Hamburg

Hamburg is Germany’s second biggest city. This being said, the center is pretty small, very walkable.

I just want to clarify that I was horrible at geography and in 7th grade failed many tests. When I heard Hamburg was a port city of Germany, I thought it was right on the sea. In fact, it’s situated on a river that leads to the sea. I was a bit disappointed, but the river is big enough that I still got the feel as if I was by the sea.

We got there on a Wednesday, which was fortunate, because there is a weekly market with food and drink stands. We had some delicious burgers and beer for dinner and enjoyed the environment.

There were a wide variety of building architectures. I enjoyed this about Hamburg as there just wasn’t one style, but many and every street was a surprise. In my guide book, it mentions a “Chilehaus” or House of Chile. It was very unique and interesting. It reminded me of a chocolate bar. And just like any other European city, there is a beautiful church.

We were going back to the food market and when we came up from the metro/subway station, we were facing a carnival. We decided to take a walk around. It was a lot bigger than we thought and we couldn’t walk the whole thing without getting lost. We eventually ducked out of an exit and went to get dinner from the food market.

 

Being that it is a port town, most of the appeal is on the waterfront- as there is a boardwalk with shops and food places. The philharmonic is also situated along the water with an architectural water design.

We were able to go to the viewing platform of the Philharmonic for free, but to me, the view wasn’t that pretty.

 

There is another area of town that is reknown and it is the “Red light district” of Hamburg. To this day, there are prostitutes there. There even is a museum on the district that I tried entering, but everything was in German and I was advised by the staff it wasn’t worth it for me.

The main street of the district reminds me of Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Lights, bars, and people everywhere….at night!

 

After dinner, we ventured over for a drink and went to a bar that had live music. Along the streets there are many sex toy shops. One was two floors- we had to go inside to look and things ranged from basic vibrators to more hard stuff (think 50 Shades of Grey).

Lubeck

We ended up seeing most of Hamburg the first day and so the next day we took a day trip to Lubeck.

 

The trains (no buses) were very expensive so we took a Bla Bla car there and back- my first experience. You search where you want to go and a list of people going there pops up with the time they are leaving. You meet at the driver’s desired place and will get dropped off where the driver wants (it is written before you reserve).

Both of our drivers didn’t speak much English and there was another German in the car so they ended up speaking only to the other person the whole time, but I was happy looking out the window and seeing the beautiful green scenery go by.

Lubeck was very beautiful and well worth the day trip. It is extremely small, but has a lot of charm.

For example, there were these “Patio houses.” The town was overpopulated once and the town decided that owners needed to open their patios or gardens to house the new arrivals. Soon some type of housing was built and now the modernized descendants of these buildings stand, quaintly.

This small town had many churches and one of them, Lubeck Cathedral, was really big and beautiful and it had this clock thing:

I also recommend the Marienkirche (church) as well to visit.

Lubeck appeared to be a tourist destination for locals/Germans. We didn’t hear many languages that wasn’t German and both Bla Blah car drivers were surprised we were visiting. But I definitely believe it is worth a trip if you are in the area. The architecture was beautiful and the town was really charming- full of stories.

Another story, which I really enjoyed was: a little devil helped build a church because he thought it was going to be a wine bar. He WINE-d and tried destroying the church, but the townsfolk decided to give him the bar in the same neighborhood and he was appeased.

For my last day in Hamburg, as my friend, S, had a flight in the afternoon and I had a night bus to a German Wedding the next day, I went to the movies and walked around the town some more before finding a restaurant for WiFi and a beer.

We looked up English movie theaters and I ended up going to Albaton. It is a one screen small theater. It reminded me of what cinemas used to look like back in the day. The film I watched Viceroy’s House and it was about England leaving India to become its own country and the break with Pakistan. It was really good and gave me a new perspective to the country’s history.

That was my experience in Northern Germany. I hope you enjoyed my post and I hope you will enjoy Hamburg and Lubeck just as much as I did.

Have a glass of wine for me :)

More pictures

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