THIRTY-SIX HOURS IN HAMBURG

 

Today is April 4, 2023, and it’s Crunch Time for Cheeto!  To distract from the unworthy political news, I’ve put together a photo essay on last weekend’s trip to Hamburg, a Hanseatic city on the Elbe and Germany’s largest port. 

We arrived on Saturday in the wind and the rain, but we were committed to a two-day, self-guided walking tour, and we were not going to let the weather get in the way.  While Saturday was very wet and blustery, Sunday dawned clear and sunny, with the same stiff breeze from the day before.  Perfect walking weather!

Our base camp was Hamburg’s Hafen City, a mixed-use and mixed-demographic redevelopment area along the Elbe River and the Hamburg container ship harbor.  The city has encouraged multi-generational, mixed-income housing in this area, building transit infrastructure to connect to the city center and facilitating adaptive residential, retail, and office re-use of six-story, late 19^th century brick warehouse buildings and 21^st century multi-story structures.

We stayed at the 25Hours Hotel (above), located in the repurposed Hafenamt, the old port offices. The hotel is in the neo-Gothic style, snug in the Speicherstadt warehouse district, a UNESCO World Heritage site, built in an extensive warren of tidal canals and tributaries of the Alster and Elbe rivers.  The main goods stored in the warehouses in the late 19^th century were tea, cotton, cocoa, spices, silk, and rubber; today, most of the storage spaces house electronic goods and oriental carpets.  Here is a look at Speicherstadt.

Not far from the North Sea, Speicherstadt is subject to severe storm water flooding, as this poster attests.   

 

There are miles of second story walkways (above) linking buildings near the harbor, providing emergency pedestrian refuge.  The harbor area is also home to the Elbe Philharmonie (above) , affectionately called the “Elphi,” a brick and glass concert hall right on the river with residential floors, sitting atop a brick podium.  It’s a cultural anchor that draws tourists and residents alike on every day of the week.

Here's more of Elphi

 

 

the surrounding harbor area 

and St. Michael’s Church, where a rehearsal of Bach’s Passion greeted us,

 

 

Adjacent to Speicherstadt is a commercial district called Kontorhausviertel, home to commercial buildings in the 1920s Expressionist style, like Chilehaus below. 

 

Not far from the Kontorhausviertel is St. Nicolai church (below), originally built in the 12^th century and rebuilt in the neo-Gothic style after the Great Fire of 1842.   

 

The church was heavily damaged in WWII and was deliberately not rebuilt, its ruins standing as a testimonial to the horror and futility of war, as this seated figure, head in hands symbolizes.   

Over four days in 1943, the RAF bombed Hamburg with explosive bombs to open roofs and then with incendiary bombs to create an inferno.  35,000 people were killed and 900,000 were left homeless.  The bombing was retaliation for the Luftwaffe Coventry Blitz of 1940.  In the crypt of St. Nicolai is the Coventry Cross, three iron nails salvaged from Coventry Cathedral and fashioned into a cross (below), a gift of reconciliation from the British.

Further on is the Rathaus, or town hall, built in 1886-1897 in the neo-Renaissance style.

 

Attached to the Rathaus is the stock exchange founded in 1558 and the oldest in Central and Northern Europe.  There may not have been a union of church and state in Germany, but there was (and is) a union of commerce and state. 

 

Along the canals near the Rathaus is the shopping district, Jungfernsteig, home to Expressionist and neo-classical temples to acquisition.   

 

Across the boulevard is the Binnenalster, an artificial lake popular with joggers, strollers, and boaters.   The daffodil drifts along the lake bank were positively neon!

Sunday brunch was right around the corner from the Rathaus at Café Paris, an art nouveau tiled affair with a typical bistro menu.  

 

On the other side of the lake is the Kunsthalle, Hamburg’s art museum.  The Main Hall was devoted to a didactic exhibit challenging the viewer to form opinions about the works.

We skipped through the medieval and Renaissance religious art and focused on modern works by Kandinsky

 Picasso

Leger

Kokoshka 

Kirchner

Grosz,

and an Expressionist sculptor whose name I don't recall.

Just down the street from the Kunsthalle is the main train station serving half a million passengers a day, making it one of Germany's busiest.

Dinner was in the St. Georg neighborhood near the theater district, at Neumann’s Weinbar.  We ordered a Stellenbosch rose’ aperitif with sardines for me and steak tartare for my husband.  By the way, the bread was to die for!

Then we had a  Beringer California zinfandel with our goat cheese and fig Flammkuchen (tart/pizza thing) main. 

Hamburg is about 2 hours by train from Berlin, 3 hours by car.  We got a pretty good idea of the Alt Stadt (old town), Speicherstadt, and the waterfront, but we barely scratched the surface.  We will be back!

 

Keep it real!

Marilyn