Thursday, August 7, - Sunday, August 10, 2014

Thursday - We're off to Hamburg, Germany. With stops we expected it take about 6 hours and that's close to what it took. We stopped every 1 1/2 - 2 hours for lunch and then coffee. Kees' Garmin GPS took us into town and up to the front door of Hanse Clipper Haus - a hotel picked by Lynda because she and Frank had stayed here before. And, just like what she arranged in Stressa, Italy years ago and our hotel last week, it is just a lovely place with a large suite. AND!!!, IT HAS AN ELEVATOR.

After getting settled, we walked around the corner to a grocery store and each couple purchased breakfast food. We also needed ice for the vodka and prosecco. A little later we had drinks in our room. Dinner was at a Portuguese restaurant a few blocks down the street. This particular side street is lined with them. Its a Portuguese neighborhood. I had gambas and artichokes in a red creamy sauce - I know - cream, but I'm surviving. Lynda had the same thing and my Linda ordered tuna steak with white potatoes. Frank had swordfish. All the dishes were served with small salads. 

These guys came by and sang to us. They blended with each other really well even without many teeth.

Back at the hotel I served everyone specialty chocolates that I thought contained different liqueurs. But, I was wrong - it was marzipan. I don't really care for marzipan, but everyone else was happy to go to bed with that in their tummies.

Friday - After the Adamsons got their leaky refrigerator fixed, we headed out for a subway station nearby. Our tour guide, Lynda, showed us how to buy a pass for 3 days that we just carry in case an official wants to check us. 

Down a few stops to the main station, a stop at the visitor center for information on concerts, tours, and street maps. We purchased our tickets for the Hop-on, Hop-off bus and walked outside and got on the top deck for our 90 minute tour of the city.

The first part of the tour was narrated in German only because no one told the speaker that she needed to add English. I finally got up at a stop and went down below to tell the driver, but he was already talking to the woman who happened to be sitting just a few rows behind us. After that there was some English but as is usual for this kind of operation, there was a lot more German than English. I don't think we got the whole story. We certainly didn't get the jokes.

We did see a great deal of the city: large estates around a lake, interesting buildings (many of them newish), the red light district called St. Pauli, old train and ship terminals, and museums. Their architects seem to have a great deal of freedom to put up stunning buildings. 

Here is a mosque in the middle of an affluent neighbor. It was built by a rich guy.

Part of the Red Light district - much smaller than Amsterdam's.

Even the square buildings have interesting facades and floors may be offset. There was a big fire in 1842 that did major damage to the city. There was no mention of bombing during WWII. The city has 60 kms of canals. Makes you think of Amsterdam, but the buildings are straight. Just as I said that, we came upon this building.

We stopped for lunch at a quasi-cafeteria that Lynda had read about. It was inexpensive and tasty.

Then we took a break at the hotel until it was time for the harbor tour.

For the afternoon, we took a 90-minute bus ride around the port of Hamburg. The good news was that the cost was included in the price of the morning tour. The bad news was that the narration was completely in German. But, the other good news was that it was a perfect, sunny day and we were riding around in a convertible (top deck of the bus).

The Hamburg port is enormous. It makes Baltimore, another working, cargo port that we are familiar with, look like a small Caribbean island port. It looks like it is made up of 4, 5, 6, or 7 separate ports, each with large dock quays and huge container loading/unloading cranes. Frank said he heard that they can turnaround a container ship in 36 hours. That compares very unfavorably to Long Beach, California, which takes 7 days.

We sauntered toward our hotel and stopped for an espresso. Then, our regular routine of a rest, aperitifs, and dinner. We ate at another Portuguese restaurant – this one just down the street from yesterday’s place, but up a few grades in quality. 

After our dinner last night we had walked past it and the young couples eating at an outside table raved about it. The chef/owner fixes what he wants and the servings are fish tapas. We were served gambas in a heavy-duty garlic sauce which was excellent. The owner brought them to the table flaming – very dramatic. The shrimp was followed by a slice of swordfish and a slice of tuna with several unidentified, delicious sauces on the side. Frank doesn’t like tuna, so we think he was served two pieces of swordfish. I don’t normally eat these fish, but I cleaned my plate, as did everyone else. All washed down with a bottle of white wine.

Continuing our Hamburg routine, we walked back to our room for a special piece of chocolate and then to bed.

