Warsaw was never on our list of places we wanted to go to and see - we had a few places on the list in Poland, but Poland's capital was not one of them because there were other, more interesting places to us. I certainly didn't expect to be back in Poland so soon after Wroclaw. But, I ended up there because Jeremy & Rachel were not going to be able to fit in Berlin or anywhere closer/convenient to visit during their (relatively) short visit to Europe in the course of their Global Travels, and we were off to NZ and Australia for most of the time they were in Europe. I had a day off while they were in Warsaw thanks to the way my leave worked - and it was possible for me to go to Warsaw for the day and visit them, although Sasha could not come too. Berlin to Warsaw is not a small distance - it was 5 hours by train in each direction (it takes nearly twice as long by bus, just for interest) and due to the times of the trains that run, I had about 6 hours in Warsaw with Jeremy & Rachel. But it was really good to catch up, in a snow-covered city (strangely there had been no snow on my journey across Poland except when we arrived on Warsaw's outskirts). We ate Pierogi (Polish Dumplings) for lunch, wandered around the city taking photos in the daylight, twilight and then darkness while discussing various stories and anecdotes from all our travels or times living in London, and had what has to be the largest cup of tea ever (I had one to myself while Jeremy & Rachel split theirs - we had been expecting it to come in a pot, but it came in a huge cup!). More of a wander around and then I had to depart on my train back to Berlin. I don't know when I might next see Jeremy & Rachel, their brief foray into Europe was following a comprehensive tour of both Americas and preceding a foray into Africa, apparently followed by Asia. To travel around the world for an undefined but prolonged period of time is amazing, and all power to them for seeing the world in such a way - personally, I don't think I could stomach spending nearly a year globetrotting like they are - I feel weary enough as it is! although they would see some amazing sights and experiences along the way!
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So we wanted to see some Christmas Markets while we were in Germany - a task that was going to be made a little difficult by the fact we were heading home in December for a holiday and foreshortening the period where we could go and visit such markets. We were quite ambitious about this - wanting to see as many as we could in that small period of time that we had, but also not just seeing the ones in Berlin - we wanted to see them elsewhere too. Our first was in Wroclaw as a part of that trip, but there was far more to come! Our first one in Berlin was at Gendarmenmarkt, after work one night - for this one it cost €1 to enter, but was quite worth it. We had dinner here, eating a rather yummy Spatzle with truffles and cheese and we partook in a mug of Glühwein or two but decided not to keep any of the mugs. We also took our cameras as we figured the setting of Gendarmenmarkt would be rather picturesque - it certainly was! The next was a bit of a curveball - we had intentions of going to another market when Sasha found out about another market that was only going to be open from that Friday night through the weekend, and sounded worthwhile going to. Since we already had plans in mind for the weekend days, we went to this market near Neuköln on its Friday night opening night - and boy was it packed! We also had some difficulty finding each other at first. However it was a good one, there was a bit more Glühwein and we also "won" some jams from a lucky dip. The next day, Saturday we decided we'd go to Potsdam and visit the 3 main Christmas Markets which were on there. The first was in the main town center, and proved to be full of stuff - we got lunch, and proceeded to have a Glüwein or two or three although technically one was Swedish Glögg (which is the same stuff basically) and one of the Glühweins with "Schuss" (a shot) tasted almost entirely like rum with a spash of Glühwein rather than the other way around. We also visited what was billed as a "Craft Christmas Market" which was supposed to have lots more homemade crafts type stuff but almost seemed to be more manufactured stuff than the other markets, though we did buy some homemade Schapps. The last market in Potsdam of the three was a little further out in a complex, but when we got there it was very much dead despite all advertising saying it would be open until 10pm and most places that were still open (not many) were planning on shutting at 8pm. We had planned to get dinner at this market, but this did not prove possible so after another Glühwein we headed off on our way back to the main market, which was mostly shut up and then we ended up back in Berlin getting dinner there. Of the three markets, the first one