Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg

Last Saturday, Jake's host mother took he and I to see some castles nearby Münster. That was pretty neat.
Last Sunday, we left for Hamburg. And now I'll go through some of the highlights with a couple of pictures.
We ended up in a very nice hostel owned by Generator Hostels. It is very new, just opened last summer, so very clean as well. The first day we took a tour of the city on a bus, a Stadtrundfahrt. The guide did not perform very well and was very hard to understand, but we still saw a lot of the city. That night, Kirk, Jake, Eve, and I ended up eating at a really neat little Afghan and Indian restaurant just down the street from our hostel.

The little restaurant. They also had a sitar and some other cool instruments near one of the other couch table places

The next day we went to the Miniature Wonderland. It's the largest model train-base-world in the world. All of the models are extremely intricate and lifelike. It was very cool.

Here is a moving model of a theater performing Romeo und Julia someplace in Germany. There are many more pictures of this place on Facebook.

After the miniature awesomeness, we went on a guided tour of Hamburg that focused on Jews. We went to several locations were there used to be Jewish houses or synagogues. Unfortunately, most of the synagogues in the city were destroyed in the war. Many of the houses previously owned by Jews were also taken away from them, sold, or demolished.

This is where we ended the tour. It is a very old Jewish theater which is apparently very well-known. Right now it seems they are playing Frost/Nixon.

On Tuesday, we started off by going to a really big, well known church: St. Michael's Kirche. It is fairly large, fairly new, and has five organs, one of which is above the ceiling. They have a little organ concert there every day at noon, but I was not able to be there for that. There were lots of tours going on, but we did not take one. There were also old lady guards walking around telling people to not do things. I got yelled at for taking a picture of some stone box. Another old lady was much nicer. She walked up to Jennifer and I and started telling us about the history and building of the church. Unfortunately, we had to go and neither of us felt comfortable interrupting her. Luckily Frau Steding realized what was happening and saved us.

The largest organ at St. Michael's Kirche. I really wish I could have heard it play.

After the church, we went to take a tour of the Rathaus, the city hall. Hamburg is more than just a city-it is a city-state. That means it is also it's own province of which the mayor is also governor. The city hall is very big and ornate like a state capitol in the US.

A room in the Rathaus that I think is used by the mayor guy. The book in the glass case on the left is a special golden book that each mayor writes their name in during their swearing in sort of ceremony. However, in case they make a mistake and swear in the wrong person, or if the person turns out to be bad, the book is just loose sheets of paper so they can remove the person's name without defacing the book.

Tuesday afternoon we had to opportunity to go to any of the museums we wanted to in Hamburg. I, along with most of the rest of the group, decided to go to the Maritime Museum. Hamburg is, after all, the second biggest port in Europe and the museum is one of the largest in the world. Jake, Jennifer, and I ended up going through most of the museum before they made an announcement telling us to leave. It was very large but much more interesting than I expected.

Here is a very large model of a ship hanging from the ceiling. It was about a story and a half tall.

 On Wednesday, we took the train to Sylt. It was about a three hour ride each way. A very popular vacation place for Germans, mostly the richer people, Sylt is an island that is the farthest north point in Germany. It is very nice and has a couple of pretty little towns. When we were there it was very foggy most of the day: we could not see the full three blocks of the main road at one time. I really enjoyed the weather though. Most people go to Sylt to go to the beach. We did that, but of course did not go swimming in the cold. It was a fairly nice place.

The main road through the town Westerland in the middle of Sylt. This is about halfway to the beach, but with the fog it is just barely possible to make out the gate.

 For the first half of Thursday we went to the Hamburg museum. The primary goal in this was to check out the exhibit "Jews in Hamburg" for Paideia. I spent about the first hour we had there going through the rest of the museum, then finally went to the Jews exhibit. Once I got there and started taking notes I realized I would have to stay quite a bit longer than our planned time. Luckily, they gave us the afternoon to do whatever we wanted. Jennifer, Jake and I ended up staying there until about two in the afternoon-two hours longer than originally planned.

The Jew star badge that Jews had to wear during the second world war. This museum had a lot to read about Jews. Luckily, most of the lengthier portions were also in English.

 That afternoon we were able to do whatever we wanted. Since everyone else had already left, Jake, Jennifer and I ended up walking around the city. We saw quite a lot of Hamburg that we had not seen much of before including the Hafen. It was pretty neat.

The Lion King playhouse. It is on an island with no bridges, meaning the only way to get there is by ferry. During the day, there are boats going over there about once every ten minutes. The Lion King has been playing in Hamburg for about ten years straight.

It is possible to go out a little bit into the Hafen on big docks that the touristy boats use. There are neat bridges that you can walk out there on.

One of those bridges. This went to a dock with a large restaurant boat on it. We weren't sure if we were allowed on, but there wasn't a sign saying we weren't and there was no fence, so Jake and I checked it out.

That evening, I convinced Jake to join me walking around the city in the dark. I had wanted to do this every night so far, but nobody ever wanted to join me. We started off walking to the lake to take pictures of the buildings. Then we decided to walk around the lake, then we decided to to to the Hafen.

Here's the same bridge at night. It was a little creepier, but seemed very peaceful now that there were no longer ferries and other boats constantly crossing the channel. When we went back across the bridge there was also a couple that thought they were alone on the bridge.

 Everything looks different in the city at night. It was very enjoyable to see it that way. By the time we go to the Hafen it was about 1:30 am.

Here's the Lion King building after everyone left.

We finally ended up walking back towards the Hostel. We took a different route than normal, so we saw lots of little dark shops and very few people.

The Hauptbahnhof. As we were standing here, a few emergency vehicles suddenly started racing up to a nearby street. We looked over and there was some guy laying on the ground. We decided to leave.

We ended up getting back at about 2:30 am. Everyone else was asleep. The next day, all of the guys went and wandered around for a few hours after breakfast. The girls did the same but I think they went shopping. We left at about 12:40 I believe and got back to Münster at around 3:30.
When I got back here, my host family was about to leave to go to my host father's mother's birthday party. They asked if I wanted to come along, so I did. It was interesting, but very hard to understand everyone when there were several people speaking at once. When we got back I did some email checking and picture uploading.
Now I think it is time to finish up my homework for Monday.

Bis Später,
Marcus