There was a project planned in the 1970s to build a new subway line in Hamburg. The line would have gone from City Nord to Uhlenhors, via the city centre.
Some of the work was completed, including at Hauptbahnhof Nord, where today the planned tunnel entrance is still visible. However, the German economy was struggling a little at the time and so the project was cancelled.
I don’t know why I’ve never seen these yoghurt based Fruitmania sweets from Haribo before, but I will certainly look out for them in the future. I’m fairly sure they’re not widely sold in the UK, but they should be, they do taste like yoghurt. And since they’re Haribo, and that means they’re healthy, with the flavours being cherry, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, apricot and peach passion fruit.
How very lovely.
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is the second busiest railway station in Europe, second only to Gare du Nord in Paris. In rather a strategic move to integrate services in the early part of the twentieth century, this station was opened in 1906 to replace a number of other stations in Hamburg.
That’s a lot of trains, including a double decker train for Dylan. There are no shortage of trains either to look at, with nearly 1,000 S-Bahn trains using the station every day and nearly 750 long and short distance trains also using the building. The building was badly damaged during the allied bombing of the city during the Second World War, but it still has the look of an early twentieth century railway station.
This is the entrance to the Wandelhalle shopping centre, which is part of the railway building.
Plenty of food options in the shopping centre and there is also an office of the city’s tourist information located here. I only got a subway train from the railway station, but it was all well signed and I got the impression that it was an organised and well run station.
The public transport system in Hamburg is mostly integrated under one ticket, including the trains, buses, rapid transit, underground and also the ferries. Since my daily public transport ticket, which costs just over £5, included the ferries I decided I might as well get on a ferry to have a little cruise around the harbour area.
The photo above is of the ferry after I had got off, it’s quite a large affair and there’s a downstairs and upstairs seating area. Ticketing on the Hamburg public transport system is on a honesty based system, so everyone is expected to have a ticket and there are no checks on boarding or departing. I’m sure that there are also frequent spot checks, but this strategy did make for a smoother boarding process.
The service that I went for was ferry service 62 and it takes around 35 minutes to get to its final destination of Finkenwerder, and there are several stops along the way. I didn’t get off the ferry until nearly back into the city centre, so my cruise lasted for just over an hour. A fair number of passengers didn’t get off either, so many were just using this as a cheap way of seeing the harbour area.
Below are some photos of the trip and it was pleasant to get some fresh air given just how hot it is in Hamburg.
I was in the fish market area of the city where there are numerous seafood restaurants and so I managed to decide that this would be a highly suitable location to instead have a Thai meal…..
I’m not normally one for sitting outside, it’s usually too hot and there are random insects that come and attack me. But, when in Hamburg do as the people of Hamburg do…..
Singha, which is effectively the national beer of Thailand, which was nicely presented and, given the current heat in Hamburg, at the very appropriate chilled temperature. On that note, I hope it’s not this hot all week.
On to the matter of the service at the restaurant, which was attentive and friendly. The server appeared to be the manager, or at least if not they had a very attentive and interested staff member, who was able to serve all the tables efficiently and in an engaging manner. She spoke perfect English, which aided the ordering process somewhat, and was ever helpful.
This is the lunch-time chicken green curry. There were ingredients in that I didn’t recognise, so it wasn’t quite like any Thai green curry that I’ve had before. However, the taste was exceptional and there was a depth of flavour and spice to the sauce. The vegetables retained some bite and the chicken was tender and had taken on the taste of the sauce. The portion size was sufficient and there was rice included with the lunch-time deal.
The price for lunch, including the beer and curry with rice, was around £10, which I thought was perfectly acceptable. The restaurant had a modern decor and was spotlessly clean, with some of the best presented toilets that I’ve seen in a while.
This is the site of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Hamburg, which the city thought would be a marvellous idea to knock down between 1804 and 1807. The real problem was that the church had retained a separate authority until the late eighteenth century and the city authorities didn’t like this power base within the city.
The demolition was a distraction for the city, with the need to reinter 25,000 bodies and then destroy the large cathedral building itself. The stone was taken away and reused in construction projects, with very little remaining of either the building or any of its contents.
These 39 benches, which light up at night, mark where the pillars were once located in the five nave cathedral. The site has only been used as a park for the last few years, it was used as a car park for most of the period following the Second World War.
At the side of Domplatz are these sheets of metal which mark the former location of the Hamburg Wallring, or city walls.
WeWork is an interesting concept, a company which provides office space for entrepreneurs to allow them to develop their businesses. Not only do they provide office services, they also encourage collaborative working options so individuals can build up contacts. Although I only really know them as they own Meetup, a site that I use a lot.
Anyway, that wasn’t the purpose for this post, I just liked the marketing message of “Do What You Love” emblazoned across the building.
This is aircraft G-EUPO after it had landed in Hamburg Airport, arriving on time from London Heathrow T5. The aircraft is an A319 which BA have owned and operated since 2000.
I was able to board in the first group which was fortunate as the flight was nearly full. The aircraft could have been a little cleaner, but it looked well maintained and in good order. I was in an exit row seat which was sufficiently spacious and comfortable.
There was a crew member who seemed to be new and he was being ultra efficient in term of his security protocol. I’d far rather that he was like that than not caring, but he had a passenger remove a book from the seat pocket as they were in an exit row, which seemed slightly excessive. At the end of the flight the same crew member tried to get the customer in front of me to return his seat to the original position, which confused the seat occupant as he was in a seat which didn’t even recline. The crew member was polite though, and I liked his enthusiasm, with the entire crew seeming to work well together.
From the in-flight menu, this is the page which brought British Airways to the attention of that media titan, the Daily Mail. The afternoon tea doesn’t include a cup of tea, which is only sort of mentioned in the description.
The flight was fifteen minutes late in leaving Heathrow T5 due to congestion at the airport. The pilot explained he’d be remaining at the stand, as opposed to waiting in a queue on the runway, in a bid to save fuel. The pilot gave regular updates and fortunately he was able to make up time during the flight so we landed on time.
This was yet another comfortable flight with British Airways, nothing spectacular, but efficient, well managed and organised.
Just some photos from around Hamburg Harbour….
I’ve seen projects such as this in other cities in Germany, but Hamburg is the only location where this receives finance and support from the city council. The aim of the project is to mark the location of where people lived or worked until they were deported or killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
There’s a marvellous web-site behind this project at http://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/ which gives details of each of the plaques. I was surprised when I saw just how many of these plaques there are around Hamburg, it’s now in excess of 5,000 and what a wonderful project this is to remember and commemorate those who died.
The plaques above are located on Bartelsstraße, although I saw tens of the plaques walking around the city today. The names on the plaques above are:
Mathel Rosenbaum who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, deported in 1941 to Riga and murdered.
Max Rosenbaum who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1882, deported in 1941 to Lodz and murdered on 28 March 1942.
Edith Rosenbaum who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1899, deported in 1941 to Riga and murdered.
Hermann Hauptmann who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1919, deported in 1941 to Minsk and then Majdanek concentration camp. He survived the war and in 1949 he emigrated to the United States of America. This information seems to have come to light after the plaque was laid (http://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/index.php?MAIN_ID=7&BIO_ID=4994).
Mathel Hauptmann who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1922, deported on 11 July 1942 to Auschwitz and murdered.
These plaques are located further down the same street, at Bartelsstraße 76.
