Hamburg Mini-Break

I am writing this from England!

I've just spent a whirlwind week with my parents and dad's cousins and am now finally settling in here in London. But more on that later. For now, I need to catch up on my last couple of weeks in Germany, starting with my trip to Hamburg with Amy and Alex (a friend from my German class and her boyfriend).

Since early May, Amy and I had been talking about going to Vienna towards the end of our course. I've always wanted to go to Vienna--I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe because of the Jewish history in the city, or just because it's supposed to be so pretty. At any rate, Vienna was our plan. Unfortunately, it's an expensive city and getting there from Berlin was also looking to be too pricey. So the three of us started throwing around alternative destinations--Copenhagen, Oslo, Cologne, Hamburg. Hamburg won out ultimately because it was the easiest to get to (a cheap, three-hour bus ride from Berlin) and the most reasonably priced.

I regret the decision a bit, because Hamburg, although nice enough, proved to be a bit boring, too. Part of that may have to do with the fact that we were coming from Berlin, which, well, is hard to compete with. But fortunately, I went with friends and we had a really nice time doing cheesy tourist things together.

Hamburg itself is pretty, but it's about half the size of Berlin, and we felt it. Upon our arrival, we wandered around the main part of the city near the Rathaus (city hall) and the lake.

Das Rathaus.

Close-up of the pretty Rathaus. Puts Toronto's Star-Trekky city hall in perspective.

Restaurants in the square.

Hamburg!

Hamburg, again!

The lake. I don't remember what it was called.

While wandering around by the Rathaus, we also came across a memorial for soldiers from Hamburg who died in the First World War.

Roughly translated, it reads: "Forty thousand sons of the city lay down their lives for you."

This memorial is interesting for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because it actually exists. World history, at least as I have learned it, casts Germany as the main instigator of the First World War, largely because Kaiser Wilhelm II gave Austria-Hungary a so-called "blank cheque"--essentially, when Austria-Hungary issued Serbia with an ultimatum, Germany told her Austrian allies that she'd back them up no matter what. Of course, there were a gazillion other factors leading to the war, as well, including the longstanding arms race between Great Britain and Germany, and the complicated mess of treaties and alliances in Europe. Germany wasn't solely responsible, but the peace treaty signed at Versailles after the war did explicitly set it out as so. The infamous War Guilt Clause specified that Germany was responsible for the war and therefore owed reparations to the victors. That whole thing left Germany in a pretty bad spot and certainly played a role in the subsequent path German history would take, but anyway...this is all a massive digression that is really just to say that there aren't very many First World War memorials in Germany, at least not that I'm aware of, because that period in history is kind of messy for Germans. So stumbling across a WWI memorial in Hamburg was interesting just for the fact that it exists.

But also the wording of the inscription is interesting. It uses the second person plural euch at the end, saying that those forty thousands soldiers sacrificed their lives for you all. But why euch and not uns? That is, why not say that they gave up their lives for us? It's very peculiar wording, at least to my intermediate-beginner German mind. To me it implies some very judgmental third party put up this memorial by way of ridiculing the people of Hamburg, perhaps for making their sons go out and fight a devastating war that was their doing in the first place. But almost certainly the people of Hamburg put up that memorial themselves, and in that case it indicates the very typically German self-flagellating attitude towards the country's history.

Anyway. Coming across that obelisk was one of the most interesting parts of the weekend. This is not to say that Hamburg isn't a nice place to visit. It is, and it was, but the other things we did in the city were fairly kitschy touristy things. Of course, there's a place for those things, too.

Exhibit A: wandering the tiny courtyard of the Krameramtsstuben, old, half-timbered buildings dating back to the 1600s, that today house souvenir shops, one or two restaurants and a tiny museum.

Exhibit B for kitschy tourist things we did in Hamburg: the Miniatur Wunderland! It occupies two or three floors in a warehouse in Hamburg's historic warehouse district and is basically a model railroad-ers' dream, or any child's, really. I appreciated their sense of humour a lot, though--there was so much detail in these models that they'd sneak in some really nonsensical things just to see if the adults were paying attention.

