Our first surprise in Hamburg greeted us on the morning
of 29 October; a Sunday. We caught the metro into the city centre, disembarking
at Rathaus. The city was eerily quiet, and we discovered before too long that
basically everything is shut on Sundays in Hamburg. This did not bode well for
an enjoyable day!
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| The view from Junfernstieg over Kleine Alster. |
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| A pleasant morning in central Hamburg. |
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| A water taxi stop (which we didn't investigate how to use). |
Nevertheless, we wandered the streets for a while, window
shopping as we went. Hopping a train, we made our way out to Reeperbahn for a
look at the Beatles-platz. I’m wouldn’t class myself as a devoted fan, but I do
appreciate a bit of musical history. The city of Hamburg is where the Beatles
got their first gigs that gave the band some traction and catapulted them
toward super-stardom. To commemorate this, there is a simple monument to the
Fab Four in the area where a lot of these gigs took place.
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| It had been a hard day's night for some of the clubbers in Reeperbahn. |
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| Some of the revelers were still twisting and shouting at 10:30am. |
And as it turns out, this area is rather seedy… I’m not
sure if this was the case back in the 60s, but in 2017, it’s certainly the
dodgy club and red light district. We were in attendance about 10:30am, and
there were a couple of clubs just closing up for the night, with some less than
desirable patrons just spilling out onto the streets. Needless to say, we
didn’t hang around long!
We made our way back to Baumwall; there were plenty of
people wandering around (possibly tourists like us looking for something that
was open!). Across the bridge, we meandered through the streets of Am
Sandtorkai in search of some lunch, again finding most things closed. Back near
the train station, we found a bustling restaurant called Gasthaus Heimathafen
where we were able to squeeze onto a table after a short wait. Avy craved some
soup, as she tends to do, so we got a bit of that as entrée before tucking into
some delicious mains; sausages for her, and a juicy Hamburg-er for me.
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| Near the Baumwall train station. |
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| The view over Neiderhafen. |
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Brücke 4; the entrance to the St. Pauli walking tunnel, under the Elbe.
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| A calm day on the harbour. |
I tried researching this before we arrived, but it seems
like the jury is still out on whether or not the hamburger actually originated
here. One narrative states fried egg on meat patty and bread was a dish
favoured by the sailors passing through and it became somewhat of a tradition.
Good enough for me!
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| Soup to calm the soul. |
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| See? Now she's calm! |
From the restaurant, we found our way to St. Michael’s,
famed for its iconic bell tower which stands proudly out above a majority of
the skyline. You can go up for a look, but times are a bit restricted, so we
just admired it from ground level.
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| St. Michael's church. |
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| St. Michael's church. |
Walking by a different route, along Ludwig-Erhard Straße, back to the town centre, we
passed by the St. Nikolai Memorial. Originally one of the main Lutheran
churches in Hamburg, it was heavily damaged by bombing in the Second World War.
Amazingly, the tower, still standing today, survived and now serves as a reminder
and memorial to the atrocities of the dictatorship of those turbulent times.
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| Looking south down Herrengrabenfleet. |
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| St. Nikolai Memorial. |
Arriving back to Rathaus – which, by the way, means Town
Hall – we admired the stonework outside and in before heading back to our
accommodation for a quick rest.
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| The exterior of Rathaus. |
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| Some pretty fierce security stands guard. |
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| Main square behind Rathaus. |
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| Taking a rest inside. |
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| A nicely adorned staircase to... somewhere! |
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| Rathaus from the outside. |
We came back out to Mönckebergstraße not much later; of course Avy needed a fix of Asian food, so we found what turned out to be a pretty decent Vietnamese place called Ngan Tinh Vietnamesisches Restaurant for a good hearty bowl of pho. It’s okay – at least I got to have a hamburger before we
went back to noodle soups!!
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