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.