A day of culture

It’s been a long day.  After our early morning fishing expedition, we returned to our cosy hotel and relaxed for a while before meeting for our second breakfast.  Needless to say, it was rather more substantial than the first!

Suitably fortified, we set out under blue skies towards the station where just across the street was the Applied Arts Museum – the MKG. 

We’d decided to make today a cultural one, with three museums on our list.

This one immediately won me over, with a temporary exhibition of fashion illustration.  Having chatted to the Kingston University students recently about this, the subject was up there in my mind and the Gustafson sketches which were in the first room caught my eye straight away. 

In a different way, so did the illustrations by Antonio.

I especially enjoyed seeing the original sketch alongside the eventual magazine spread.  Fascinating!

The museum itself was really well laid out.  Fairly small, the temptation to put everything on show had been resisted, though it was amusing to see part of the archive laid out as an exhibition too.

In the Buddhist themed room, the white space flattered the few exhibits and showed them to best effect.

But just around the corner hung a beautiful William Morris tapestry, effectively lit and sadly not at all well photographed by yours truly.

As always, the fine details made the whole and the placing of the piece was perfect.

Because, just through a door we found ourselves in a rather less bountiful Wiener Werkstatte setting.  Two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

Throughout the museum we’d come across fluorescent orange flashes, highlighting the exhibits of doubtful or unconfirmed provenance, but in the last room, this theme was clarified and extended to tell the story of Raubkunst – looted artworks.  Really interesting for us to learn about and prompting us to find out more, the story of several pieces featured in the museum highlighted the issue very well indeed.

Our next stop was to be the Art Museum – the Kunsthalle.  Now here I felt we ought to have done our homework a little more effectively, because it’s undergoing renovation.  OK, so as the banners state, it’s still open and indeed, the people were still flocking through the doors.  But sadly, there are so few artworks to see, it’s hardly worth the effort.

The building itself is lovely.  But this is all the part undergoing restoration and the exhibitions are currently only in the new concrete part at the end of the pathway.  So, a good 75% or more is closed.

The cafe is still open, though, so we were ok for a while!

A few choice pieces have been singled out for exhibition during the works and so it was here we began our visit.  At the black spot.

Beyond the stark white reception area, a more conventional gallery space had been engineered and inside were hung a concentrated collection of the stars of the show.

That meant that all the visitors to the gallery found their way into these dozen or so smallish rooms too, making for a somewhat crowded and overwhelming experience.

The special exhibition was still more crowded (in spite of the image the photo offers) and eventually I decided to focus on observing the people rather than the paintings.  The characters with whom we shared the lift were worthy of a study alone – expensively dressed in a very European style (a little haute OSKA!) and ever so slightly vague, if you get my drift.

But actually, I found the building rather interesting too!

Time to move on, then.  Never far from the “ugly” church near our hotel, we made our way to the U Bahn and took the same route as we had this morning, staying on for one more stop to St Pauli.

We’d planned to make the Hamburg history museum the last stop of the day and just as well, for at least four of our six feet were beginning to protest.

Eventually we found our way in and sure enough, here was another wonderful collection of interesting ephemera which told the story of the city.

The thing is, whilst the other two were admiring model ships and suchlike, I was trying like mad to remember what I did with the cloakroom receipt for our coats.  I wondered if I’d actually been given one at all and then came to the rotten conclusion that I’d probably wandered off before the cloakroom attendant had returned and tried to give me the thing. 

Oh heck.

Oh well, I’m sure I wasn’t the first to do that and at least I could explain auf Deutsch that I’m not so good at conzentrieren at times!

So we enjoyed the rest of the museum, finding pictures to make one birthday boy’s heart sing and learning a bit about the Hansestadt as we went.

We learned about ropemaking and how the Reeperbahn came about.

Finally, the historic exhibit to make us all feel ancient – a room from 1990.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad were it not for the fact that our studio desks are rather too similar to those in the display.

And of course, now I had to retrieve our coats without a ticket.

I grovelled in my best German.  “Es tut mir sehr leid, aber…”   But the cloakroom attendant was having none of it.

“Ohne ticket, keinen mantel”.

