Copenhagen

As you can see by the train schedule at the Lübeck bahnhof, shown above, the train to Koebenhavn (Copenhagen, 4th from the top) leaves Lübeck each day at 10:06 a.m. I've looked at this schedule board many times and have longed to be on the train to Copenhagen sometime. This past Monday, January 28th, we were on it!

Before we departed, I bought myself a bit of lunch (a little pizza) from one of the take-aways at the Lübeck bahnhof, for eating on the train. I have yet to see lunch counters or fast food places use styrofoam for to-go orders: they pack everything from sandwiches to pastries in biodegradable paper bags like this.

Our visit to Copenhagen was short: just two days. We figured we'd hit the high points and see if we liked it there, and as it turned out, we should have stayed longer, because we loved it. We felt at home there, probably because the Danes speak English well (they actually apologize if they speak Danish to you before realizing you don't speak Danish, which made me feel bad), but also because it's elegant and pretty, and because the Danes named the main street through town Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard. 

The train ride to Copenhagen is a four-hour trip from Lübeck (shown by the blue line below), a journey that requires a 45-minute ferry ride from Puttgarden, Germany to Rødby, Denmark. The entire train goes onto the ferry, and everyone disembarks and enjoys the ferry's duty free shop and sea views. 





Here's the view out the train window as we headed into the ferry:

And here's our train on the ferry, on the train and truck deck (can you tell I'm fascinated by the idea of a train on a ferry? I suppose Europeans think it's no big deal):

We walked along this narrow corridor to a door leading up via stairway to the passenger part of the ferry, which looked like this, with a cafe and a duty free shop:

We wandered around on the ferry and looked out the windows and stood out on the deck until it was time to go back down to the train. And then we were in Denmark, where the terrain was much like the terrain in northern Germany (and in Minnesota, for that matter): flat, with a few trees here and there, and lots of farms.

When we got to the Copenhagen bahnhof we did what we normally do: we found the Tourist Information office and asked about various things, including how to find our hotel. Unfortunately we didn't listen very well:  we took a long, circuitous route to our hotel and we eventually found it, about a block and a half from the bahnhof.

We stayed at an inexpensive but new hotel called SteelHouse, which is actually a new style of hostel. We used to stay in hostels in Europe before the invention of Air Bnb, but this one was a cut above what we've been used to. It had a big modern kitchen surrounded by windows, where people can cook their own food, and a game room and house-concert room for the younger folks. You can check in online at a bank of computers in the lobby, and everything is run by your room card, even the elevator. If you don't scan your room card in the elevator, you don't go anywhere, we discovered, until someone clued us in. 

Our room was teeny tiny: just a queen bed and bathroom, and a little bit of floor space so you could walk from one to the other. What does a person really need a floor for at a hotel anyway? The room had a TV and good internet and a shower and a hairdryer; the mainstays of life in the 21st century. The lights were automatic; you didn't have to bother yourself with turning them on and off, but I noticed that you had to flush the toilet and run the sink tap manually. Someday I suppose even that will be automated and we'll never have to touch anything again, just walk around making water taps run and lights go on and off. 

I admit, I felt bad for the housekeepers, though, as making the beds at this place requires kneeling on the mattress and tucking the sheets along the wall. I hate making beds like that, and can't imagine doing it every day, many times over! I hope they have a trick to make it easier.

Anyway, in our tiny room we set down our little shared backpack (we travel light) and headed out for a walk around Copenhagen. We walked past the Tivoli Gardens (the second oldest amusement park in the world, closed in January) and along a pedestrian walkway that wound along for blocks. It felt very safe and was lively with people.  

After about a kilometer of this, we arrived at our destination: Nyhavn, a collection of old houses from the 17th and 18th centuries along a canal with swans in it (who appeared to be doing some mating dances -- heavens!). 


Here's me at Nyhavn:

And here's Gary, looking like a character from some Danny Kaye movie, admiring the clear water in the canal:

From here we walked through the Christianborg Palace (seat of Danish Parliament), and started looking for a place to have dinner. We noticed two helicopters hovering overhead, and the main road was blocked off by the police. My royalty radar was on full alert, even though I knew I wouldn't recognize the Queen of Denmark even if she rode past in a horse-drawn carriage. We came upon a gathering of people in front of the town hall who were waving Danish flags and cheering, and we learned that Denmark had just won the 2019 IHF World Men's Handball Championship, and that the team would be appearing on the balcony at any moment. So that was what all the fuss was about! We didn't know anything about handball or the team, so we continued on, happy to see so many people so happy.