had been the best by far. For Sunday, our plans were a bit more adventurous. It had always been our plan to go visit a market or two outside of Berlin - Wroclaw and Potsdam both fitted that bill, but there were other places with notable markets. Cologne and Dortmund for instance, but they would prove too difficult to get to or do - we even toyed with the idea of visiting the markets in Quedlinburg and Wernigerode. One idea had been to visit Wismar, as we could use a €44-ride-as-much-as-you-want train ticket for both of us to get there and back and do whatever else along the way. However after being to Dresden last time, we were pretty set on going to the Christmas Market there as it was one of Germany's oldest. Getting there though didn't look easy at first - we could catch a direct train there in 2hrs like we had taken to Decin, but not a direct one back unlike the last time we were there and taking those trains was costly. If we were to use the €44 ticket, we'd have to change trains at least once and travelling to Dresden would take 3.5hrs in each direction. About a week out, we looked at it again and found suddenly there was an extra train that would go direct to Dresden taking 2hrs 15min, and was an RE train - meaning we could use the €44 ticket on it. It wasn't advertised anywhere but it turns out it was a special train put on to take people to the Christmas Markets in Dresden every year at the weekends in December. Being a special, additional train it used spare carriages - some of the older and crabbier double-deck cars around but it was kind of amusing in its own way. Toilets stopped working and I couldn't sit in the window seat because the angle of the wall was too severe! the seat layout even had "baby" seats in some of the window spaces; acknowledging that a full sized person would struggle to sit on those seats. The train was also very lightly loaded so we had an entire top deck to ourselves. Dresden turned out of have a few markets - one near the Railway Station, the main Strezelmarkt which we had intended on going to and also another one near the Domkirsche which went to near the river. We didn't consume much Glühwein this time as we were a bit over it after the previous days efforts but did have some hot chocolates, and got to try for the first time Eierpunsch (otherwise known as Eggnog). We also bought some Dresden Stollen, a type of bread with raisins and other similar dried fruits in it plus covered in icing sugar on the outside. We had a few options for trains back, but decided that we'd take the special train back as it was the least faff. We also made a point of going up a church tower overlooking the Streizelmarkt to get evening shots of it all lit up, and happened to be up there until closing (which was earlier than signposted but we were about done up there anyway). But wait, there was more! We also visited the market in Alexanderplatz (which wasn't anything much special, except the Glühweins and hot chocolates came in 200ml frosted steins instead of mugs) and lastly we revisited the Gendarmenmarkt market with our friend Nat from the UK and Sandra and Christian, whom we know through Nat and later we all went to a Swedish Christmas Market at the Kulturbrauerei. The Swedish one was not terribly different to the German ones, the main thing I remember is that it was rather bitterly cold that night! I think its fair to say we certainly did the Christmas Markets! Overall, they were all different but some were better than others - I liked Potsdam's main one because it had more craft stuff, Dresden's was large and pretty and action packed, and Gendarmenmarkt was interesting from the perspective that it had actual restaurants set up in glass-fronted but rather warm looking rooms along the edge of the market. Best food was definitely Gendarmenmarkt, Best drink was probably Wroclaw with its million different varieties of Glühwein and the best items for sale was Potsdam's main market.
Way back when I discovered the tickets for trains to Szczecin, Poland (see A Day Out - Szczecin), I'd also stumbled across tickets to another place in Poland called Wroclaw and that there was a special cheap train called the "Kulturzug" going there every weekend in the summer. We'd put it up against the Szczecin train but decided for Szczecin - but since Wroclaw was the 2016 European Capital of Culture, it looked interesting and since the train was cheap we kept it in mind as a future option although we never got around to it before the original summer period when it was running expired. Sometime later, I discovered that the Kulturzug had been extended until the very beginning of January 2017 - we could still do it yet. Wroclaw had ended up on our list of destinations anyway, and when having a cursory look at when we might perhaps go to Wroclaw we discovered the Christmas Markets there started in Mid-Nov - just before they kicked off in Germany. So, we decided to aim for the