Baden’s Excellent German Adventure – Part 4
Flensburg Reunion
In my last installment, I was saying that I was on my way to Hamburg where I needed to transfer trains to catch the connecting train to Flensburg in northern Germany where I would be staying the night with Barb’s uncle and aunt Claus and Renate and her cousin Steffen.
The big challenge was to change trains in the 7 minutes that I had before one train arrived and the next one departed. Frank was of the opinion that the train to Hamburg was consistently late and as a result there was little chance that I would make the connection.
The funny part is that in Canada it is usually viewed that the the trains in Germany were always on time and never late. Actually, I would go so far as to say that we think that everything in Germany is on time. When I told this to Frank he just laughed and laughed.
The good news is that I was able to make the connection as the train arrived on time in Hamburg. My train to Flensburg seemed to stop at every station along the line but I eventually arrived at my destination (on time I might add) where Claus, Renate and Steffen were waiting for me.
Claus and Renate had not changed too much since my first trip to Germany five years ago with Barb. Steffen, on the other hand, had changed quite a bit as he was only about 14 when we saw him last and was now 19 and he had obviously spent a lot of those five years learning more English as his speaking skills were quite a bit better since I last saw him.
Barb and I stayed with them for about 4 days during Christmas in 2001 and without a doubt was one of the most memorable Christmas memories that I have.
Soon after arriving at their house, we settled in for a nice snack of cake and coffee. Renate had made a tasty apfle kuchen (apple cake) which I remembered that Barb’s mother had made for us on at least one occasion and that I had always liked it.
After relaxing for a while, we all went out to local Flensburg Italian place called Odore del Mare Ristorante which happened to be completely packed pull of customers (always a good sign) but luckily Claus had phoned ahead to make reservations.
In addition to a half litre of good Chianti which Claus and I shared, I ordered a simple sounding but very delicious plate of spaghetti with olive oil, garlic (lots!) and tomato pieces. The sauce was deceptively simple but it was extremely tasty. I have probably never ordered most of the pasta that I have eaten without tomato sauce so this was a nice change and it was definitely a great choice.
Since I was only going to be spending the one night in Flensburg and was going to be leaving on Saturday morning I had breakfast with Claus, Renate and Steffen before they drove me to the train station to catch my train to Hamburg. The typical German breakfast consisted of buns, jam (several home made by Renate), cheese, cold cuts and coffee. I couldn’t have asked for a better send off.
Hamburger Experience
My train ride from Flensburg to Hamburg was not only uneventful but it was on time as well. Unfortunately Frank’s comments of an unreliable train system were not coming true for me.
On Saturday around 2PM I checked into the hotel in Hamburg where Frank and I had arranged to meet again. The plan was that Frank would be meeting me at the hotel and he would be arriving on a train from Frankfurt about 90 minutes after my train from Flensburg would arrive.
I met up with Frank later on in the afternoon and he explained how his train was late leaving Frankfurt and also experienced delays on the way to Hamburg. After telling him my experiences so far, we agreed to see how the train on Monday leaving Hamburg with both of us on it would fare.
Soon after meeting in the hotel lobby, Frank and I walked around Hamburg to see what it had to offer.
One of the first impressions of Hamburg was how cosmopolitan the city was. Much more than any other city that I had been to on this trip Hamburg and its citizens (known as Hamburgers) seem to have a typical style that I often see in large European cities.
One of the immediate things that I saw in Hamburg was that it was a real shopping city. In the few kilometres around the main hauptbahnhof (train station) there were dozens of streets with nothing but large and small stores of every type, block after block. I told Frank that if Barb were here with me she would have quickly told us that she would be going off on her own and meet us back at the hotel after the stores had closed. Having one (or two) men with her would have only been a distraction from the serious matter of European shopping.
Revisiting Venice
Almost as immediate as seeing all of the shopping areas of Hamburg, one cannot help but see one of the main distinctive points of Hamburg which are the canals. Sometimes called the “Venice of Germany”, Hamburg’s canals (with the buildings going right down into the water) bears a striking resemblance to the canals of Venice. Although there are no gondolas carrying tourists through the canals, the Hamburg canals are an extremely picturesque area of the city.