Day Two in Copenhagen

On our second and final day in Copenhagen (we would have stayed longer if we knew we'd love it there so much), we visited the National Museum of Denmark, where they have an amazing collection of Viking artifacts -- we had no idea so much has been unearthed from that era -- and a great history of Denmark from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages too -- right up my alley. I was too busy gawking to take many photos, but I managed to get a photo of these things:

I thought these were part of a modern art installation set inexplicably in the middle of the Bronze Age exhibit, but I learned that these are Lurhorns, "used to create an atmospheric background for Bronze Age rituals." This strikes me as very odd: they had all they could do to make bronze items just to survive through a day, and they made these fanciful horns? So bizarre. All of these lurs were found in bogs around Denmark (as were most of the items in the Danish pre-history part of the museum, including a few human bodies).

We had lunch of open-face Danish sandwiches and beer in the museum cafe, then walked over to the Bertel Thorvaldsen museum. I had never heard of Thorvaldsen: he was a Danish sculptor (1770-1844) who was extremely prolific in his lifetime, carving what seems like hundreds of marble statues, busts, and reliefs, which can be found all over the world. He carved marble in a classical Greek style, such as this one:

... and he's buried in the courtyard in the middle of the museum, which was his request. 

After this, we had to say farewell to Copenhagen, sadly, as we had tickets for the ferry back to Germany that evening. We went to the bahnhof and bought tickets for the train to Malmö over the new (since the year 2000 anyway) 4-km bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. We arrived just as the sun was setting, so we had to wander around Malmö in the dark. We saw enough of it to see that it's a pretty little city, but next time I definitely would like to see it in the daytime!

I managed to find in Malmö what I had hoped to find: semlor! They used to serve this heavenly little cardamom bun -- filled with not-too-sweet whipped cream and marzipan and dusted with powdered sugar -- only between Shrove Tuesday and Lent. But now it's available in bakeries shortly after Christmas. Halluliah!!! (This reminds me, we didn't see many pastry shops in Denmark, which was a surprise considering that the Danish was invented there, I presume.)

We had a busy and somewhat hair-raising evening in Malmö: we had to be at the ferry terminal by 9:00, and we knew we had to take a bus to get there. But we couldn't find a travel information office at the Malmö train station, which would have provided information on where to catch the bus, which bus to take, how much it cost, and how to pay. By asking around, we got a variety of wrong answers and enough correct ones to get us to the remote ferry terminal just in time to board the ferry for Travemunde. It was a good thing we didn't follow through on our idea to grab a bite to eat at the ferry terminal, and had our dinner instead in Malmö, because the ferry terminal consisted of a ticket counter and a too-brightly-lit waiting area with a row of plastic chairs and a vending machine full of candy bars. 

A van drove us and the other "foot passengers" (two girls from Holland) to the ferry and dropped us off next to an elevator on the car deck, which we took to the reception area to get directions to our cabin. The ferry was full, but it was mostly truckers and car drivers. We had a glass of wine (for me) and a Bailey's (for Gary) in the ferry bar, and watched the departure.

After saying goodbye to Malmö (we hardly knew ye!) went back inside, picked up a bottle of cloudberry liqueur at the duty free shop (this is unavailable in the U.S.), and hit the hay, waking up just in time to disembark in Travemunde and head for "home."  

Oldenburg and Hanover

This weekend we went on a whirlwind trip, first to Oldenburg to visit a former student of Gary’s -- Regina -- from when he was in charge of the foreign exchange program at the U of M dental school. Then to a town near Hanover to visit some other friends from that same era. 

Very quick history in a nutshell

Before we left, I checked out Oldenburg history and learned that archaeological digs have dated the first settlement in that area to the 8th century -- by West Germanic tribes and later also by the North Germanic Danes -- but wasn’t until 1108 that Oldenburg was first mentioned in history, when Eligmar I became its first count. 

This got me to wondering how one becomes an area's "first count"; I apparently missed that day in history class. It turns out it's too complicated to summarize in a nutshell, but I learned that Romans and Franks were involved in this particular area in initially setting things up with kings and dukes and counts. So that satisfied my curiosity for the time being. 

Anyway, Eligmar I, the first Count of Oldenburg, is interestingly the patrilineal ancestor of the “House of Oldenburg,” which has ruled Denmark continuously since 1448 and still is Denmark’s royal family today. Even Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, is descended from Eligmar I.