opening weekends of the markets as that was something we wanted to do too, visit Christmas Markets in a country outside of Germany. Dates selected, accommodation for the Saturday night found, train tickets purchased and the trip was locked in! Getting there and back was accomplished by the aforementioned Kulturzug - the special train put on by Deutsche Bahn at weekends direct to Wroclaw. There apparently used to be a direct train to Wroclaw from Berlin, but not anymore - in general, train links between Germany and Poland are not great. This train was €19 each one way, which for a 4.5-5hr train journey wasn't bad we thought. It was a long time to spend on the train, which was one of the older German Railcar types but considering the train was cheap and there wasn't a massive swathe of things to do in Wroclaw, it was fine. We left at 8.31am on the Sat and arrived at 1.05pm, and left on Sunday at 4.29pm arriving back at 9.32pm. The train wasn't fully packed, but still had a decent load but despite the length of journey it was surprisingly comfortable. We brought our own snacks and food to eat and drink on the train too. The main event, as far as we were concerned was the Christmas Market and it was no small one. There were a large number of stalls, all selling a wide variety of items - and a large amount of them were locally-produced arts and crafts or food and wine. We had dinner there, with meats and potatoes cooked on a barbeque which was shaped like a steam train, we also had waffles for breakfast, which were heavily overladen with cream and chocolate sauce. We did procure some items, including a bottle of home-made Polish Wine (turns out its Rhubarb Flavoured and yes we did try it before buying. Also, the commercial Wine producing scene in Poland is virtually non-existent) but perhaps our biggest consumption at the market was Glühwein (Mulled Wine, or warm wine with spices) of a wide variety of flavours and types. They had 10 different kinds - the most variety I'd seen - and they came in little boot-shaped mugs which you paid a deposit (Pfand) for and got back when you returned the mugs. Or didn't get back, if you didn't return the mugs - its expected some will become souvenirs and yes we did procure two of these cute mugs for ourselves. Wroclaw itself, in the Old Town was very charming looking - it had that classic Germanic style like Brasov in Romania, except unlike Brasov in Romania but just like Szczecin, Wroclaw used to be a part of Germany and was known as Breslau. This wasn't just during World War 2 or anything, it was Germany for as long as Germany existed as a country and then belonged to one of the Germanic Kingdoms before that. It only stopped being German when after World War 2 Russia insisted on shifting Poland to the west - so the Soviet Union could become bigger, and did so at the expense of Germany which shrunk (but kinda didn't matter after a while since Poland and East Germany became part of the Eastern Bloc and de-facto Soviet Union anyway). How weird is that, that an entire country just got shifted to the west? The Soviet Union is no more and that area of Poland that it acquired is now in Lithuania and Belarus, and the little bit of German territory it acquired just north of Poland is now an isolated part of Russia. So we were in a city that was once German, but now is Polish thanks to the Russians, hence the architecture. Wroclaw is the Polish version of Breslau - and pronouncing Wroclaw in the Polish manner is rather difficult, its more like "Rosh-love" but often we defaulted back to calling it Breslau since everyone in Germany still calls it that and while our friends and colleagues haven't heard of Wroclaw, they have heard of Breslau! Poland is rather cheap compared to Germany in many respects, including food and drink. They use the Zloty and not the Euro despite being a part of the EU, and its roughly 4 Zlotys to 1 Euro. Sasha found us a little cafe in Wroclaw with quite a reputation and apparently was open 24hrs - in a neat old building, it had real charm and also its food and drink selection was rather simple and effective. Food? the menu was painted on the wall by the bar, and everything was 8 Zloty's a plate (2 Euros); drinks, well the menu was painted on the opposite side of the bar and everything was 4 Zloty's (1 Euro). So that's beer, wine, Polish Vodka, tea, coffee, etc was all 1 Euro and all the food was 2 Euros. We got 3 plates to share for lunch and a beer, and later got a vodka each (which just came as a shot) but upon our next visit we got glasses of wine, which I have to say were rather generously filled given the price! We also had a lunch at a place which specialised in Pierogi, or Polish Dumplings (and proved to be far too much food for us!). While we spent the majority of our time in the old town area, we did venture around a bit including going to look at the "Train to Heaven" - an old steam locomotive mounted virtually