Oot and Aboot

So clearly even if I say I’m not doing any traveling for a weekend, I’m still doing something… and well, last weekend was no different. I finally got around to touring around Hamburg, followed up by a day trip out to Lübeck (ok so I lied, I did travel, but not far… only about an hour).

Friday

Friday night after work Fathi (Turkey) took me and Tomoko out to “the city of Altona”… which is really just the neighborhood outside of downtown Hamburg, kind of like Oakland in Pittsburgh. But it was a new neighborhood for me and a lot of fun to wander around, and we ate some of the best döner kebab I have ever had. The area has a nice pedestrian thoroughfare with lots of little shops and things. I learned later this week with Jodie that it also has a lot of little happening bars during the middle of the week.

Saturday

Saturday was a long day with bipolar weather… It was sunny one minute, downpouring the next, both hot and cold… with just enough humidity to totally kill my hair. My day started with heading downtown for the first time. [this isn’t entirely true, my day really started with heading into the village and enjoying some breakfast and coffee at the one of the local bakeries] my first stop was the Rathaus [town hall] where, in the middle of the square was the European Beach Volleyball Championship Finals… so of course I had to go in and watch for a bit, until the rain very suddenly started hammering down on us… They passed out ponchos in an attempt to get people to stay… but really, it just wasn’t worth it (but hey, I got a free poncho). So I just started wandering around the city, which is actually just another major shopping area, full of pedestrian areas, and indoor mall like passageways (a lot like Singapore… but less so… hard to explain)… The best part was finding possibly the largest H&M I’ve ever seen directly across from a Lush store. I got all the way down to the Hauptbanhof (main train station) turned back around headed back to the Rathaus, ended up taking a tour of the interior, then headed over toward Sankt Nikolaikirche (Saint Nicolas Cathedral), which is the bombed out ruins of what is left of an old church. Its really very neat; rather than rebuild the church they have left it the way it was after the WWII bombings, and they have added an elevator to the top of the cathedral tower to see a panorama view of the city. After that I headed off to the warehouse district [Speicherstadt], which is basically an entire community of old fashioned brick warehouses and canals. While I did pass by the Hamburg dungeon and miniature wonderland, I restrained myself from going into either in hopes of bringing some people with me [I really am just a big kid]

From here I made my way to the symbol of Hamburg, Sankt Michaeliskirche, [St. Michael’s Cathedral]. Just outside the Cathedral was a little community festival with high school bands and a classic car show etc. [It really is just a fantastic fluke of fate that I got to see a volleyball championship and classic car show all on the same day]. Again, I got take another elevator trip up the steeple to see the city… I LOVE that Germans believe in elevators rather than making you walk bagillions and bagillions of steps, especially considering by that point I had been walking for about 5 hours. I ended my little jaunt by checking out a street set up for the widows of tradesmen, and seeing the main harbor Landungsbrücken… There is a relatively famous tower here, its on all the post cards, unfortunately it was under scaffolding when I got there, so I just jumped on the train and headed home.

Sunday

Sunday is the sunniest day I’ve seen since I was in France, so I seized the opportunity to head out to Lübeck… which claims to be the home of Marzipan and quite possibly the creepiest city I have ever been to… EVER. It is a world heritage site, known for its red brick buildings, and one of the only places (if not THE only place, to have an entire downtown labeled as a historical site). Unfortunately, what this means is that all the buildings are sort of shifty… as in literally shifty… the bricks are starting to break down so nothing is quite standing straight up. This is pretty neat looking until you go into your first building… apparently I get a bit queasy in slanty buildings… it didn’t help that the first slanty building was the museum, so I was trying to read the history and things… and everything was very legitimate… until the last room… which was the torture chamber… out of no where, and totally not in theme with the rest of the museum. They also have one of the largest puppet museums in the world… but not just puppets, marionettes… which I also find to be uber creepy, and decided not to go in mainly because I wasn’t sure how much time I had before things closed as it was Sunday. So I dropped into my first church… Everything is completely white washed on the inside… no pews… and a black crucifix… and 1940’s jazz playing in the background… now beside reminding me of a Torchwood episode…the whole thing was… well… I took video, you’ll get the idea. The other thing was that all of the buildings I went into had a dank musty smell to them all, which didn’t help the atmosphere at all.

At the Catholic cathedral all of the artwork was very morbid, lots of skulls (in general this was true in all the churches along with lots of clocks). But then in the back they had an art exhibit… the first thing I saw was a guy being crushed by a rock, followed by lots of bloody dark, horrific pictures. Turns out it was an exhibit on Depression.

I then just strolled around, hit up the Marzipan store, etc. The whole place was very very quiet, despite lots of people. But also very pretty. It only took me about 5 hours to see the whole city and do all the things they recommended (they actually had a tourist map with path to walk along to see everything… along with a mini history of each bit… the only hitch being that I had to pay for it, *it’s the first time in Europe I had to pay for a tourist map… and they knew w/out it you’d be more or less screwed so it cost near 3 euro – that’s like $5 right now)

Monday

Back in good old not creepy Hamburg! After work I met up w/ Tomoko and one of her friends from Japan and we went to Sankt Jacobi for an organ concert. Now this turned out to not exactly be what any of us expected. It was all music composed between the 1950’s- 1980’s… so it was kind of like old school sci-fi music, which while it works in old-school corny sci-fi movies… when put to an organ concert, its just weird. And they never introduced the songs or anything… They just started playing, paused, switched songs, and then ended… somehow the rest of the audience knew they were finished… how, I’m not so sure. It was pretty weird, but yet another event I can check off under amusing experience.

Other random things:

So basically the last week has been all about getting into Hamburg. I’ve also been doing some exploration after work w/ Jodie, and you really get to see that this whole city has more dimensions than most places I’ve ever lived. Though we’ve both agreed that it might be too “hip” for either of us.

Otherwise things are good… I’m reading a book that is soooo not up my ally that I have to finish it just to say I have, and thanks to Bryan, I’m catching up on the latest season of Dr. Who (for those of you have to watch via regular TV, I laugh at you and the suspense your must be going through each week).