Hamburg: A Tour and a Carnival

As part of the tuition that we pay for the FU BEST Program, we get a 9-day excursion/ trip with the whole group. This semester's trip is to Hamburg and Copenhagen. We left last Friday and get back on Saturday, so I am updating my blog before we are done here in Copenhagen.

On Friday morning, we left for Hamburg from the Hauptbahnhof with an Intercity Express (ICE) train. Although we are 75 people, which makes it very hard to move around as a group, only one person missed the train. Once at the station in Hamburg, we got our transportation passes and moved on to the youth hostel that we were staying at. Dirk, our program director, had booked rooms for us at the Hosteling International Hostel (like the one that we stayed at in Binz, except nicer). The hostel was right on the waterfront, with breakfast and dinner included.

Since we couldn't check in until 1 and we had a walking tour that started at 3, so some friends and I decided to just walk around until then. Hamburg is a port city, which obviously means a large port and industrial area, but also a tendency for commerce and capitalism. As such, it is a pretty rich city. In fact, it has the most number of millionaires of many German city and a very high cost of living. Walking around the city, there are tons of expensive shops, almost no cars that arn't BMWs, Mercedes, Porches, VWs, MGs, etc, and houses that have ridiculously high rents.



[group exploring Hamburg]


[Nikolaikirche, bombed and now a memorial.]

At 3, we got a walking tour of Hamburg, where are tour guide just emphasized how rich and high class of a city Hamburg is. It has always been a port, with commerce being the most important trade and a center of the old Hanseatic League (which it still prides itself on). However, our tour guide also made the dichotomy of the city very apparent. On the one side is the commerce, while on the other is the Reeperbahn and St. Pauli, the largest red light district in Europe.


[Town Hall in Hamburg]


[Annie and me in front of the fountain that sits in the courtyard between the stock exchange and the town hall]


[Hamburg is sometimes called Venice of the north because of it's canals]


[Haborcity, the largest construction site in Europe. Basically a really rich area of the city where expensive apartments are being built that just have hideous views of the industrial area of Hamburg. I wouldn't pay money to live there]


[The car elevator in Hamburg; a tunnel that has two elevators on both sides for the cars. It is also closed on the weekends, and can be rented out for parties]

After a nap and dinner, we headed to the DOM carnival that happens in Hamburg three times a year. It was really fun to be at a carnival [the lights, excitement, rides, etc], but it was also really fun to see cultural differences in the kinds of rides and stands that they have [for example, a lot of beer and beer gardens, as well as fish sandwiches].


[DOM!]


[Girls on the Ferris Wheel]


[The Carnival from the Ferris Wheel]


The night at the Carnival was topped off with fireworks!