Hobbing around Hamburg

We left Cologne bound for Hamburg, to meet Angela and Claudia; Angela spent some time in Thailand while her husband Rainer was working there, she and Mum became great friends and planned a few international visits! We were lucky enough to stay with the Dorrheide family for the weekend.

Without a reservation on the train, we played seat hockey between those who were getting off and those getting on at different places - you never know whether a reservation is necessary, although the system is cool, LED text lights up above reserved seats, showing the parts of the journey that are reserved.

Angela and her daughter Claudia met us at the train door and we headed off for a tourist bus tour to get our bearings around the city. Hamburg has so many little canals, the catch cry is 'more bridges than Venice and the Netherlands put together', they were used to distribute goods quickly from the port.

There is a large lake in the middle of the city, ringed by parkland and super swish houses, millionaires abound! The tour also took in parts of the port, the new harbour area and many of the beautiful old buildings in the city.

Claudia, Angela and I

After the tour, Angela led us across the city, through a few interesting alleys of shops (the picture is from an area set up after the second world war for the widows of sailors) to have dinner at a traditional restaurant that is famous for selling the Hamburg special, Lebkause (spelling?!). We all sampled the dish, which consisted of shredded corned beef (silverside), in a potato mash mixture served with beetroot and dill pickles- everyone who orders it gets a certificate! Random!

We stayed the night at the Dorrheides' lovely house just out of Hamburg. To get there, we travelled on one of the German autobahns, with no speed limit. Oh boy! I have never been in a car so fast, Angela was happily zooming along and changing lanes at over 180km/hr - huge!

The next morning Angela put on a lovely German breakfast of meats, cheese,  yoghurts, spreads and fresh rolls from the bakery - yum! We set of for an English walking tour of Hamburg which was led by an English pianist who talked quite quickly - but Angela and Claudia's English skills are so good they had no problem keeping up. 'Kim' told us many stories, from the growth of Hamburg as a port and how often it was pirated and the story of the most infamous pirate who, when finally caught and brought with his crew to be executed he bet the executioner that he could run beheaded (think a chicken beheaded) and for every crew member he made it past, they would be saved. As the story goes, he saved every one.

Mum, Angela, Me and Claudia waiting for the tour to start

We walked through areas of churches, significant buildings for the town, even the area where the great fire of 1842 started in a cigar factory (it burnt almost the entire city down over two days),

Where the fire started - its now a restaurant

'Sharpest' building

We also saw the 'sharpest edged building' which was built in the shape of a ship as it was a shipping merchant's headquarters

Kim also took us to the new harbour area, that, much like Melbourne's Docklands is facing a glut of supply and its major landmark, the under construction music hall has blown out from a budget of 28MEuro to over 350MEuro last year when they were informed there would have to be major structural re-inforcement works - so the current indication is over 500MEuro - oh boy!

A small section of the harbour area

The building of blowout interest is the on the left at the end

Amazing wood and brick buildings!

From the tour we went back to the Dorrheides' house for birthday cake for Rainer, Angela's husband who had just arrived back from Thailand. Angela and Rainer took us to Lu(e)neberg, a small university town near Hamburg, where Claudia is at university. Luneburg is a gorgeous little town, that made its money off the salt that lay under the town. Unfortunately, the salt mines have removed so much of the salt that areas of the town have dropped around 10m in places, it looks quite strange! In other areas, foundations of the buildings have been, or need to be re-done and the buildings sag a little. Angela told us that the town 'council' decided to demolish the whole town due to the cost of fixing all the foundations, but the history and tourism that the town has stopped that plan. 

The main square - the slant on the buildings doesn't come out on photo great, but if the angles look peculiar, that's why!

This duck had a great nesting spot!

 We had a beer in the beer garden next to this canal in a busy little restaurant

The Dorrheides' then took us out with them for Rainer's birthday dinner to an incredibly traditional German restaurant in an old farmhouse, with period furnishings and a menu that made translation very difficult! We had a lovely meal to finish off an amazing weekend!