“Was?!”   My German began to flow, as it does in such circumstances!  I suggested that perhaps we’d need to wait until the last people had left the museum and then there would be three coats left…and if she insisted we do that, then……well….

She quietly picked up a ticket from the desk at that point.  How many coats were there?  Off she went to retrieve whatever was hanging on that particular hook.  Sure enough, there were our three coats.  Unsmiling, she handed them over and unapologetic, we took them and left.

Harrumph!

We love it here though, and moments like these are few and far between.  We satisfied the inner Bavarian in us all this evening with supper at the Hofbräuhaus just down the street and agreed that however tasty and locally authentic labkaus might be, there’s nothing quite like a solid dish of Schweinshaxen and Knödel to keep body and soul together.

Good grief, blogging before breakfast?

It’s almost as if we are taking over where we left off yesterday – standing on an U bahn station, waiting for a train.  But as you can see, it’s just past 6.35am and we are heading in the opposite direction – towards St Pauli, in fact.

The concierge had looked at us askance as we went out at such an ungodly hour this morning, but undoubtedly he’d guessed where we were headed.  Along with a few other visitors, we were taking the advice of our friends and the guidebook and going out to the St Pauli Fishmarket.  Well, two of us were, anyway – the youngster preferred to stay in bed!

Almost everyone on the train got off at the Landungsbrucken stop and crossed the bridge littered with more silly locks to walk the 1km to the market.

As we understood it, the market would be in full swing.  The guidebook described how the market traders would call their wares, our friends described the fun of a live auction, music and Gemütlichkeit.  So we continued past these first stands selling the same trashy clothes seen on any market stall and continued on towards the market proper.

There was some beautifully fresh fish on offer, that’s for sure.  But we hadn’t come across the market traders, or any “life” yet.  Maybe it’s a little further on?

Even further on, we were still amongst the “tourist tat”, the cheap souvenirs and the hats and handbags.

Though there was the occasional fruit seller calling their wares, there didn’t seem to be much spirit around and it wasn’t quite what we were anticipating.

Aha!    We reached the market hall and headed inside, because maybe that was where it was happening?

Well, the hall was full of tables, set out in traditional lines with a band set up on stage at the end.  People were here eating breakfast, but the party had certainly not started and there were no live fish auctions or anything particular to see.

Hmm.  Was this why we’d got up at 6am?  Looked like it!

Maybe it’s the season.  Perhaps the first Sunday after the New Year isn’t the time to get the full experience?  Maybe we were here too early and the activities hadn’t kicked off yet?

Or maybe we had left our own Gemütlichkeit at home?  Whatevs.  Rather than stand and eat a fish sandwich here in the cold, we decided we’d prefer to go back and enjoy the lavish choices of our hotel breakfast offering in comfort.

Which is why we found ourselves returning to the Landungsbrucken station shortly after 7.30am.

Catching a train back was easy and quick and we were soon back where we started.

Had we wasted our time?  Not at all.  We have to do these things, to give them a try and to see what’s what.  If we didn’t, who knows what we’d miss?

I think the Birthday Boy will be glad he chose to stay in bed, though!

Walk a little further in Hamburg

So, where were we?  Oh yes, somewhere along the Willy Brandt Strasse and on our way to the Hafen City, a new development area of Hamburg where there were several places of interest.  First, we have to cross the road by means of the Cremonbruecke which strangely has escalators going down but steps going up.  Never mind, we’re all for building our appetites – or maybe, still working off the rather huge breakfast we’d enjoyed this morning.

Cremon is a street which dates back to the 13th century port and around here are the oldest buildings, many still in use.  Actually, we’ve booked a table for dinner in a restaurant nearby this evening, but for now, we’ll just get a feel for the place and carry on towards the waterfront.

Actually, looking a little more closely down there, we spot the new Elbphilharmonie construction which sadly isn’t going to be ready for quite some time but which looks spectacular from what we’ve read.

Oh, and looking back from where we came, there is the tower of the Nikolaikirche, which offered the viewpoint from the top.  It’s easy to see why it created such a stir when it was constructed, isn’t it?

A few steps further and we’re by the water, in an area of the city which reminds us of Liverpool – warehouses, a few boats here and there and quite a bit of modern development.