After Frank and I had spent several hours walking around the city, we eventually stopped for dinner at a seafood restaurant called Friesenkeller. We thought that having seafood would be good at a port city like Hamburg and also the Friesenkeller restaurant was situated right beside the canal. Well, the outside of the restaurant is situated right beside the canal. The inside of the restaurant doesn’t have any outside view at all.
Despite the lack of views, the food at the Friesenkeller was very good and both of us had a different type of local fish. Mine was had with a good local beer called Jever Pilsner.
Not being a huge beer drinker, this was the first beer that I had since being in Germany and I think that it would have been a shame to not try out one or two of the local favourite beers.
After dinner, with it still being warm (about 18 or 19 degrees) we decided to continue walking for a bit. We decided to walk towards the harbour area as the harbour is one of the main historical attraction of Hamburg – being the 2nd largest port in Europe (after Amsterdam). For several centuries, the port of Hamburg has been one the main world-wide stopping points for ships around the world bringing goods from the four corners of the earth.
Seeing how it was night time at this point, there wasn’t much to see in the harbour area so we called it a night and decided to come back tomorrow for a tour of the area.
Harbour Tour
As it’s Sunday again today, we’ve made plans to go back to the harbour and take a harbour tour. I had watched a show on TV about 3-4 weeks ago on the port of Hamburg and it was showing how the huge cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 had come to Hamburg to get some repairs done on the underside of the ship and how they put the QE2 in this huge dry dock area to work on it.
In the morning time and considering that today was a long weekend for Germans there were quite a bit of people on the sidewalks beside the water. Many of these people, like us, were interested in taking a harbour tour from the literally dozens of small boats that provided these tours.
The harbour tour lasted one hour and it gave me the opportunity to satisfy my historical curiosity of the area.
Visible from the harbour are the steeples of the many kirches (churches) in the city and the largest of them all is the Hauptkirche St. Michaelis.
While the inside of the St. Michaelis church was only of minor interest to Frank and I, it was the 132 metre (about 440 feet) high climb to the top of the church tower that we had in mind.
While it is possible to get to the top of the church via elevator, we decided to take the stairs up the top. Once at the top, you were rewarded with a spectacular view of the entire city and harbour.
This view was reminiscent of the similar trek that I had made about a year ago in Italy to the top of St. Peter’s basilica and enjoyed the view from there of the Vatican City and Rome.
We continued our exploration of the city by walking back towards the centre of the city to explore two very famous areas of the city which are two large lakes called the Binnenalster and Aussenalster.
Separated only by a few bridges, the “inner” and “outer” lakes not only have many types of boats sailing but the walking and cycling paths along the side of the water proved to be extremely popular with the local Hamburgers.
Since we had been walking for several kilometres after leaving the harbour (including the 132 meters up and down St. Michaelis), we decided that it would be a good time for a rest and stopped at a local cafe right beside the Aussenalster called Bodo’s Bootssteg.
At Bodo’s, Frank and I both enjoyed the same plaumennkuchen (plum cake) with and extra service of sahn (whipped cream). Unfortunately, neither Frank or I could finish our large portion of whipped cream and both felt that we probably should not have asked for it. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
Over dinner that night, Frank and I talked about our plans to leave Hamburg tomorrow as we would be heading to our next destination of Dresden. We had decided to make a short stop in Berlin for a few hours as our train goes through Berlin on the way to Dresden.
I’m writing this on the train heading towards Berlin and we will be arriving at the first Berlin station called Spandau before stopping at the brand new main station in Berlin a few minutes later. My memories go back about 5 years as Barb and I stopped at the Berlin Spandau station where we started our first German Adventure and met up with Barb’s father at the platform at Spandau.
The next (and final) installment of my Excellent German Adventure will come on Friday as my trip comes to an end…
Baden
