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. We 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! I 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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