Saturday – Spending most of the summer in Soest for the last 4 years, we have gotten used to almost everyone speaking English. You expect it in a major city like Amsterdam, but its also true out in the country in many towns in The Netherlands. But, here in Hamburg you cannot take it for granted that the person sitting next to you speaks and understands English. Most of the retail people who wait on you have passable English but that’s it. But, I don’t think Hamburgers like being asked if they speak English. I was doing that when I first arrived and it seems appropriate for truck drivers but not adults in the city. I just start asking my question and they can stop me if they want.

Linda asked a guy standing beside her in a line if he spoke English. He said, "a little", so she asked him to translate a German word. He told her that he didn't speak or read German. So, you never know.

It also seems that Europe is moving away from using credit cards and wants to switch to bankcards. But these bankcards must be linked to a bank in their country, not one in the States. So, you can’t expect to pay with a credit card, even one with a chip. We have to keep a good amount of cash in our pockets to ensure we can pay the bill. So far, our experience has been that some restaurants will accept our Visa cards and some won’t. And, it doesn’t seem to be tied to whether they are better restaurants or just cafes. I have learned that they will not accept credit cards for small purchases.

The forecast was for rain this morning and sure enough that’s what happened. Lynda suggested we stay in until noon, then lunch on our way to the train museum. This was an important day – seeing the train museum was one of the main reasons we came to Hamburg. She and Frank went for a walk and found the restaurant for dinner: Le Plat du Jour and made reservations.

We walked around the corner and had salads at a café on the busy touristy street. It was just enough to energize us for the afternoon.

Linda found this Smartcar parked just like she always wants me to park.

The train, which is just a few blocks from our hotel, took us close to the Miniatur Wunderland. Its located in part of a beautiful block-long building that was once a warehouse. This place shares the building with two other businesses but still occupies 1,300 square meters and will eventually expand to cover 2,300 square meters.

There was a long line waiting outside, but because of prior planning by Lynda, we just walked in and purchased our tickets. Linda and I also had reservations for a “behind-the-scenes” tour and we purchased those tickets too.

While we waited the hour before our “behind-the-scenes” tour to start, Frank and Lynda guided us through many of the individual sections of the train display. Each section is modeled after a real place and heavily oriented to Germany, of course. Besides places like Hamburg and Bavaria, there are Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, and the States. Italy is under construction and they have plans for France and others in the next few years. All the sections are connected to each other. Sometimes the trains are running under the walkways and can be seen through plexi-glass sections of the floor. The kids really like that. This connectivity earns them the title of the largest model train display in the world.

The middle picture shows a concert on a jumbotron screen showing the performers.

The most popular display is the airport, which must be the largest also. Planes leave gates, taxi over to the main runway and take off. They fly into the clouds that are painted, soft opening in the wall. They also emerge from one of these at either end of the runway when they are coming in for a landing. From time to time, the display will change their takeoff and landing directions as if the wind had changed.

Check out this sequence. The plane is starting his roll down the runway, then lifts off, and finally he flies into the clouds (hole in the wall).

For our special tour we were met by a nice German young man who had a strong voice and spoke very good English. There was only a man and his young son with us. This tour has special requirements: no big people or mobility-challenged people, no pacemakers or metal in your body, and no large backpacks. There are many small places you need to bend down and squeeze through. For an hour Marias (I think that was his name) showed us how they move all the vehicles, planes, boats, boat lifts, ski lifts and other mechanisms. At some points there are five levels of trains and cars and other moving things below the main, visible level. 

This plane has landed, taxied behind the stage and is being lowered on an elevator to eventually come back out to the airport.

There are charging stations that trucks and cars will come over to automatically when they sense their batteries are getting low. Some of the movement is controlled by chains and magnets under the main platform. There are large cruise liners, container ships, and cargo ships remote controller by “captains”. This cruise ship just arrived "back stage" and was docked by one of the "captains".

Each area is made as real as possible, so in the Hamburg display there were buildings that we recognized from walking around town.

This whole thing was opened in 2001 by two brothers who had owned disco bars and wanted to do something else. One brother had the idea and the other had to be talked into it. They were able to raise 1.5 million euros seed money because they had a good business track record and their business plan made sense to the bank. Think about going into a bank and asking for that much money to construct toy trains. Hmmmm.