On the first floor they had little sections representing different periods of German history. This one was interesting--obviously it's supposed to be the Third Reich, but I think it's illegal to display the swastika in Germany today, so they just used blank white circles instead. But there's the torchlight procession and the bystanders giving the Hitler salute, so it's pretty unmistakable.

To give a sense of the scale...

Miniature Hamburg!

Switzerland at "sunrise."

An airport.

The airport was the most impressive thing, actually, because they actually had little planes take off and land!

But then, wham! A couple of dinosaurs chasing a poor chap up a mountainside.

And a drowning victim! Or, was it murder? Dum dum dum!

And a giant crab with an unfortunate scuba diver in its clutches!

And a proposal on board a ship!

And everyone's favourite.

And those little funny things are just the ones that we noticed! So props to the Hamburg Miniatur Wunderland for keeping things interesting.

The warehouse district itself was quite pretty, actually. It lies right in the water and is full of these huge brick warehouses reminiscent of Toronto's Distillery District except on a much larger scale:

Exhibit C: Dialogue in the Dark, an interactive tour through a series of pitch black rooms that is supposed to give you an idea of what it might be like to be a blind person negotiating every day situations like crossing a street, buying groceries, visiting a cafe, walking through a park, and even climbing on and off a boat! All you have is one of those walking sticks and the voice of a guide, himself blind. It was a delightful mixture of fun and sobering reality. Of course, I have no pictures of that. Although, I do wish that afterwards they would have led us through the rooms again, this time with the lights on, so we could have seen what it was that we had so clumsily made our way through before. But anyway. They have these places in other cities, too, and if there's one by you I'd certainly recommend it.

Exhibit D: The Reeperbahn, Hamburg's red-light district. Hamburg, being a very important port city for centuries and centuries, has played host to a constant influx of sailors over the years--as a result, the city has developed a pretty significant red-light district. The thing is, today it's this bizarre mixture of kitschy Niagara Falls-like lights and bars, and also strip clubs and prostitutes. We walked down the street one night to take it all in. What made it even more surreal, though, was that our visit to Hamburg coincided with their annual Harley Davidson Days, so the place was chockablock full of bikers.

Exhibit E: The U-Boat Museum. This was easily the strangest and most hilarious part of our weekend. It's this old Russian (not even German!) submarine parked (docked?) in the harbour that you can walk through. There are tours you can take, but we didn't bother because we were too cheap. There are no signs or explanations of anything, though, so you are really just walking through this decrepit old submarine. What makes it creepy/hilarious is that they've stocked the thing full of these mannequins which they've clearly bought second-hand from a tacky store that was going out of business, as they all have make-up painted on their faces and they're all bald. The museum has dressed them up in old Soviet uniforms and put hats on them all, but not a single one of them was wearing shoes.

We had fun making our way through that creepy little submarine.

Strategy meeting.

An image of the Statue of Liberty, apparently as seen through a periscope. Sinister.

On our last day in Hamburg, we met up with Lina, an old friend I know from my previous trip to Germany five years ago. We hadn't really kept in touch over the years, but she's from Hamburg and we met up for a lovely lunch and catch-up right before we had to catch the bus back to Berlin.

And of course, we ate pretty well over the weekend, too, including, quite importantly, having a (veggie) hamburger in Hamburg!

Having a veggie hamburger in Hamburg! There's apparently debate over the true origin of the hamburger, but I didn't really care.

Amy and Alex at lunch one day, where we had seitan "gyros."

We went to the ubiquitous Loving Hut one night for dinner! It's a vegan cult with restaurants all over the world (they have this TV running in all of their restaurants broadcasting their own channel, which features the Supreme Master. True story.), but they have some pretty yummy food.

German vegan propaganda!

Oh, and this was my breakfast the first morning in Hamburg:

BREZELN COUNT: 17

FYI, that Brezeln count is not a final one. I have another post or two to write about Germany and will finish off with a final Brezeln count then. I hope to write more over the weekend as I play catch-up. So tune in!