on end which pointed towards the sky. It wasn't until we were at the train and read its name properly that we realised it was a reference to the Holocaust. Our Kulturzug train tickets were also valid for Wroclaw's public transport for the weekend, which made things rather easy to get around. Last but certainly not least, I can't forget to mention the "Dwarves". Wroclaw is known for its "Dwarves" - which are little bronze statues placed around the city, no more than Gnome sized and mostly they look like Gnomes rather than Dwarves although if you think of "Snow White and the 7 Dwarves" thats the kind of Dwarf they depict. Initially they started out as a form of protest against the Communist regime, and then later the city commissioned a few of them in memory of their form of protest. They were so popular that many businesses got their own made and placed outside their business - our hotel even had one! some were better than others but it was fun to go round the city on the lookout for them. I think we found close to 20, but there are apparently more than 80 planted around the city! Over all, we didn't go crazy with the spending but we still had a good time and got a lot for our money's worth. It was also our first Christmas Market of the season - which was going to be short for us since we were going away for most of December, but we were determined to get as much in as we could. Wroclaw was a fitting opening for our "Christmas Market Adventures" but also a lovely place to get away to for the weekend, and of course another tick off our list of places we had to visit.
Autumn can be quite a picturesque time of year, and the autumn colours of the trees were getting quite pronounced in Berlin. The weekend following Hamburg we'd gone out and about in Berlin to have a look at the autumn colours in the parks and areas on the Sunday - it was quite spectacular looking. We'd hit upon the idea that perhaps we go to Quedlinburg for a weekend soon and experience the Autumn colours in the Harz forest region. This seemed like a nice idea on the face of it, as did the idea that perhaps we could take the Harz steam train to go and see more of these colours. But when we started getting down to the nitty gritty of working out exactly what we'd do and go about it, it started getting hard - there was nowhere in particular on the Harz line out of Quedlinburg that I could definitely think of that would have autumn colours, and I started remembering a lot of the trees in that area still retained their leaves during the winter time that I was there so maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea. We were also complicating things by wondering whether Wernigerode should be included in the visit, or whether Wernigerode would be better than Quedlinburg. It was all getting a bit hard! One morning Sasha sent me through a picture from Instagram of a stone bridge high up on some rocks with hills behind and lots of autumn colours. Her message accompanying it was "What about here for Autumn colours. I know he has edited it but... It's near Dresden". I looked up this bridge (called the Bastei Bridge) and saw that yes, it was near Dresden, to the South-East of it along the Elbe River which looked like it would be a pretty area anyway. It would be accessible by train - and hey look, that train line carries on into the Czech Republic to Decin. I knew of Decin - it was where I had wanted to go by steam train when I visited Dresden during my Big Germany Trip, but the steam train had been sold out before I could get tickets. Decin itself looked rather pretty - what if we went to Dresden and stayed there, but visited this bridge and Decin as well? I'd finally be able to say that I had been to the Czech Republic, but it was also not out of the way for the Bridge. We'd both been to Dresden before on separate trips and we'd both liked it - Sasha liked the idea of going back and also the Decin add-on, and realising that the leaves were starting to drop off the trees rather quickly we aimed for the first weekend in November. To get there, we caught a train from Berlin. This was a Czech train but it travelled through lots of Germany before getting to the Czech Republic and ultimately Prague. We didn't have allocated seats and instead started off by going to the restaurant carriage and having breakfast there because when else might we get that opportunity? The meal and coffees were quite decent, and then we found ourselves some seats in a saloon carriage where we sat for the rest of the trip to Dresden. We weren't getting off in Dresden yet, but staying on this train to Decin but I knew there was a locomotive change (from German locos to a Czech one) and that I had about 10mins to get off, take photos and hop back on - I didn't take the full 10 minutes and Sasha was half wondering if I might miss the train! It was about another hour to Decin from Dresden, down the Elbe River valley and past where the