Modern Day

Getting back to our little side-trip, Friday we took the train to Oldenburg and Regina met us at the train station. She picked us up in her brand new VW camper van, which was very well designed inside compared to our old Ford Coachmen van we recently sold. We asked if she'd been camping with it yet and she said she and her boyfriend took it to Slovenia over New Years. Because that's where you go camping when you live in Europe. *sigh*  

Regina took us to see her dental office, which was very modern and housed inside a building with the date 1853 on the front. From there she drove us to the “rich” part of Oldenburg, with house after house like this one, which turns out to be where she lives:

This is a Buddhist center, which was an intriguing surprise to us. Four people, including Regina, share this beautiful house, and it's very peaceful and calm inside as one would expect. They share a common kitchen and living room and a meditation room, and each person has a separate (large) bedroom. The house also has two sunrooms, one in the front and one in the back, and what looks like a beautiful garden in the back (it's winter, so we didn't see it at its prime).

After tea in the back sunroom, we walked through a large park, where kids were out testing the ice on the newly frozen river (eek!) and to the old part of Oldenburg, where we had lunch in the basement of the Rathaus. 

After lunch Gary, Regina, and I had a quick look at the castle (shown here) and had a woman snap a photo of us before it was time to head to the bahnhof

From Oldenburg we took the train to Neustadt and were picked up at the bahnhof by another friend, Andy, who took us to his and his wife Antje's house in a little farming village called Schneeren, near Hanover. There we had a great raclette dinner, along with Antje's sister Imke and her son Michel, and we spent the night there. 

This is Antje, Andy, Antje's sister Ute (pronounced OO-ta) and, of course, Gary, at früstück the next morning. 

Antje arranged to take us to visit an old mill in town, which was really a treat. (We temporarily misplaced our camera while there so these are images from the internet.)

The proprietor was raised in this windmill, and her parents were both German and English. When her mother died in 2008 she moved back to the area and restored the mill to its current condition, which apparently was no small (or cheap) feat. She now runs it as an Air Bnb, and kindly let us go inside the rented part to take a peek even though some people were staying there. It's beautifully restored.

My favorite story she told us was that the mill was built, to grind grain, in 1871 by a man named Heinrich Dettmer. The windmill was problematic from the start, because the sails kept hitting the masonry as they turned. Dettmer tried again and again to fix the problem but failed. He finally got fed up, so he secretly sent all the unmilled grain to his father-in-law's house in town for safekeeping, and set fire to the mill, intending to collect the insurance money. Unfortunately, his stash of grain in town was discovered and he knew his plan had been discovered. Before he was arrested, he set fire to the town, fled to Bremen, and sneaked off to  America, never to be seen again. Only the brightest and best, eh! 

From here, Frank and Ute took us to Hanover for a quick visit to the town hall, where the city has set up four scale models of Hanover, showing how the city has changed over time:  a walled city in the Middle Ages, Hanover before and after WWII, and Hanover today. The model from 1949 was the most striking: it shows that nearly every building had been bombed and was missing its roof. What a mess that must have been. One cathedral has been left in its bombed-out state, as a memorial, like the one in Hamburg. It's mind-boggling that this happened so recently, in the scheme of things. And it's a good reminder of the consequences when a country votes for the wrong person. 

After a walk through what's left of the old part of Hanover (including some beautiful old timber frame houses), we stopped at a Dutch cafe where they served excellent hot chocolate and kuchen! Yay!

... and then we went to the bahhnof and boarded the train for home. A quick but fun trip! 

The old-fashioned trains with compartments are gone, but now and then you'll luck out and get a modern one with compartments. This was the kind we had for the trip back to Hamburg. The ICE trains (in Germany ICE means InterCity Express) also have Wi-Fi and electric sockets so you can charge your phone and computer.

Gary in the train compartment, heading back to Hamburg

Today (Sunday, January 27) was a rainy day in Lübeck. It's apparently -22 F back at home, with a winter weather advisory, which makes 41 and rainy feel like a dream come true.

Bippen & Bremen

Gary in front of Guntram and Eva's farmhouse. It's run completely by solar energy, including three rental flats. The extra electricity their solar panels produce is sold back to the grid, as part of Guntram's retirement income. 

This past weekend we visited friends Guntram & Eva at their farm near Bippen, which is close to the Holland border. They took us to see a burial area of giant rocks that are dated from 3500 B.C. How those people moved them there and piled them in a formation is a mystery. These would have been the forebears of the Saxons.

