Two-Day Trek: Hamburg, Germany

Two-Day Trek: Hamburg, Germany

The bohemian spirit grasps every aspect of life in Germany’s capital of cool.

A maritime gateway that invites creativity and embraces innovation, Hamburg offers a distinctly German twist with its carefree, funky vibe.

THURSDAY

We arrived in the early afternoon, so our first task after arriving at the Hamburg airport — besides figuring out the unnecessarily complicated S-Bahn ticket machines — was to get to our hotel and find lunch. Fortunately, across the street from the Suite Novotel Hamburg City (Lubeckertordamm 2) was Oh It’s Fresh!, a small cafe chain offering soups and salads.

It was raining when we arrived, so our plans for the first day got a bit jumbled. Regardless, we took the U-Bahn a few stops to the Rathaus and tried to explore the ornate city hall, which was built between 1886 and 1897 and is where the government still meets. Unfortunately, aside from the lobby, the building was not open to tourists when we were in town, but it does regularly schedule English-language tours.

Behind the Rathaus is the Börse, home to the Hamburg Stock Exchange. Traders began working out of the building when it opened in 1841, and though floor trading ended in 2003, the massive halls are still open to the public — and it’s easy to stand on the balconies and imagine the chaos that used to reign below.

What To Know
Date of visit: Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, 2018.
Airport location: Six miles north of the city and easily accessible in 25 minutes by the S-Bahn’s S1 line.
Walkability: 6/10. It’s fairly easy to get around, though it will take time.
English: Not universal, but spoken fairly well among residents.
Must-See Attraction: There are several must-see museums, but for a real appreciation of Hamburg’s history, walk the length of the Elbtunnel (and back).
Traveler’s tip: The public transportation network is extensive and day passes also cover the cost of the river ferries.

The rain picked up as we were leaving, and the early winter sunset was near, so our modest circuit of the city center was a bit more hurried than we had hoped. We went first to the Church of St. Nikolai, which was once the tallest building in the world and used to be one of the five main cathedrals in Hamburg until it was destroyed by bombing during World War II. Rather than rebuild it, residents decided to leave it standing as a memorial, and an elevator installed a little more than a decade ago now allows residents to reach a viewing platform at the top of the spire.

A few minutes’ walk east is the Domplatz, a green space that has long been considered (though recently proven incorrect) to be the birthplace of the city. And, across the plaza is another church, St. Petri, a Protestant cathedral that mostly survived the WWII bombing and is known for its oxidized bronze lion’s head door knocker.

Given that it was the Christmas season, we wandered aimlessly around the variety of Christmas markets that popped up nearby, both in the streets around St. Petri church and down a variety of narrow alleys. For dinner, it was recommended that we get hamburgers in Hamburg and were directed to Better Burger Company, but upon getting there, we realized it was little more than a local fast-food chain and felt rather disappointed. For the rest of the night, we continued to seek refuge from the rain by ducking in and out of the markets.

FRIDAY

We hopped on the Metro and headed down to the waterfront and, first, the U-Boat Museum. A decommissioned Soviet submarine, the U-434, it once made top-secret surveys of the Atlantic seaboard but has been permanently moored at the docks since 2002. It’s certainly not for the claustrophobic, and although tours were supposed to be available around the clock, there were none scheduled for that day and the English-language brochure left a lot to be desired. Still, as the only ones in the submarine at the time of our visit, it was fun to explore and consider what life would be like sealed underwater for weeks at a time.

After emerging and taking in plenty of fresh air, we walked back along the waterfront only to head back under the surface. The Elbtunnel, a still-operational, quarter-mile-long passageway under the river Elbe, was built in 1911 to connect the docks with the shipyards and make traveling between the two significantly easier for the thousands of workers who needed to be on both sides each day. Cars are, incredibly, still permitted to use the tunnel by driving onto one of four massive elevators on each side that take them down 80 feet beneath the surface. When we were there, one of the two tunnels was undergoing a complete resurfacing that appeared nearly complete.

Once again back on the surface, we walked over to the Rickmer Rickmers, a three-masted sailing ship that, like the submarine, is permanently docked on the river. Completed in 1896 as a trading vessel, it was soon commandeered by the Portuguese and used for decades as a naval vessel until it was salvaged in the 1980s by a private foundation and turned into a museum.

From there, we caught the ferry down the river to Elbphilharmonie, stopping first for a sandwich at Campus Suite, a cafe just outside its main entrance. Tours of the massive, wave-shaped glass concert hall, which opened in 2017 and is considered one of the most technologically advanced in the world, run sparingly and not on the day of a performance, but visitors can take in the view from the observation deck halfway up the remarkable structure.

A quick walk led us over to Spicy’s Gewürtzmuseum (Am Sandtorkai 34), a unique, hands-on exhibit located in an old market hall. Visitors can learn about the history of spices and herbs, both for taste and preservation, and purchase nearly any that they see on display. Nearby, the Miniatur Wonderland, a model recreation of several of the world’s most famous cities, and the Hamburg Dungeon, a museum devoted to the city’s darker history, were also recommended as tourist must-sees, but we made the decision to pass on both.

We continued our exhausting walking tour by heading over to the St. Pauli district, perhaps Hamburg’s most famous, stopping along the way to see the St. Michaelis church, a symbol of the city, and the Bismarck-Denkmal, a massive statue of Otto von Bismarck in a nearby park that, sadly, appeared not to have been tended to in some time.

The Elbphilharmonie, which opened in 2017, is one of the most acoustically advanced concert halls in the world.

Upon reaching St. Pauli, we walked along the Reeperbahn, a mile-long street that has become known as Hamburg’s red-light district. Lined with some of the most eye-opening shops one can imagine, it’s also notable for the BeatlesPlatz, a circular plaza near the western end of the street that celebrates the Beatles’ long history in the city. With a little bit of time to go before our dinner reservation, we filled it at the Heiligengeistfeld, a nearby festival ground that holds three massive annual fairs each year — one in the spring, one in the summer and one in the winter.

Following the disappointment of the night before, we were pleasantly surprised with our second dinner in the city. Zum Spätzle (Wexstraße 31), a bit off the beaten path, is a family-run restaurant offering traditionally Swabian food, including maultaschen and, of course, spätzle. We liked the food during our visit to Stuttgart two years earlier and were pleased to find somewhere that served it just as deliciously.

We finished the night by returning to the Rathaus and wandering around its Christmas market before heading back to the hotel and preparing for our morning train to Berlin the next day.

Verdict: I didn’t expect it to become one of my favorite European cities, but it did because of its layers of quirkiness. Its significant history as a center of shipbuilding, and the regeneration of the riverside docklands, also helps set it apart from so many others.

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Disclaimers: All products, services and experiences were paid for and arranged by the author and the vendors named herein had no editorial oversight of this piece. All photographs were taken by and remain the property of the author; contact for republication rights.

Zac Boyer

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