Bastei Bridge was. Decin was small, but charming. We had a decent wander around the town, as well as going up to a lookout on a tree-covered hillside with masses of leaves on the hillside. We had lunch there at a neat place Sasha looked up online, and got ourselves some Czech Pilsner to go with our hearty meals. Once we'd covered as much as we wanted to, we made our way to the station to get "Elbe-Lande" tickets which would allow us to travel by any train back to Germany and then unlimited train rides in the Dresden area. We'd been expecting them to be a fraction cheaper than buying them in Germany (the difference was you had to start using them straight away if purchased in the Czech Republic, vs anytime you validated it with the German ones) and the lady behind the ticket counter didn't speak English - but I manage to purchase the right tickets anyway and it turns out they cost half the amount of the German ones! We caught a Czech train to Bad Schandau, and discussed our options - either trying to go back to the little town we saw on the border, or going ahead to the Bastei Bridge but we couldn't do both in the remaining daylight hours. We made the call for the bridge, so caught a train to Rathen where we then caught a ferry across the Elbe and found the path up to the Bastei Bridge. It was here though that we stopped - the sign said it was a 40min walk to the Bastei Bridge up the hill, which in the by-now pouring rain and starting-to-fade light didn't sound like the most wonderful combination. So we made the call not to go up there, but consider it for tomorrow if the weather was good - so instead had some hot chocolates from a nearby cafe, then caught the ferry back and a train on to Dresden. That night, wanting good food but also somewhere fairly decently priced, we ended up going to the same Schnizz Schnitzel place that I visited last time. Remembering last time that the staff I had encountered there spoke no English, I was all ready to attempt ordering in German when the lady at the counter spoke to me in English - well there goes that! Because of the train and our early start we didn't get up to too much more that evening. The next day we both decided we didn't feel like trekking out to the Bastei Bridge again as the weather wasn't supposed to be so great again there, but was better in Dresden with no showers. So we chose to stay in Dresden and spend the day looking around the autumn colours there instead, which we did. We also had a big wander around the Old City, and visited the Zwinger Palace which is something didn't see there during my last visit but Sasha had. When it eventually got dark (which being winter, was about 4pm), we pulled out our tripods and started taking night photos of the old Dresden buildings along the Elbe Riverfront and into the city itself. Eventually we went and caught our train, which was a German one this time although it had originated in Prague and was a night train going all the way to Zurich - it was in fact the same train I had taken the last time I had left Dresden, except we were just hitching a ride on it in one of the seated carriages to Berlin. Our carriages were at the back of the train, and were Inter City branded and painted cars but the interior was the same IRE interior we'd experienced going to and from Hamburg - apparently Deutsche Bahn never bothered to bring some of the old IRE carriages up to proper IC spec and just gave them an external paint job. We got ourselves an actual compartment to ourselves (which had 3 seats on one side, 2 on the other and they were interleaved) and rode through the darkness the two hours back to Berlin. Journey over, but a lovely visit to the charming city of Dresden and the charming town of Decin in the Czech Republic. Even as we were boarding the train back to Berlin we were sure we'd be returning to Dresden soon as a part of one of our other future trips, and a visit to the Czech Republic will also be another must-do again although it will probably be Prague and not Decin.
Of what travels we'd done so far since moving to Berlin, German-based destinations were looking a bit lacking! So of course we thought a weekend away somewhere "domestic" would be good. Sasha had a small list of places that she's seen or heard things about and would like to go to - one of these was a town called Quedlinburg, which I knew of through train stuff as being one of the three main towns that made up the Harz Steam Train railway (and I'd been there, if only briefly, doing those trains). We looked at going there for the weekend, but one of the weekends the place was completely sold out, and the other the weather looked like it would be no good. I'd found a cheap train to Hamburg from Berlin with special fares for September and October, and with little other idea of where to go we thought we might go there instead. What would we do there? We actually didn't have much of a clue - when trying to look things