Hamburg in Two Half-Days, First Half

It was just shy of 4 PM local time yesterday (being Thursday, 9/22) when I departed my hotel to see some sights.

I walked the shore of the Elbe River in the area known as Landungsbrucken near the city proper all the way to the Fischmarkt in the St. Pauli district - about 1600 meters according to the scale on my map - call it 1700 yards, or just about a mile. I also walked back.


I saw all sorts of cool boats, working boats, pleasure boats, gambling boats, dinner boats, lighthouse boats, Mississippi river boats ... And then there was my favorite -- the Russian U-Boat. Yes, not German, Russian. Bought by two Hamburghers (the people, not the sandwich - I really can make a funny!) for €1,000,000 from the Russians about 9 years ago.


It was toward the end of the day for the exhibit, but I was allowed to go through even though there wasn't another tour in English scheduled for the day - you had to be part of a group in order to gain access to the Command Center of the sub. Instead, the guide told me in half-decent English that a german tour would start in about 10 minutes and to go ahead and look around first inside, as long as I waited for him before entering the Command Center. I politely thanked him and agreed. He said to me, You're not from Texas!" I replied, "nein, Ich komme auf den Boston." He explained in English, you are much more polite than the Texans I had here earlier."

The submarine was barely made tourist-friendly and there was a big sign in three languages when you entered that you could hurt yourself and that you would have to participate in minor contortions to maneuver on-board. The first trick was climbing through this hatch.

I'm glad there was not much done to this 1970s Cold War submarine that the Russians hadn't done before selling it. You see and get close to everything without plexiglass in the way.

I spent about an hour in the sub just taking it all in. It was really cool.

By the time I returned to land it was into dinner time. I'll admit it - I was tired and didn't want to expend the effort figuring out exactly what I was ordering. So I went to Pizza Hut and had a personal pan pizza, but with salami on it instead of pepperoni. Good German food!

UPDATE ON MY TRAVEL GOODS

The telescoping handle on my roller bag is working fine. Must have just been a weird kink in New Jersey. The expensive cushy socks I bought for the trip have been worth the money - I have not had sore feet despite the enormous amount of walking I've been doing. I haven't bought a scarf yet, but I'm tempted. I may also buy a light casual jacket - I've been using a nice tweed blazer as my jacket, but it's just too formal for most of the time. It's not quite warm enough to go jacket-less. The rest of my wardrobe is OK. My electronics and chargers/adapters are working well. The only technical snafu I have is this - I can't change the weather status on the blog webpage from here, which is why it still shows Amsterdam's weather. Weather.com uses flash to give you the code for your website, and flash and the iPad don't mix.

Location:Hamburg,Germany