Eva, Guntram, and Gary at the Megalithic tombs

For dinner Saturday night, Eva & Guntram made a big pot of grönkohl, which is sort of the northern German version of sauerkraut except that it's not fermented. The dish they made is similar to Polish bigos, only with kale instead of sauerkraut. We diced 5 onions and put them in a Dutch oven, then they added two packages of frozen chopped kale (grönkohl), some bratwursts, and some pork. This cooked on the stove for an hour or so, and the result was a wonderful & healthy dish, easy to make, and served with small boiled and peeled potatoes.  As someone who dislikes cooking, I always like finding easy things to make. 

(While I'm at it, I have another easy and good recipe that I got from Cordula when we were in Heidelberg: you cut up chicken (like a chicken breast) and put it, raw, in a baking pan. Then you mix leek soup mix with a good amount of Half & Half (or cream with milk), and pour it over the chicken so that you'll end up with a gravy. That's it! Bake until done, and serve over rice. It's really good because, of course, it's nearly all cream.)

Getting back to our trip this weekend, on Sunday afternoon at the end of our short-but-lovely visit, Guntram & Eva brought us to the closest train station and politely waited for us as we boarded the train. We waved out the window at them standing right there next to us on the platform, until the train pulled away. I love that part of European life, the daily train-taking, where you just park your car and stroll to the train platform just beyond the hedge there, and either wave goodbye or get on the train and leave. Just like that. 

We took the train as far as Bremen, which was recommended by a friend (thank you, Janice Springer!). Before I continue, I have to first talk about  . . . 

A nutshell history of Bremen

The area around Bremen was originally inhabited by tribal ancestors of the Saxons, back as far as 12,000 B.C. — the same people, no doubt, who built the stone tombs we visited with Guntram and Eva. The word Saxon is thought to come from the word “Sax” or “stone knife.” 

The Roman historian Tacitus wrote of the Saxons and other tribes living in the area that “they universally join in the worship of Herthum; that is to say, the Mother Earth.” 

The Saxons were devoted to their god, Odin, and to Mother Earth at a time when Christianity was spreading. Their reluctance to accept Christianity -- along with a propensity for raiding their neighbors -- ultimately led to their downfall, which coincides with the founding of Bremen.

For centuries the Saxons were constantly at odds with the Franks, led by the Christian king Charlemagne, to their south. Eventually the two sides had one last skirmish — a war that lasted over 30 years, from 772 to 804. (To put it in perspective, the Viking Age in Europe was roughly 793–1066). The Saxons failed to win over the forces of Charlemagne, and lost the war. Charlemagne forbid the Saxons to continue worshipping Odin, and upon the threat of death, he forced them to convert to Christianity. That's the story of how the Saxons were welcomed into the loving arms of Jesus. 

In 787, during the long war with the Franks, Charlemagne formed the Catholic diocese of Bremen, which is when the city of Bremen officially began. About sixty years after the war ended, in 888, Bremen was granted the rights to hold its own markets. Bremen’s first stone walls were built in 1032, and in 1358 the city joined the Hanseatic League. The rest is more history, of course, but I've already covered the Hanseatic rise and fall so will leave it there. 

One last thing: We all know Bremen as the city in Grimm’s fairy tale about the Bremen Town Musicians. I had to re-read the story to remind myself what it’s about, and here’s the gist of it, from Wikipedia, in case you’ve forgotten, too: “It’s the story of four aging domestic animals — a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster — who after a lifetime of hard work are neglected and mistreated by their masters. They decide to run away and become town musicians in Bremen. Contrary to the story's title, the characters never arrive in Bremen, as they succeed in tricking and scaring off a band of robbers, capturing their spoils, and moving into their house.”  That’s it — end of story. 

I wasn’t exactly sure what the lesson of this story was, so I Googled it:  “The respect of your elders is one lesson in this story. . . Another lesson is the importance of teamwork.”  Okay! I have a new respect for the Bremen Town Musicians. By the way, this story dates from the 12th century (the brother’s Grimm retold old folk tales, they didn’t write them themselves, I learned), and in the original version the robbers are a bear, a lion, and a wolf. I don’t know if that’s significant, but I imagine it likely was, for whatever reason. The bear, lion, and wolf are often used on heraldic crests, so maybe it was a tale of the downtrodden defeating the “1%” of the day and enjoying the spoils? 

