Hamburg

Sorry about the delay today folks! I didn't get up until rather late, and then I was feeling a bit lazy today.

My trip to Hamburg was enjoyable, I guess. I saw lots of incredible things. It is a beautiful city, and it doesn't feel at all like it is the second largest city in Germany. Nevertheless, it wasn't a trip without problems.I ended up taking a different train than Jim and Tracy because my rail pass expired and I didn't want to pay 120 euros for a round trip ticket on the fast trains. So, my train ride ended up being 4 hours instead of the 2 hours that it would take on the ICE (fast) trains. Nevertheless, Jim and Tracy were supposed to get there at roughly the same time that I was, and they were going to meet me on my platform.

So, imagine my surprise when I got there, and the only person waiting for me on the platform was Tracy. Apparently, Jim never showed up at the train station that morning. (I found out today that he and Tracy were actually on the same train to Hamburg, but somehow they didn't find each other). So, it was going to be just me and Tracy for the day. Which wasn't terrible, but neither one of us had really had a chance to look up what we would like to see in the city, so we had no idea where to go. Plus, of the three of us, Jim definitely spoke the best German.

Nevertheless, Tracy and I bought a map, and set off to go see the sights. The weather was wonderful for most of the day, and Hamburg is really one of the most beautiful cities I've seen since I've been here. Case and point:

But anyway, I was quite nervous about touring with only Tracy. I don't really know her that well, and I'm not very good at small talk. (Plus, I knew that her boyfriend had just broken up with her a few days before and she was still pretty upset about that). The great thing about Jim is that you never really have to say much around him. He's enormously entertaining to just sit and listen to, and every once in a while you can throw in your two cents and all is well.

But anyway, we managed for the most part, and it was only slightly awkward. So, we wandered around, saw some very famous buildings, like the Rathaus and the Stock Exchange, and other similar places. We also found this AMAZING park that we sat in for a while. There were some pretty fountains and lots of chairs to relax in, and ponds with ducks! Both Tracy and I agreed that we could sit there all day long. It was beautiful. Here is the view from the chairs that we snagged in the park: After that, it started to get very very warm, and we thought about walking back down towards the docks to take a boat tour. But unfortunately, when we got there, it was a bit expensive and very confusing, and the boats either had no cover at all or were completely enclosed in glass (neither of which were very appealing to Tracy. I didn't care much one way or the other). So anyway, we decided to scrap the boat idea and went to find the street that had the old warehouse district and the street that had the houses right on the canals. Which, eventually, we did find, but it wasn't nearly as awesome as we thought it would be. Oh well.

By about mid-afternoon, though, we were both very very tired, so we decided to try to find someplace to eat. I sort of wanted to stay down by the canals and eat at one of the restaurants there, but Tracy thought they were rather expensive and we walked back up towards the center of the city, although we couldn't find anyplace at all to eat there. We finally found a reasonably priced restaurant there that served burgers (no bun or anything...just burgers with nothing on them! Crazy!) and one of the most incredible baked potatoes ever. I don't know what was in that sour cream, but it was awesome..... Anyway, after that it was nearly 5 o'clock, and we were both exhausted and a bit grumpy, so we decided to go back towards the train station. There was a train at around 6 that we decided to take to go home.

Unfortunately, I didn't really have time to do any souvenier shopping, and I also didn't get to go up in the hot air balloon to get a really good look at the city.

Overall, I'm glad I went, but one day I would like to go back to get a proper look at the city and do some of the things that I had wanted to do but didn't. Maybe on my next trip to Germany!