They’re touting for business on the small harbour boats, offering tours of the warehouse district and of the wider harbour, but we have plans already, because we’ve just spotted a sign on the building opposite.  The Miniatur Wunderland was recommended to us by our friends and had also featured on Michael Portillo’s programme recently – we’d been told that, however hokey it sounded, it was worth a visit.  So visit it we will!

We cross the waterway to get to it, growling about the silly locks which are all over the bridge as we go.

Reaching the entrance, I am bewildered.  We’ve spent the whole morning in a more or less empty city and here, suddenly we are besieged by crowds of people who seem to have appeared from nowhere.  Come on – let’s not hang about with the smokers, but go straight inside and see what’s what.  We climbed the five flights of stairs inside the warehouse and eventually reached the entrance.

We were greeted by a young woman who asks if we had tickets.  Well, no…we’d intended to buy them here, of course.  At this point, we were herded into an empty room which quickly filled with people, standing around, waiting…for what?  Eventually, when the room was more or less full, the young woman came in, closed the door behind her and proceeded to explain in pretty unrelenting German that there were no tickets available, that the earliest tickets were for 12.30pm (it was now 11am) and those would entail a 30 minute wait.  If we wanted, we could buy tickets for this evening, which would have no wait at all, or come back another time when it was less busy.

Such a complex ticketing system clearly baffled the natives too – it wasn’t just us – and most people shuffled off with a harrumph, which is exactly what we did!  We’d wasted fifteen minutes hanging around here and didn’t intend to waste a moment longer, so we went back down the stairs and out into the fresh air.  What to do now?

 

The answer lay a little further along the street, where a small visitor centre explained the Hafen City concept with some excellent displays and a large model.

The Hafen City is the island with the terracotta coloured buildings on, there in the distance.  The terracotta church left of centre is the ugly church we’d passed first thing this morning, and the curved structures were the Chilehaus and surrounding area.

There was a small cafe here too, so as well as giving us a chance to get our bearings, to work out the city and the environs, it was good to take a small break.  Though we hadn’t walked that far, we hadn’t really stopped since we started, if you get my drift.

It was a good chance to plan our next move as well.  How about the Maritime Museum, just up the road, then?

Off we set, through the modern development where a few old ships were moored.  The wind is pretty brisk around the water, though, so we wrapped up warm and didn’t hang about.

Still not so many people around – it feels quite strange.  How many of these apartment blocks are occupied, we wondered?  Would it feel different on a workday?

One small “box” is actually a visitor centre for the Elbphilharmonie and a woman is giving a lecture to a group of people.  We creep around the back and take a peek up in the “cockpit” where there was a model of the main auditorium.  It’ll be nice when it’s finished

Actually, it’ll be like this when it’s finished – quite unusual layout and a multipurpose auditorium with very carefully designed seating.

But come along, having decided we’ll go to the museum, let’s get there, shall we?

We pass the statue of Klaus Stoertebecke and cross the bridge to the museum entrance.

It’s a fine old building, isn’t it?

We decide to begin on floor 9 and work our way down through the exhibits, so jump in the lift and get out on the top floor.  This is what we see.

Can you see what it is?

A little closer.

Closer still.

I think this room contains a model of every ship there ever was.  Each one is carefully labelled, arranged according to country of registration and beautifully, impeccably ordered.

There are rows upon rows of them, tiny tiny little things for the most part.

The men in my family are in seventh heaven!

Actually, I find it quite interesting too and set out to look for my three favourite Nassau-registered ships though sadly, they appear to be missing.  Shame.

So I wander about and marvel at the precision, even where there are numerous variations on a theme, whilst my Hero and his boy gasp at the sight of some aircraft carrier or other.

There’s an interesting display of how the models are constructed, too and once again, the precision and accuracy is faultless.    No wonder this is such an amazing collection.

But of course, it’s time to move on eventually, and working our way down through the floors we are fascinated by the wealth of information contained in this unassuming place.  There are great displays about undersea exploration and oil drilling.

There are displays about passenger ships and liners – here is a mock up of a suite on Sea Cloud, a modern cruise ship.

Sometimes, whilst the men went off to investigate naval history or something, I took the chance to rest my feet and do a little people watching.  That’s as fascinating for me!