up, not much was coming back as suggestions. We knew it was a port city (somehow, as it wasn't on the coast), it was Germany's 2nd largest city, and we knew it had the world's largest Model Train set (the No.1 and No.2 thing to do in Hamburg according to Tripadvisor - one listing was in English and the other in German hence why it came up twice!). But other than that, not really much seemed interesting. We considered just going for a day, but in the end decided to go for the weekend and see if there really was nothing much to do there or whether the city might surprise us. Day 1 - Trains, Boats and Figurines So, one October Saturday morning at 8am, we boarded the cheap train to Hamburg at Berlin's main station. We had allocated seats, we found them and sat down - and noted how strange the decor and arrangement of our carriage was. It was neither the typical compartment, nor open saloon - it was some interesting combination of the two. I do find it interesting when you come across something that is different than the usual and can see a lot of logic in the design - I did like the way that the middle row of seats where Sasha was sitting was offset compared to the other rows meaning all passengers could stretch their legs out without getting in the way of any other passenger. However it seemed not fully thought out and surely couldn't be the most efficient use of the space? The whole train was like this - our train was a special train made up of former Inter-Regional Express (IRE) carriages which were cheaper and slower trains than the usual Inter City (IC) trains, until they got stopped in order to make people use the IC or ICE trains. The IC or ICE trains take 2 hours between Berlin and Hamburg, but our train (going a slightly different route) would take 3 hours - not a problem to us considering it was half the cost of the other trains, and was still faster than the bus. Just after 11am we arrived in Hamburg, had a little wander around the area near the station and following that decided to get lunch from a nearby place that had been recommended when Sasha looked up places to eat. It lived up to its reputation - we both got the same meal, and it was monstrous! we could easily have shared one between us actually. Following lunch, we wandered along the river/canal nearby until we arrived at our Airbnb accommodation at the appointed time. We were only expecting a room in a flat, but it turns out no-one else would be home over the weekend so that was a bonus. Having dropped off some gear, we ventured out into Hamburg again - in a hurry now as we'd taken a look at the brochures we'd picked up at the station, liked the look of the hop-on-hop-off cruise as a means of getting to see Hamburg's harbour area and then realised we'd need to go to the wharf immediately. Not certain that we'd get there, we did with a few minutes to spare. We knew fullwell that if we hopped off at one of the hop-on-hop-off spots there would be no getting back on as it was the last circut of the day, but we weren't interested in using it for that - so far as we could tell, it did the biggest and widest ranging circuit of the harbour so we'd see more. As it transpired everyone else on board had the same idea, so we never did drop off anyone and also didn't pick anyone up. But the boat still did its full circuit, past the Blohm & Voss shipards where we could see some Naval ships being worked on, past a large Aida Cruises cruise ship, past the container wharves where absolutely massive container ships were, through a shipway lock which wasn't about sea level but stopping the harbour silting up, and past various museums, places of interest and museum ships before going back to the start. It had been raining for most of it, but mostly lightly so and we had been out the back protected by an awning so we had maximum view but also good shelter. We might have also had a Flensburger Pilsener as well during the trip! Having hopped off the boat, we were slightly cold so we got a Glühwein from a nearby shop on the wharf which also did Crepes, also getting some crepes as a snack in the process. We had a bit of a wander through the streets of the city on our way back to our accommodation, where we got ourselves ready to go to the Miniature Wonderland which was nearby - the world's largest Model Train layout. Sasha had reserved tickets at a discount for 7.30pm, as it was a special late night at the Wonderland and it was open until midnight. Our plan was to go there, have a look around and see it all and then find dinner afterwards as we weren't hungry at that stage and we figured it shouldn't take more than 2 hours to see the place. Well we were in for a bit of a surprise. First of all, turns out Sasha somehow had inadvertently reserved tickets for 7.30am and not 7.30pm - we'd missed our timeslot by 12 hours! In Germany they use 24hr time and so there was no AM or PM on the ticket. We'd read stories that sometimes you