Two different views of Hamburg

Since most of our afternoons are free, we try to get out and see some of the local sights.  The Hamburg Botanical Gardens is just a 20 minute S-Bahn ride from downtown.  It’s a beautiful and quiet place to walk around and enjoy the plants and trees from around the world.  They are currently hosting an interesting exhibition on North American Indians and the crops that they grew.

Adam eating the apple

It‘s amazing how many varieties we saw while walking around and how good it all smelled.  I did notice that there were no pine trees like we would see on the west coast, by maybe they don‘t grow here well.  Considering how late it is in the growing season, there were still many blooms.

This weekend the gardens are hosting an Indian Summer festival as they close out their season.  Hopefully that doesn‘t mean we‘ll be having cold weather soon, but we‘re ready when it does.  In the meantime we‘re enjoying nice fall weather and (keep your fingers crossed) no rain!

Japanese garden

Quite a different side of Hamburg is the Sternschanze quarter, an area touted as an alternative to the touristy Reeperbahn.  It‘s colorful, gritty, and a slightly seamier side of the city.  There is a lot of graffiti all over the city, but much more predominant in the working class neighborhoods.

School Days

Day 3 of school and there‘s no hiding in class.  As suspected, Paul and I are the only students in our level and our teacher, Sylvia now knows what she‘s dealing with.  We‘re getting lots of personalized correction and Sylvia says that in a month our ability to converse will be much better.  I sure hope so!

The view from the train stop near the school is pretty spectacular.  Right across the road is a harbor for tour boats and small craft.  One stop down you can see the main harbor where large ships are loaded.  The entire area is being revitalized with many shops and apartments as well as the Elbphilharmonie.

We hope to have some free time in the next few days to visit the Immigration Museum at the harbor where many German immigrants to the US made their initial journey.  Paul was able to track some of his ancestors here through Ancestry.com and now we want to see what records are available. Tomorrow afternoon we will head to the Hamburg Botanic Garden (Sylvia said we had to go while the weather is good).  With an expected high of 69 we‘re experiencing a real heatwave!

Remember that it‘s Oktoberfest and we‘re doing our part to celebrate.

Life in Hamburg

Hi all.

We made it!  After uneventful flights, we landed in Hamburg early Friday morning and headed to our abode for the next three months.  We are in the Eppendorf quarter of Hamburg, in a third-floor walk up on a quiet residential street.  I expect to have much stronger legs by the time we leave!  Our landlord, Bernie seems like a really nice guy and had lots of area info for us.  We‘ve already been out exploring and found a nice cafe nearby for either breakfast or lunch if we want to eat out.

Since this is our first visit to Hamburg we went on the hop-on, hop-off bus tour to orient ourselves in the city.  The city center is primarily south of where we are staying but our school is just across the harbor from the Elbephilharmonic and near the downtown shopping and business areas.  The harbor area was much larger than expected and it was fun to see the headquarters for the shipping company cargo that we see come into the Port of Savannah.

Here are a couple of today‘s highlights:

The Tanzen Building (dancing building) is located on the edge of the Reaperbahn (red light district) near the harbor.  From a distance the curves appear to dance.  There is a restaurant on top of the left tower but since Paul doesn‘t do heights we will skip that one.

The Lemon Lady statue near St. Michaels church - local legend says that if you rub her finger, it will bring you good luck.  Of course the finger is rubbed down to the brass.

We start school on Monday and may be the only students in the class.  We got an email last night saying that the minimum number of students is four but that they had decided to go ahead with us with perhaps shorter hours.  We will discuss it with them, but private classes aren‘t such a bad thing.  In the meantime, I‘ve been trying out my really bad German in shops and at the grocery.  Two trips to the grocery and still no pretzels purchased!

We plan to spend the remainder of the weekend exploring the area around the apartment and may hop on the S-Bahn and head north to see what‘s going on up there.  Then back to school on Monday morning!