Of course, where they came across something which they felt I should see, they came to let me know – like this display about Grand Admiral Tirpitz, whose figure stood alongside his “decorations”

When awarded a new one, Edward suggested he might say, “just put it on the pile”!

I always enjoy learning a little about the individuals, so this picture of KapitaenLeutnant Weddingen and his fiancee prompted me to find out who he was and what he did. 

The display of military headgear caught someone’s eye too.  Always one for a fancy hat, Edward would have given his eye teeth for that little number with the gold insignia, I can tell you!

Nearing the ground floor, the displays of uniforms were fascinating, and in particular I was glad to see that the “Marinehelferinnen” (Auxiliary Naval Women) were “traditionally built”!

No room for arguments here, don’t you agree?

We exited through the gift shop, resisting all kinds of model ship temptation and retraced our steps back through the Hafen City.

The small, original buildings which remain amongst the new builds give a clue to how it might have been some years ago and reminded me a lot of the town docks in Hull, where my Grandad worked in a small Customs house amongst the waterways and warehouses, much like this one.

Soon, we reached the end of the development and stood in front of the River Elbe.

Looking back, there was the Elbphilharmonie and the rest of the Hafen City.  The clouds were gathering and there was an icy blast off the water, so we didn’t hang around.

Instead, we kept on walking, past a bunch of tugs which could join my collection of “Tugs of the World” – yes, really, I have a Flickr set

Originally we’d intended to take one of the harbour tours this afternoon, maybe catch a ferry boat over the river or something, but as it was chilly and we’d enjoyed the museum so much, we simply kept on going, aiming for the tower, there to the right of the picture.

By the Landungsbruecken, in the St Pauli area, there was just one more thing which interested us.  It was to be found under the dome there at the end of the path.

The Elbtunnel, a masterpiece of engineering and well worth a visit, we thought.  Come on though, I’m not walking down when there’s a sign there for a lift!

Sure enough, down there is a tunnel under the river. 

Ok.  Seen it.  Been there.

Time to catch the lift back up again and make our way back to the hotel.  Enthusiasm and our enjoyment of being here tempted us to walk back to the city centre, but weary feet and a drop or two of cold rain led us to the U bahn station.

In no time at all, we were back.  That was easier than walking, wasn’t it!?

This evening, we’ll eat at Deichgraf and then tomorrow, we have a very early start.  Well, two of us have    (One of us fancies a sleep in and a late breakfast)    To find out what takes us out at 6.30am on a Sunday morning in early January, you’ll need to wait till tomorrow.  I hope it’s worth getting up for!

Walk with us in Hamburg

It’s a chilly morning, but there’s not many people about yet (even though it’s almost 10).  Grab your hat, gloves and put on your comfy shoes and come, explore Hamburg with us.  Our first stop will be the station, just down the street there, where the Tourist Information office can be found.

Needless to say, it’s on the diagonally opposite corner of the station and since we can’t cross the tracks, it takes a while to get there.

We cross the bridges on the way there, but coming back we go down onto a platform and up the other side, though I fear we’re not really supposed to do that without a valid train ticket.  Oooer – but nobody sees us and we get away with it!

We now have our five-day Hamburg card and intend to make the most of it.

First of all, we’re going to walk, though.  Leaving the station and walking a couple of blocks we soon find ourselves crossing the inner ring road.  We’re following the walking tour suggested in our guidebook which begins in the warehouse district.

Walking along Steinstrasse, we notice the ugly church a little further along.  It stands amongst blocks of offices, built of bricks in a style our guidebook tells us is typical of Hamburg.

Just as we are looking around to take note of them, we spot the Sprinkenhof at the end of a side street, and a little further along, we turn left towards another notable building

The Chilehaus was there in front of us and tempted in through the archway, we couldn’t resist taking a closer look.

The inner courtyard was striking, with beautiful brickwork details and high walkways on the upper floors.

The designs were fascinating and rewarded a closer look, so we stayed a while gazing up at them and taking a few photographs.

Having strayed from the guidebook route, however, we didn’t realise until now that we missed the main feature of the Chilehaus – reminiscent of our favourite Flatiron - after all of that!  we will just have to return…

Onward, then, considering “brick expressionist architecture” for a while, we wandered through a very quiet business district.  I suppose Saturday morning is a good time to explore the area.

