Hamburg was not at all what I had expected. Historically, this was always one of Germany’s most important cities in terms of economics. Today, the city is still an industrial capital. There still exists a historical section, but its being quickly eaten up by corporate development in a very strange infusion of old and new. The reason for this is all the ports, docks and industry! Everything, save one theater is nothing but dock and factory on the other side of the Elbe River, which is an incredible amount of space.
I took mitfahr there... if you're wondering what exactly that is, it's like an online Craig’s list where people with cars register and you can call them up and ride with them wherever they're going for a small price. It's an amazing system, and is quite cheap. I got into the city pretty early, so I did some waking downtown before looking for my hostel. That's when I saw most of the pretty churches and city buildings in the downtown old city. They were nice.
The thing with Hamburg to be aware of... at least for when I was there is the weather. Nasty storms come plowing from the West off of the North Sea. They're very cold and windy. I even got hit with some random hail at one time. As soon as they're gone though, the city becomes warm, pleasant and beautiful once more... Watch out also for the developing section to the Southeast. I wandered down that way in search of a Submarine exhibition that's no longer there... along with anything else! The whole area is half under construction; and empty ghost town... but only because it's not finished yet, which is an odd twist.
Hamburg has one of the most beautiful botanical garden/park centers in Europe, and it's huge. It's cared for by the city and university, that has a large botany section. They have an old Garden and a Japanese section. The whole thing is absolutely beautiful, and I would consider a must-see, though I'm kind of a garden/park nut, so who knows! lol.
The boat rides are great too, and you can do them with just a simple transit ticket if you want. Ignore all the silly "sailor" dudes who will try to tempt you with their long tours around the canal. It's much more worth it just to take the larger boats with the electric signs on the side. It's really funny, because they even say the same things on them that you here on the trains; the famous "zurrueck bleiben bitte" (equates to 'mind the gap')as the door goes up and down. People have to take the boats to get to work at the docks on the other side of the canal after all!
At first I thought that Hamburg had one of the lamest night life of all the cities I've seen, but then I found Reeperbahn street, which turned out to be the exact opposite for my taste; WAY too intense! There was a club simply titled "injection" with a huge syringe as the sign... there were Granny pole dancers! It was smart the way they arranged it though. It was all contained on one little street from what I saw, and there were tons of cops there to make sure order was kept, so I didn't feel in danger or anything... unless I had gone in one of those places, which I didn't! I'm an innocent exchange student from WMU after all! :D
Checked out a pretty nice museum in the garden district... no surprises there aside from how nice the museum exhibits themselves were; very interactive and informative. The city has been a port city for 500 years, and always will be. Other than that its history is similar to most other German cities; war, explosions and regret from the last century followed by steady recovery.
They had a huge Lego store, which I was very happy to see!
I also had a huge hamburger at a restaurant there... wow how silly of me :P
There was an all-age group rowing race going on the second day I was there, which was pretty interesting
I got home late on Saturday, missing a party held by one of my theater buddies... oh well. Today I did laundry, posted the pictures and made some banana bread. I've been trying to get the right software to make music videos for random things today as well, and that's proving to be hectic at times... the hard part was finding a file converter so my editing software could cut clips I wanted to edit... sigh. k, well I guess that's all I got to report for now... pretty sure... had a great presentation last week! Oh, and I need to get working on a paper I have to do for my language course... keep forgetting about that... le-sigh... other than that things are going super! My performance is coming up soon... oh and that summer course back at Wayne will be starting in a week... sent an e-mail about that with no reply... oh well, enough babble! Peace all,
Dave
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