can queue up to 2 hours to get in if you don't reserve tickets, but it turns out the wait would be no more than 15 minutes before we'd be able to go in. During that wait, we were able to have free drinks (including soft drink) in the adjacent lounge & cafeteria. The model layout itself? incredibly detailed. It is organised into different sections and all are different countries and cities - so the German part is Hamburg, naturally but they had USA loosely based on Las Vegas, the Scandinavia area was an interesting mix of Denmark in one part, before merging into Norway (including the Arctic Cathedral from Tromso in the scenery), Norway merged into a wintry Sweden with a large mine - the Iron Ore mine at Kiruna in fact, the town where we'd stayed when we saw the Northern Lights in February. Switzerland was spread over the two upper stories of the building, because the Swiss alps are tall and steep and the layout stayed true to that. The model trains, which were the reason for the Wonderland's creation and reason to be, although interesting to me at first very quickly faded into the background - quite literally, because your focus soon becomes all the little miniature people and the scenes of what they are up to on the layout. People at the beach, people having picnics, driving cars, firefighters working on a building on fire, to Polar Bears having a party, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs hiking in the mountains, a dog driving a car, penguins and kangaroo's in the snow - and of course people enjoying one of Germany's favourite pastimes - naked sunbathing in public areas. The detail was immense and it was so much fun trying to see what other odd scenes you could find! It wasn't just the trains which moved around - which by the way, are all controlled by computers and monitored by people in a Train Control room just like you have on a real railway - on many parts the cars did too, stopping at the railway crossings when the barriers came down for a train to pass and there was also an airport. The airport was fascination as the planes there not only moved from the terminal and taxied to the runway, but then they'd roll down the runway and take off - flying into a hatch in the wall into which they'd disappear, and some time later (after a few more planes had taken off and landed) it would land again. The flying into the wall part was perhaps the quirkiest part, and the part which I couldn't get over! very clever system whoever invented it. I know for a fact that Sasha thought 2 hours would be pushing it for a visit there and while she didn't have much idea of what to expect, I knew she was mostly going to humour me. However we actually left the place at 11.30pm, nearly 4 hours after arriving because we both just got so caught up in all the detail! We were of course a bit hungry by now, but in a cursory search we could not find a foodery from which to get food so we went back to our accommodation and ate some snacks we had instead, then went to sleep. Day 2 - Wandering AroundWe had a rather early start the next morning - not as early as we had intended or had been recommended, because of getting back later than we intended the night before but still early enough. We left our accommodation and used public transport to get us to the Fish Market, something which happens every Sunday morning in Hamburg. Starting at 5am, the latest fish and produce gets sold off here. We'd been told to check it out, as it would be a mix of people up early to get the best catches of the day, and drunk people still out from the night before. When we did get there about 7.30am, it was very busy and fair to say the description had been accurate. Inside one of the old wharf warehouses at the Fish Market, was a band playing Rock cover songs while stalls sold sausages, crepes and in particular beer - it was the remnants of Hamburg's own Oktoberfest celebrations and they were still selling Festbier (Festival Beer, i.e. Oktoberfest beer). There were a lot of stalls selling fish-related food, so we got ourselves some freshly battered and fried up seafood bites of different kinds to share as breakfast, and afterwards wandered into the hall and got ourselves a Festbier each because why not? Ordering the two festbiers (in 500mL Steins, not the proper 1L ones) proved easy enough for me but when Sasha came back from getting the 2nd round, she came back with two Wheat beers instead. "What happened to the Festbier?" I asked. "Is this not Festbier?" Sasha replied, and then said about how she'd gone up and asked for two Festbiers in German ("Zwei Festbier Bitte") just as I had, and had been given a wheat beer and a glass of wine instead - not sure how! but she managed to get another beer but hadn't realised that neither glass was the Festbier. Never mind! Once we'd finished, we wandered around the market again - what struck me most was the way the stall venders auctioned their wares off in