Final Day in Hamburg, Final Day on Vacation

This was in front of the theater at which "The Lion King" is being performed. I'm not sure if it's related.
But it's an elephant with stilts for legs. It doesn't need a reason.

For my Hamburg finale, I took another one of those free walking tours. Usually it's better to do one of these on the first day in a new city. I'm a rebel and I don't follow the usual rules.

One of the reasons you do the free walking tour first is so that you don't repeat what you saw when you were walking freely the day before. For example, the tour started at the Rathaus.

But the swans in the water near the Rathaus were new,

And I visited St. Peter's church, Hauptkirche Sankt Petri, yesterday,

But I did go inside on the walking tour.

It's a Lutheran church that was re-purposed in the Reformation from its original use as a Catholic Church. My observation? It's rather spartan for a Catholic church, but it's lavish and ornate for the Lutherans.

We did forge farther east than I did yesterday. For example, I got to see the Chilehaus.

It was named for the country of Chile. The owner of the building made a fortune with a monopoly on the Chilean saltpeter trade during World War I. Saltpeter was a critical ingredient in gunpowder.

And why is there mud caked on the walls? Flooding?

No. This is something interesting I learned. Not only are the waters here tidal, on an eight-hour cycle, but because of the lay of the land, the tides are rather extreme. Which you can see from the mud on the sides of the walls.

And again here.

Once again, we ended up at the ruins of St. Nicholas church, Mahnmal St. Nikolai:

The guide did clarify that the black on the stone was not from the fires of the bombing that destroyed the church, but is pollution absorbed by the sandstone.

The remains of St. Nicholas were more crowded today.

Moving on.

And here's that same shot, now with tour group in place:

Where we are standing actually rises and falls with the tides. Since this is low tide, we walked down a slope to get here.

Even more popular than the free walking tours of Hamburg are the boat cruises around the harbor. Dozens and dozens of boats ply the waters.

Or are docked waiting for the tourist hordes to come on board.

So that ended the Free Walking Tour. The Hamburg visit concluded with dinner with Daniil, my former exchange student from the 2016-17 school year, and his mother and her husband.

We explored the harbor area after dinner, Then descended into the St. Pauli Elbtunnel, a long tunnel that runs under the Elbe River that you can walk of bicycle through, safely out of the pathway of the large container ships coming into Hamburg from all over the world. But usually from China.

It was a long descent. Not so bad to walk down the steps, but I definitely was riding the elevator back up at the other end.

And here's Daniil:

And here's me, in the tunnel:

This is the elevator station for getting into the tunnel.

I don't know why the building has a beanie and propeller on the roof. And finally we walked up the side of a building, the Dockland building, or Fischereihafen, which means "fishing port." Germans are very much literalists when it comes to naming things.

And he we are overlooking Hamburg harbor.

The evening ended at a small bar in the St. Pauli neighborhood reconnecting with a lawyer friend who relocated here temporarily (probably) recently. And that concludes the Bucharest to Prague to Karlovy Vary to Hamburg European vacation.

Hamburg Harbor

Warehouses (formerly, now re-purposed) along a canal

Hamburg is not a city for sight-seeing. There is a beautiful harbor area with canal and little fingers of river going in all sorts of directions. But not only is there a dearth of must-see sights. There is an utter absence. (I'm here for people-visiting, rather than sight-seeing.)

German cities have the U-bahn and the S-bahn. The "U" in U-bahn stands for underground.

Except that some of the track is above ground. And a lot of the S-bahn runs underground, too.

As seen in the subway station. Yes, David Hasselhoff still rules in Germany.

And in Germany, non-alcoholic beer is marketed as a sports drink.

The things you learn while traveling.

This is the HafenCity neighborhood. Which was the second harbor. It became obsolete when larger containerized ships needed to dock.

This is the most hideously ugly building in Hamburg. Perhaps in all of Europe.

The Elbphilharmonie. Hamburg's concert hall. The roofline is supposed to resemble waves of the North Sea. It's an architectural trainwreck of a post-modern glass structure plopped on top of a historic brick warehouse that was historically protected. But insufficiently protected to prevent the ultra-post-modern monstrosity from being placed upon it.

This is St. Michael's Church.  Hauptkirche St. Michaelis.

It's Lutheran, as evidenced by the statue of Martin Luther off to the side.

And these are the ruins of St. Nicholas Cathedral.

Mahnmal St. Nikolai. St. Nicholas Memorial,

This is a huge cathedral, once one of the largest in the world, which was destroyed by the Allied firebombing of Hamburg in 1943.

The church, except for its enormous tower, largely was destroyed in the brutal bombing campaign.

This statue recognizes that horrific history:

More bridges:

Hamburg is the city of bridges. By some counts, it has the most bridges of any city on Planet Earth.

This is the Rathaus.

Hamburg's city hall.

The name "Rathaus" does not literally translate to "House of Rats." Disappointing fact.

More canals:

Canals with fountains:

A man could work up an appetite walking across all those bridges over all those canals. So it was time for a hearty German supper.

Kartoffelstube, which translates to "Potato Office". So potatoes were most definitely on the menu. For starters, the classic potato soup,

Potatoes, onions, carrots, and frankfurters. The broth had a slight vinegar flavor (like good German potato salad, which did not appear to be on the menu -- at least not in a form I could recognize in translation). It was very tasty. But heavy.

So heavy I could not finish my main course, pork schnitzel on a bed of peas and carrots, with a side dish of pan-fried potatoes. The potatoes were fried with the onions which we so carmelized they were burnt. But still sweet. Which is something I remember eating when I was little. The pan-fried potatoes with the onions slightly burned beyond carmelization. The schnitzel was schnitzel, but the pan-fried potatoes were excellent.

And a beer from the bar, of course, to wash it down.