Later we ate outside at Le Plat du Jour restaurant. The name means "dish of the day" and when we were traveling in Provence years ago, we always ordered it for lunch and were always happy. Our wonderful meal consisted of: a starter of snails in a heavy garlic butter already out of the shells. All I had to do was pick them up with my spoon and shovel them into my mouth. Lynda had this too. Frank had the pate de maison and Linda had a chicken livers salad. Lynda and I had rump steak as a main course, and it was pike for Frank and my Linda.  Dessert was “bad”. I broke my rule and ordered the profiteroles and everyone else had sorbet with either vodka or champagne. But, it was soooo good.

We walked over to the Rathaus (a large government-looking building) on a square full of people sitting, looking at a large screen. I asked a couple what was going on. They said they were waiting for a free movie to start. It was a French comedy dubbed in German. After taking some pictures we caught the train and waddled over to the hotel and said good night.

Later, before we went to sleep, we were entertained by fireworks for about 10 minutes, just a few blocks away. Last night, they were on the other side of the hotel and we couldn’t see them. But, tonight we had a clear view. Don’t know why they were being shot off.

Sunday – We agreed we would be on our own for the morning and then meet up at the International Maritime Museum at 2:00. Linda and I walked through town down a very fashionable street called Neuer Wall. Every expensive store was there: Rolex, Vidal Saisson, Prada, Louis Vuitton, etc, etc, etc. Regretfully, it was Sunday and they were all closed. No spending money. 

We ended up by the large lake in the middle of town at the oldest café in town. It had been pointed out to us during one of the bus tours and I wanted to have an espresso there. 

This guy came by to entertain us while we were drinking our espresso. He set out a bunch of small cones and did his inline skating routines between them.

After that, we took the subway over to the tour boats very close to our hotel. We hopped on the harbor tour boat with English narration with 15 minutes to spare. It was nice enough to sit on the top deck. There are expensive apartments and condos along the waterside, but the most interesting part of the tour was the container terminals with as many as seven gigantic cranes loading and unloading a single ship. 

The containers are either 20 feet or 40 feet long and one ship we passed could accommodate 40,300 containers. Yes, I typed that correctly. Each crane costs 9 million euros and they are all built in China and shipped over to Hamburg on specially modified ships.

Along the banks were some interesting looking buildings. This one to the right is the headquarters of a shipping company. Therefore, the unique ship looking-design.

Ever since Linda saw the movie Captain Phillips, she calls these lifeboats: Tom Hanks boats.

The docks are floating because the difference between high and low tide is 4 meters. That is way over the type of fluctuations we are used to in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

This emblem is the coat of arms of Hamburg. Its all over town.

After the boat docked we walked down the crowded quay. Lots of tour boats and lots of people getting off and getting on. No lines here, just everyone for themselves. By the time we got over near the museum, I was getting tired and my stomach didn’t feel too good. The problem may have been the sausage we shared on the quay. Street vendors can be a problem.

We took a few wrong turns and asked 3 different people where the museum was located and none of them knew. Finally, we turned a corner and there across a canal was the building with its name plastered on the front with a large ship’s screw placed near the front door.

Frank and Lynda were there to meet us. We sat for a few minutes for me to rest and Lynda gave me some candied ginger to soothe my tummy. After about 10 minutes, I was ready to go. Yes, ginger does work. The museum contains nine “decks”. We started at the top and worked our way down. On deck #9 were the model ships. They were everywhere and every size. 

Actually, there were models throughout the entire museum we were to learn, but here were the little ones. Some of these navy ships were called “waterline” models and were used to instruct navy personnel how to identify enemy ships and explain maneuvers. One case held tiny sailing ships with sails made from Japanese silk and etched hulls. 

Another set of navy ships including an aircraft carrier was made from paper.

Other decks displayed weapons, uniforms, life on a luxury liner, and paintings. It was overwhelming. You could visit this place many times before you really saw everything.

Thank goodness we found a metro stop close by and took it over to the Rathaus station to make the connection to another line to take us to the hotel. Unfortunately, we got confused, had to come out of the station and walk 3 or 4 blocks and reenter.

After drinks and snacks in our room we crossed the park in front of the hotel and attended a church service at the Lutheran church because they were featuring an organist and saxophone duet playing between each lesson. 

It was lovely. We had never heard that combination of instruments before. They blended very well. It was a nice calm way to end our visit to Hamburg.