Today was our day to look around Hamburg, with the bikes safely stashed and no pressure to get anywhere. What woud the Grampies do on such a day? First, of course, is eat - that is at least normal. The Watsons prepared a wonderful breakfast. We then left their temporary apartment and headed..
The Watson's place is in this block. It's a 6 floor
Next, in David and Collette's very own neighbourhood is Globe Trotter - five floors of camping and cycling gear. The photos below tell the story of what we saw there. MMost telling is the one of me with the long receipt! Also telling is that we spent over half our Hamburg time there. Then we went back to the post office to mail home further stuff made obsolete by what we got at Globetrotter. Oh,oh, the post office staff are starting to recognize us!
Right off, Dodie spotted these short legged storm pants. They will keep your bottom dry and prevent chafing, while not overheating you in summer riding.
From Globetrotter and the Watson's neighbourhood, a U Bahn train runs to downtown and the Rathouse. We had already been in the Rathaus square, but planned to return there. Then the idea was to walk first to Saturn, a major electronics shop, and from there the 2 km or so back through the Rathaus and to St. Michael's church. The church is a major Hamburg sight, but we also figured the 1 km walk would give a good sample of the city core.
The Saturn store was far and away the largest electonics retailer we have ever seen. No North American Best Buy store can touch it. In fact, Best Buy is laughably small by comparison. Saturn lies on an upscale pedestrian shopping street. The whole thing was jammed with people. I mean, this whole thing, this part of the city is major .
All this majorness, though, did not mean they had the simple cable I needed for the Nokia phone. What, do we have to pedal to Norway for that?
Bacck to the Rathaus, and some more shots of its elaborate carved exterior, then off on our transect walk to the church.
A good sample the transect may have been, but the city core is pretty much totally uninteresting. There is at least one pretty big car traffic street, and the rest, save for the canals, is ordinary. The reason, as always, is of course war damage.
St Miichael's itself is "ok". If a church building is "cathedral type", we judge it by how crazily over the top it is. But if a church does not seem to aspire to cathedral-dom, then we will judge it by other standards. Because of Lutheran influence (according to Collette), St Michaels is toned down. Yet it has enough gold trim to be playing in the big leagues. Anyway, it didn't blow us away. Sorry JJ. Faulwasser, and everyone who rebuilt the place in 1907-1912.
St Michael's interrior. Enough gold? Too much? too little?
Back on the U-Bahn and home. Good thing, because the heat and sun had overdosed poor Dodie and slowed her to a crawl. We all felt the Thai restaurant just across the street was as far as we should go in looking for food.
As far as we got in the search for supper. It worked out well, though.
Whether fried by heat or not, I can be relied on to go for a bakery goody. oo wile the Thai lady worked away in her small and unventilated kitchen, I jogged off to a bakery. The first three were already closed, but no worries, since that only covers the first two blocks out. At the fourth bakery, I proudly conducted the whole transaction in German, including enunciating the name of each item I was choosing. Here is one of them. See, Sandra, I can say "mohn"!
Part of dessert. Acquired by Steve's amazing ability to order pastries.