 

The next building of note in our book was the Afrikahaus, built by a shipping company in 1899 with a strong African theme.

The warrior by the gate confirms that, as do the two elephants in the courtyard.

We are pleased to see the name of the company which commissioned the building, Woermann, still there amongst the nameplates.  Rather satisfying, that.

Anyway, onwards, over the street and we’ll walk over the oldest bridge in the city.  What do you mean, you can’t see a bridge?  (well, no, I can’t, either)

But it is there, with a figure (a bishop and a duke) on each side and was first mentioned in 1266, we read, though this particular structure is much newer than that, of course.

Standing in the middle of the bridge we get our first glimpse of the canal network in the city, for although we were by the waterfront last night, at the Weisserzauber market, we’ve not really felt as though we were in an historic port so far.

Just over the bridge, we find the remains of the St Nikolai church, left in ruins as a memorial following the extensive bombing raids on Hamburg during WW2. 

There’s a lift up what remains of the tower and fine views of the city are promised but we decline the offer and content ourselves with looking around what is left of the nave.

We read that there have been several structures on this site, the last one being designed by George Gilbert Scott, to whom there is a small memorial in the corner.

Time to move on, then, walking along Willy Brand Strasse towards the waterfront.

Time for a bit of sustenance though, don’t you think?  I just happen to have a bag of our favourite sweets in my pocket!

See, had we not stopped for those, I’d not have noticed that little fountain in the middle of the graffiti-strewn square.  A little gem in the urban landscape marks the end of the first part of our city walk, but join us in my next post to continue to the Hafenstadt and beyond.

One way to spend the day

OK, so I can understand the reasoning and principles of time and travel but it nevertheless always comes as a surprise that choosing to take a lunchtime flight from Heathrow, the decision to fly east or west can make a disproportionate difference to where to have tea.  Take the noon flight to LA, for example, and sit on Third Street Promenade in the late afternoon sipping a cool glass of Californian white something-or-other in an altogether different time zone.  Or, fly east and at 4pm, you could be checking into the hotel in Hamburg, just one hour’s flight time away. 

Either way, it will involve an early start and a drive on a hopefully, free running M4, just as it was this morning.

Though actually, Heathrow T5 was pretty busy as people were heading home after the holidays and, I guess, like us, were squeezing in a last weekend before starting back in 2015.

It just seems rather peculiar that getting to a city just one hour’s flight time away takes a whole day, but factor in check in times, all the hanging around, a small delay when the tow truck broke down under the plane mid-manoeuvre, the time difference, the luggage collection and so on and the 12.10pm flight brought us into Hamburg city centre at around 4.15pm.

It’s great to be here and though it was very tempting to flop onto that comfy bed for a nap as soon as we arrived, we resisted the temptation and went out onto the street immediately, to get our bearings and establish ourselves here in the Hansestadt.

Our hotel is remarkably central and in the late afternoon there were still plenty of shoppers making the most of the bargains in the January sales.  We were happy to wander, taking in the atmosphere and working out what was where.

Until, that is, we came across the Weisserzauber (White Magic) market where there were one or two things to tempt a weary traveller from foreign shores.

Gluehwein or Eierpunsch?

Well, one of us chose the former.

And we two chose the latter.  Hic.

Suitably fortified, we meandered through the rest of the market, passing the doughnut stall, the hot chestnuts and the candied almonds.

I can tell you, it wasn’t easy to pass the bratwurst by and all our powers of resistance were sorely tested because we were getting hungry.

With a quick read of the gingerbread hearts which seem to be a fairly accurate barometer of current culture (there wasn’t a single, simple “Ich liebe dich” on display) we made our way back to the Rathausplatz.

We’d booked a table at Parlament and though two of us had succumbed to a snack whilst in the market, we were all feeling pretty hungry.

Just as well, because portions were a little on the generous side!

It’s great to be here, we are delighted to have a new city to explore and after a hearty supper and a couple of hefeweizen the birthday boy himself is feeling at home.  It doesn’t as take long to acclimatise as it does to get here – even if it is only an hour away!