via picnic: Hamburg Day Trip

We had seen and heard good things about Hamburg, so Jacob and I decided to make a day of it.

On a Wednesday morning, we hopped on an ICE train and an hour and forty minutes later, voila! We were in Hamburg.

We picked up a free map from the tourist office at the train station and off we went.

We rushed to make the train that morning, which meant that Jacob and I didn’t have breakfast. So by the time we arrived in Hamburg, we were pretty hungry. The first thing we wanted to do was find something quick to eat, quickly! We headed down a busy street which was full of shops and Hamburgers. It was crowded and hard to find a place with all the Hamburgers in our way. Eventually we found a food stand full of Hamburgers eating bratwursts. Jacob isn’t a Hamburger, but he did eat a bratwurst. (Come on, people! When else will I be able to make that joke?) By all accounts, it was yummy.

Brats didn’t sound good to me, but I also wanted something quick, so I opted to try out Ditsch. Ditsch is a fastfood chain that sells oval-shaped pizza to on-the-go types (such as myself) in train stations and in shopping areas. It looked pretty tasty and I’d been meaning to try one, so this seemed like the right opportunity to do so!

It definitely hit the spot. It was a strange way to eat pizza, but kind of fun! I felt like a pizza-eating chipmunk. Cute!

Our first stop was Hamburg’s beautiful City Hall. We considered taking a tour of it, but we decided it was best to see more of the city since we only had a day.

We had done some research on things to check out while in Hamburg, but we didn’t have anything “planned” so to speak, so we basically just explored without any agenda. Like Cologne, Hamburg was also heavily bombed during WWII, so many of the old buildings have been destroyed. However, there are still many old parts of the city intact, and many of the newer structures feature some really neat modern design.

During the war, many churches were destroyed or damaged, but then rebuilt afterward. Not in St. Nikolai’s case however. The city decided to leave St. Nikolai Church as a memorial for victims of war, violence, and persecution.

The weather that day in Hamburg left something to be desired. I had checked the forecast the night before—partly cloudy, 48 degrees F, 20% rain, and 20mph winds. Sounded pretty good—no one is fan of wind (except sailboat captains and professional kite-flyers, of course), but if it’s not raining and not freezing, I’m fairly content. In reality, the weather was much like the weather we experienced in Amsterdam (only much colder) —20 minute intervals of alternating rain and sun with huge gusts of wind in between. Eventually this pattern gave way to mostly freezing cold rain and knock-you-over wind gusts. That put a bit of a damper on things, so we decided we should give our feet a break, dry off, and have a snack.

We ducked into a restaurant that looked cozy, and ordered some sandwiches and a couple of beers. It was a really nice, “homey” place, which made returning to the wet and cold Hamburg streets all the more difficult.

Next stop was Alster Lake—a lake within in the city of Hamburg. We were amused by our free map of Hamburg’s description of the lake, which boldly stated “Only in Hamburg you will find a lake in the centre of a city!” Oh really, Hamburg? There’s no other city with a lake in the center of it? I beg to differ…

Despite the horrible weather conditions, we made it to the lake, quickly taking shelter under an icecream shop’s outdoor umbrella. It looked like the lake was about the size of Calhoun and Harriet combined. In fact, the resemblance between Alster and the Chain of Lakes area in Minneapolis was uncanny. While we were walking a stretch of the lake, there was one spot that looked almost identical to the walking path area on the North side of lake Calhoun where the boats are moored. It was pretty cool!

After seeing the lake, we took a long walk by the Fair Grounds, the St. Pauli neighborhood, and the Red Light District.