bulk lots to bidders in the crowds. A fishmonger would grab different kinds and different amounts of fish from his supply, yelling the types out in the process and then say the price for the bundle which was usually around the €20 mark. First person to say they'd take it gets it - I guess you just have to wait until you see what you think is the most useful and attractive combination to you, there is no asking for what you want. This went for all manner of things - fruit and vege baskets mostly as well, but also a group of people selling garden plants which I thought was the most bizarre of all but also was the one with the biggest crowd! There was also one or two stalls selling live poultry or their products - quite literally you could go to the stall and choose to buy either the chicken or the egg. I've never seen that before in a food & produce market! We then wandered around through Hamburg (stopping off at the wharf area on the way where we'd taken our harbour cruise and got Glühwein from the same place as the day before), and eventually needing lunch - I wanted to have a Hamburger in Hamburg, since it was the city that Hamburgers were supposedly first invented. We found a place which specialised in burgers - I would describe it as upmarket fast food and we could order a glass of beer to go with our burger and fries. The burgers were rather large! Following this we made our way to the meeting point for the afternoon Free Walking tour. During the walking tour we learned about Hamburg's history, how it was one of Germany's richest cities for a long time, and how it got devastated during World War 2 but was rebuilt by the allies and retook its place as an important port city for West Germany, and then Germany as a whole following German Unity. We wandered across a large swathe of Hamburg, during which we made friends with an Australian girl called Sophie who was travelling around Europe by herself but staying with people she knew in Berlin and had made a day trip to Hamburg - literally arriving in Hamburg not terribly long before the walking tour started. Following the tour, the three of us wandered to another part of the city to get dinner - which was a cheap doner kebab, but from a place reputed by our tour guide to be one of the best in Hamburg. We discussed travel stories and tips, and after dinner we tried finding Glühwein nearby as Sophie had never had it but with no success so we ended up back down at the wharf getting Glühwein and Crepes from that same place! Sophie was not sure of her plans that evening - she was hoping to catch up with a friend, but the friend was only in sporadic contact and she couldn't make definite plans. She did know of the times of all the buses and the last bus back to Berlin was about 11pm, and we had our train to Berlin which left at 7.30pm. Sophie came with us to Hamburg station and saw us off -she'd decided she might check out the Reeperbahn area of Hamburg while waiting for her friend to get back to her, just in case they did and if not then she'd catch a later bus. The trip back was in darkness, and in the same train with the slightly odd seating - it went fairly quick and deposited us back at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof on time. An S-Bahn train to Alexanderplatz and a tram from there and we were home - journey done! Summing UpI didn't expect to like Hamburg. Aside from being Germany's 2nd largest city and having the Miniature Wonderland, it didn't seem like it had much going for it. I am happy to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the city and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. I don't know that there's exactly a lot to do there still, but there was definitely enough -and enough interesting stuff - to keep us entertained during the weekend we were there. Hamburg is a port city (there's a large and deep river going from the seat to Hamburg) but it is also Germany's main city of theatre shows and concerts (and will be even more so when the new Opera house opens), not that the theatre show thing is of much use to us currently as we don't speak German yet and we wouldn't be able to understand what's going on! My highlight was the Miniature Wonderland, but not for reasons that I expected - it is not really the kind of place for massive model train buffs to geek out about this train and that train, but more for modellers in general for all the detail and for all the public, spotting all those little figurines and what they are up to! Hamburg is the sort of place where we might very well consider going back to for a day trip or a weekend again - undoubtedly though Hamburg will feature in future trips as a place we pass through or use as a launching point for elsewhere. So Hamburg, we enjoyed you - and we will see you next time, whatever shape or form that might take!
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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