Yesterday (Sunday) was for church, plants, and opera. Today was for sightseeing.
We slept in an extra half hour, and left for the city about 9:45 a.m., which still got us to the parking garage in the harbour (at St. Pauli Landungsbruecken) just before 10:15. It had been a toss-up whether we would go to Hamburg or Bremen today, and the last check of the weather in the morning gave a very slight edge to Hamburg, with tomorrow’s weather being predicted to be equally bad in both cities (but the weather up here is so variable, that forecasts can change drastically over an hour, so who knows what tomorrow will bring).
Of course, as soon as we got into the open the rain started, not heavily, but a soaking drizzle which would have made walking very unpleasant, not to mention unhealthy! So we hopped onto one of the many double-decker tour buses that stop at Landungsbruecken, and did the two hour city tour (much of which we had driven the day before, but I only got to see the traffic). That gave us the highlights, and places to walk back to, if we ever got to walking. When we returned to our starting point, it still wasn’t very pleasant, although the rain had been reduced to an occasional drop or ten, so we quickly moved on to one of the harbour tour boats (with glass sides and roof for a view all around) and had a really amazing tour of Europe’s 2nd-largest and the world’s 5th largest harbour. The size is amazing, given that Hamburg is 125 km from the North Sea, and all ship traffic moves in and out of harbour along the Elbe River, which at this point is very wide, and has average 1.6 m tides. Some additional factoids from the two guided and interpreted tours were that Hamburg, a city of 1.7 million, has more than 800 km of internal water ways and almost 2500 bridges! the harbour is not only a place for cargo ships to load and unload (container ships mostly, these days) but also is a major contender in the repair, repainting and building of ships, in several dozen dry docks, and an equal number of floating docks (these are the ones with ballast tanks that when flooded bring the dock to the bottom of the river – some 12 to 20 metres down – the ship to be repaired moves in, the ballast tanks are blown out, and the dock raises the ship out of the water for whatever repair is needed). The harbour employs 150,000, and has a policy of no lay-offs –but possibly shortened working hours – because most of these workers are highly specialized and could not be easily replaced if they moved to find work elsewhere.
Returning to the dock newly educated in harbour facts and economics, the weather cooperated by breaking out into bright sunshine, although a cold wind continued to blow. After a quick lunch at a Nordsee (a German seafood chain that is famous for it’s freshly caught fish, and it’s high quality but quick seafood restaurants within their retail shops) one of the many places to eat in the harbour, we started walking.
We first walked the short distance to the Elbtunnel entrance. This building houses a system of elevators that lower cars (and pedestrian) about 23 metres down to a pair of tunnels that go under the river Elbe to a similar installation on the other side. Pedestrians walk on narrow sidewalks on the sides of the tunnels. The tunnel length is about 425 metres. the tunnels themselves are "pipes" buried in the river bed, with a concrete safety plate above them (which I think is meant to protect the tunnels from possible damage by ships' keels or anchors)and there is 12 m of water above the safety plate. The whole thing took 4 years to build (1907-1911) and cost the enormous sum (for the times) of 10 million goldmarks. After viewing this engineering marvel, we began to walk inland.
We went by the enormous statue of Otto von Bismark, who might be called the father of the modern Germany, uniting the dozen or so German-speaking states that were often at each other’s throats into an effective united nation. The monument, built in the early 20th c has a 3rd Reich feel about it, and can only be described as “Germanic” ; Bismarks figure itself is 14.8 m, with the head nearly 2 m high, standing militarily erect, holding a sword, point down. With it’s base the whole thing is nearly 35 m high, and being on a raised hill ensures it dominates the the view.
From there we went to the St. Michaelis Church (St. Michael), which is under renovation inside, so cannot be viewed, but the tower platform is still accessible by foot or elevator (we wimped out for the later). As the church is on top of a rise inside the city, it’s tower can be seen from quite a distance, and from the platform at 132 m, the view of the city and surrounding country is most impressive, especially on a clear day, which today had become by this time. Clear yes, but the wind was still blowing, and at 132 m it could have been used to make ice.
Then a short walk to the Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas’ Church) which is a WW II ruin with only the tower (at 148 m the tower was the tallest building in the world from1874-76, and is still the 2nd tallest in Hamburg, outdone only by a TV broadcasting tower) remaining standing, left as a Mahnmal (a German word having no exact English equivalent, meaning a monument that is a warning – in this case against war). One can take an elevator to a viewing platform near the top, but having just thawed the frozen bits left from the other viewing tower, we passed. Walked instead to the city hall, which is a very large 19th c structure, neo-classical in style, and very ornate. The size is necessary, since Hamburg is not only a city, but also a state within the German federation (Bund), and thus has not only a city council, but also a parliament and a senate. (Bremen is the 2nd such city state, and even more complicated in that it consists of two areas that are not joined, and thus “interrupted” by Lower Saxony.)
From the city hall we hopped back onto the tour bus that stops there (the tickets are good for the day) and returned to the harbour area, the car, and drove back to the hotel, in Hamburg rush hour – such as that is, since in Germany they are not in the custom of working downtown and living in a far-away suburb. As usual, the biggest delay was road construction, not increased traffic volume.
And then supper at another hotel in this village, administrivia, a hot bath to warm up from the weather, and now to bed.
Tomorrow, Bremen!
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