Anyway, the Bremen Town Musicians are *everywhere* in Bremen. Every town needs a good mascot, and Bremen has four. Here's the sculpture of them that sits outside the town hall. (The truck behind Gary is a pop-up flower shop.) 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We arrived in Bremen late Sunday, checked into our hotel near the bahnhof (very convenient), and had dinner in the Ratskeller, in the basement of the Bremen town hall. It was built in 1405 and the Ratskeller looks like this (this is a stock photo; our table was next to one of these huge barrels):

We ordered Labskaus, apparently a typical Bremen dish, which was described as corned beef and mashed potatoes with eggs, and beets, herring, and gherkin slivers on the side, which sounded perfect. When it came to the table I was surprised to see that the corned beef and mashed potatoes were served in one big mashed pile, which was more than a bit off-putting, as you can see, but tasty anyway.

Labskaus in Bremen

Our visit to Bremen was badly timed, on a Monday, when all the museums and many stores were closed. But we had a good time walking around the elaborate government buildings from the 15th & 16th centuries, and the Schnoor area, which was where the craftspeople lived, we were told, in those same centuries. Now the Schnoor is a tourist spot, with old little houses and narrow little streets -- very sweet and picturesque. 

We also visited Böttcherstraße, an area that used to be populated by barrel-makers (coopers = böttcher in German) and was rebuilt in the 1920s and 30s into an artsy shopping area with art museums. While there, we passed by a shop that sold sheet music! I wasn't going to go in, thinking I would never be able to explain in German what I wanted. But Gary insisted I try, and to my relief the woman at the front desk was very kind and spoke perfect English. It  was a treat to look for music for the Poco Baroquo ensemble on these shelves.

I picked up some Bach and some Handel and some English folk tunes arranged for string quartet, and also a tiny music box that plays the Triumphal March tune from Aida, for our bathroom.

Even though much of Bremen was closed, we felt lucky to be there on a cold Monday in winter, because there were plenty of tourists in spite of the weather and we can't imagine what it must be like on a summer day, packed with people. That's one reason we like traveling off-season. We don't get to see places at their best, but we also don't have to contend with thousands of tourists as clueless as we are. 

We ended our stay with a cappuccino and hot chocolate in this old flour mill, located right in downtown Bremen:

And now we're back in Lübeck for a few days before our next adventure. 

Living in Lübeck

This week was a quiet one; we just lived in Lübeck as if it's a normal thing to do. Gary wanted to help Peter start installing a new walk-in shower in our flat.  The two of them removed the old tile and carried it in buckets down the stairs, while I continued working on the illustrations for a children's book I'm writing (and illustrating) with a friend of mine. It's been a productive week for us all.

Wednesday night we walked all the way to Peter's bistro (about 20 steps from our flat) to hear a group called RoadBird: two excellent guitarists and a vocalist with a powerful, lovely voice. Peter snapped this photo of us while we hung out as if we belong here. The trio was entertaining and professional -- really fun -- and all of the original songs were in English, so we understood every word! 

Gary and I at Essig-Fabrik Bistro

After the show, we walked all the way back to our flat, and got here in no time!

Today we decided to visit a big-box hardware store, called BauHaus. The nearest BauHaus is only 2 km away, so we walked there. We discovered that after you leave the old town of Lübeck -- passing the Trave River harbor and the old river warehouses (slowly being renovated and turned into restaurants and office space), and crossing over the railroad yards, you are in suburbia. It's faster and newer and louder there -- but you can see the cathedral steeples of Lübeck in the distance, so it's okay.

Here's our destination:

Except for the fact that all the tools are metric, the appliances are 230 volt, the prices are in euros, and it has a backerei, it was just like Home Depot. There was another big-box hardware store nearby, so we visited that one too. They had these cute bird feeders with thatched roofs:

.... and these stylish wood stoves:

... but I felt I could have just as well have been at any L&M Fleet store in Minnesota when I came upon this familiar guy, browsing in his favorite department:

Hamburg

Yesterday we took the train to Hamburg to see for ourselves what all the fuss is about. I've read that some people consider Hamburg the prettiest city they've ever lived in, but up to now I hadn't seen that side of it.

First, a little history in a nutshell

Hamburg began in 808, when Charlemagne had a castle built in the marsh between two rivers (the Alster and the Elbe), to fend off the Slavic princes who were living to the north, in what eventually became Lübeck. The Romans and the Danes each controlled Hamburg for the next 500 years or so, and it became an important trading power. Then, in the 13th century Hamburg joined with the then-more-important city of Lübeck, as part of the Hanseatic League. 

