I decided on Monday around 8:00 PM with Alyssa, while we were waiting for Aerobic Bodywork to start, that since we had Thursday off class and we have no class on Fridays that we should go to Hamburg for the long weekend. Why not? Couldn't think of a good reason since getting there cost less than 50 Euro ($70)... it did involve 5 different trains though ha ha
We traveled with Ben, a guy I know from Madison, and met up with Ben's cousin in Hamburg because he recently moved there. Ben's cousin met us at the train station, helped us buy our local train ticket pass for the next few days, took us on a short walk around a cute lake in Hamburg. Not much was open due to the holiday and it was "Father's Day" which in Germany means men get together and drink... without their families? A bit backwa
rds ha ha. We headed to our first hostel shortly thereafter. Since we got our train tickets on Tuesday, we had to book a hostel on Wednesday for the following day. I didn't think this would be a problem considering it's Hamburg and not, say, Paris... false. There was something going on in Hamburg that weekend so I had to make about 20 calls to different hostels and finally found some decently priced ones. The first was a sort of hotel and was really nice. The second ended up being an international youth hostel association member so it was REALLY nice with a great breakfast spread ha ha. They were both located a short ways from the city center so lots of trains happened but it wasn't bad at all. I would definitely recommend both places without hesitation. That's a picture of the City Hall in Hamburg which is huge! It's important because it's the city-state's capitol and therefore city-state city hall also.
After settling into the hostel we decided to go wandering. We found some interesting places and then out of no where a red line... it looked promising. We decided to follow it and were led through a cute quarter of the city.We found some interesting things like an Otto Von Bismarck monument, the Reeperbahn aka red light district of Hamburg and the best area to go out at night, an interesting restaurant for dinner where I had an awful Hamburger... sad face, but Ben had a great "lady steak" ha ha that's what they called the smaller steak. We were pretty beat from traveling and had a big day ahead of us so we didn't go out, just got some much needed sleep since the journey begin around 5 AM that day.
The next morning started early since we had to move our things from the first hostel to the second, on the opposite end of the city, before we had a walking tour at 11 AM. Our tour was extremely informative and made me realize a lot about Hamburg. I didn't realize the city had such a history and culture to it... I hadn't traveled much around Germany before this semester so I didn't know what to expect. It's a big city with a lot of history from WWII because it was bombed heavily and experienced a Great Fire in 1842 which allowed the city to rebuild itself in a way most European cities don't have the opportunity to. They have a lot of memorials for the war too, which is something I like about Germany.
An interesting part of the tour was seeing the opera house that's being built on the harbor, it's supposed to be as iconic as the Sydney opera house when it's finished. It looks like an iceberg in a way. It's supposed to be a wave on top of a warehouse building (there's a large warehouse district where the opera house is being built)... google a picture, it looks incredible.After the tour we went back to a memorial at the St Nikolai Church for WWII. The church was bombed to piece but the tower was reconstructed and memorials constructed where the church stood. It was bombed during the biggest air raid of WWII which destroyed a large portion of the city and left thousands of people homeless.
This is where the church's frame stood. There are memorials to victims of concentration camps, the entrance for the church archive through the mini pyramid, and other statues.
There was also a peaceful and asian inspired garden next to the tower... I liked it a lot.
This is the tower that still stands, we went up it and looked at all the pictures of what the city looked like after the bombings and how badly the church was burned down. It was incredible... it never ceases to amaze me how awful people can be and the kinds of things we do it war.After the memorial, we headed to the hostel to check in and set up our rooms, took a short nap because we were exhausted, had some dinner and headed to a wax museum called the Panoptikum on the Reeperbahn before we went out. The Panoptikum is no Madame Tussau's but they definitely had some interesting figures. We got yelled at for sitting on a stone wall that was apparently also made out of wax ha ha but we got some interesting pictures with some 'famous people'. I have them all detailed in the Facebook album but here are some favorites:
The two Benedicts ha ha
The creepy Hilter wax figure that was made in like 1941... yea...
Apparently Harry Potter is famous enough to be a wax figure? ha ha
This is us being Beatles Groupies :)
After the museum we headed out on a Pub Crawl, where you pay 10 euro or so and get to be taken to 5 different bars and clubs and given drinks/drink specials, it's a good deal usually. We had a lot of fun, met some interesting people from England (a whole bachelor party) and some from places like New Zealand, Australian, North Dakota ha ha
The following day was spent at an interesting art exhibit (let's just say it was more sexually charged than we expected... because we apparently walked into the wrong art building and weren't at the photography exhibit like we thought). We also walked around HafenCity, the warehouse area, with Ben's cousin. We later in the evening went to Miniatur Wonderland, lots of models of things built in an intricate and amazing way (for pictures see the facebook album). We ended the night with dinner at 11 PM at an "american restaurant" and out at a disco with some of the guys from the night before.
Unfortunately we didn't have nice weather until the last day when we had only a few hours to enjoy it before taking the train back to Bonn. I really enjoyed Hamburg and had a rough week following it because we pulled two all-nighters and got little to no sleep for three days. There was so much to do and we were having such a great time that sleep just didn't matter. I'm really glad I went... before going, it didn't sound as exotic as some other places people were headed to for the long weekend but I had an amazing time with Alyssa and Ben, really enjoyed the city itself, and felt like I learned a lot about a city that plays an important role in Germany's history. I would recommend traveling there to anyone :) So many things to see and do for all types of travelers.
Alright: Paris and Berlin updates coming soon! Promise!
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