(Twenty years later, the Hamburg senate passed an interesting law, for a reason I'm not able to find. The law stated that anyone caught beating to death, shooting, eating, or insulting (??) a swan would be severely punished. It was said that Hamburg would be free and prosperous as long as there were swans living in the lake formed by the Alster River. The swans of Alster are still protected today, and are even brought each winter to a special enclosure so they can spend the winter in safety.)

Like all European cities, Hamburg has been through a lot. It survived a major fire in the 13th century, the Black Death in the 14th century (which killed off half the population), and witnessed the Lutheran Reformation and an influx of immigrants over the next several centuries. In 1842 a fire destroyed much of the city. A hundred years later, WWII nearly finished it off.  Toward the end of WWII, British and American bombers destroyed entire districts of Hamburg, killing about 42,000 German civilians (the Nazis killed a good share as well, of the largest population of Jewish citizens in Germany) until the Nazi regime surrendered in 1945. 

As a result of the 19th-century fire and 20th-century bombing, Hamburg no longer has a traditional city center like most German cities do, and is a labyrinth of canals and streets.

Our tour begins . . . 

We started our Hamburg visit yesterday with a 90-minute guided tour on a double-decker bus, one of those "hop on, hop off" deals (although we didn't hop off; we stayed on the bus). It was a good way to get a feel for the city's size and see the highlights. It's a huge city -- the second-largest in Germany -- and it's obvious that there's a lot of money there. Apparently it's become such an expensive city to live in, people without loads of money are having trouble finding places to live. 

One of the first places our bus tour took us was around Lake Alster, where the rich people live. The houses were immense and looked as if they'd been dipped in money. The whole scene -- the lake in a city, the expensive houses, the view of the skyline -- reminded me of Bde Maka Ska (Lake Calhoun) in Minneapolis, except that in Hamburg the houses are larger, there are several marinas and rowing clubs on the lake, and the skyline of Hamburg is dominated by cathedral steeples rather than skyscrapers. 

There are lots of canals in Hamburg, this one in a residential neighborhood

Our bus tour brought us past elegant governmental buildings

City Hall (Rathaus)

A more impressive, stock photo view of the Rathaus (photo by Daniel Schwen)

. . . and past remnants of WWII, like this bombed-out church tower in the heart of downtown Hamburg that's been left as a memorial to everyone killed in that war:

Stock photo of St. Nicholas church, by Joaquin Ossorio-Castillo

. . . and through the seedy-looking Reeperbahn, which is well known for being the place where the Beatles learned their performance skills and got their haircuts. John Lennon once told a reporter, "I may have been born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg." The Reeperbahn is famous, and some people say it's a must-see, but I contend it's a must-miss: just a nondescript street full of sex shops, nothing you can't see in the sleazier parts of any city in the world. I suppose it might have its merits; it's hard to know by just driving through it on a two-story bus. 

Downtown Hamburg is truly impressive, built on a foundation of canals.

Part of downtown Hamburg

The warehouse district -- the Speicherstadt -- was my favorite: an area of huge old brick buildings that's mainly now a tourist area with several museums. These massive old warehouses are still used as warehouses; for some reason our bus tour guide mentioned that there are a lot of cabinets from Asia being stored here. 

I'm going to cheat and use a stock photo, to show why the warehouse district is so impressive. Hamburg is the Venice of the north, but not as romantic. 

Hamburg Speicherstadt © JFL Photography / Fotolia

At the end of our bus tour, we set out on foot, and walked our feet off the rest of the day.

Our first stop was, naturally, an antique mall that we had spotted earlier, called Antik Center. We had  a fun look around, and bought a teapot.  

Our second stop was the retail shop of the Swedish clothing designer, Gudrun Sjödén. I was determined to get to this store, and thanks to Gary's map-reading skills we finally located it in the maze of downtown Hamburg. (There are lots of diagonal streets and no city center, so it's a really difficult city to navigate.)

And here I am at last, at Gudrun Sjödén, ready to shop!

And here I am again, shopping at Gudrun Sjödén:

And now I've gotten that out of my system, much to Gary's relief, I'm sure. After my visit to my fashion Mecca (which, by the way, I noticed was being visited mainly by older women), we visited the Maritime Museum, in this beautiful old warehouse:

Stock photo, Hamburg Maritime Museum

This museum was on our wish-list -- it had been highly recommended and sounded promising -- but we found it disappointing: 99.99% of the descriptions were in German only, and there were a LOT of model ships. Way too many model ships. 

By this time we were pooped out and it was getting dark, and it was time to head back home. Hamburg is impressive, and beautiful in parts, but it was nice to get back to the people-sized architecture of Lübeck.