Nine Months Later...

It’s hard to believe we’re ¾ of the way into our first year in Hamburg. At this time last year, it wasn’t even a blip on our radar!

Now, Larry is a regular employee at GGS (i.e., not contract) working on a new project, and I’m taking another German class and continuing work on my writing.

The all-American-themed
going-away party my coworkers
threw for me last fall.

How do you like Hamburg?

That’s the first question people ask when they learn I’ve moved here. That’s to be expected, but I’m consistently surprised by their reactions to my answer, which has evolved over time from “it’s different, but nice,” to “I like it,” to “I love it.”

Usually the response runs along the lines of an exchange I had with a gentleman at the flea market, who moved here from Ghana 20 years ago. When I told him I really liked living in Hamburg, he looked at me in utter disbelief and exclaimed, “But you came from America!”

Hmm. I guess I don't see my love of America and my love of Hamburg as incompatible. Besides, if there was one place in the world that could be everything for everyone, we'd all be living there, right?

What’s your favorite thing?

That's the next question people ask, particularly if they know I'm writing a blog about my experience here.

The flippant answer: Everything except the winter.

The short answer: Last week I was running some errands, and in the course of only two hours, I ran into people I know in three different areas of the city. Hamburg is large enough to be interesting, and small enough to feel comfortable.

The long answer: I suspect other expats ask this question because they’re looking for things they might do here, and people from Hamburg just want to know what an outsider thinks is great about their city.

How would you answer that question about where you live? It's hard, especially as different types of experiences bubble up into your mind.

So I decided to go back through my “bucket list” that I created when we first moved here, to see what I’ve done so far:

• Beer-tasting Tour
• Bergedorfer Castle & Vierlande Museum
• Botanical Garden 

The Loki Schmidt Botanical Garden is maintained by the University of Hamburg and includes planted areas of different geographies, a stone garden, a smell and touch garden, and a museum of "useful" plants 
(herbs, medicinal, food). 

• Bunkermuseum
• Butterfly Garden

The butterfly garden has a hothouse, outdoor garden, water garden
with coi, birds, bunnies, and more.

Kitchen at Chocoversum, where we got
to choose ingredients to make our own chocolate bar!

Let's face it, carnivals are pretty similar in the attractions
they offer. But we went to the Winter Dom to check
it out, then came back for the Spring Dom to enjoy the food!

• Café Vju
• Chocolate Museum
• Christmas Markets
• Dahlia Garden /Volkspark
• Doll Museum

• Dom
• Easter Market
• Ethnology Museum
• Fine and Applied Arts Museum
• Flea markets
• Harbor Festival

The Polizeimuseum is on the campus of Hamburg's
police academy, and provides a good history of the
city's law enforcement, complete with a hands-on forensics area.

• Historic City Centre Tour
• Isemarkt
• Kramer-Witwen Wohnung
• Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial
• Old Elbe Tunnel
• Police Museum
• St. Georg Steamboat Cruise

The St. Georg is an authentic steamboat that provides
tours on the Alster lakes in the heart of downtown.

Treppenviertel is this part of Hamburg --
nice homes nesteled in hills above a beach,
with steep, narrow, winding staircases
you can climb for a nice view of the Elbe

The Speicherstadt--
Hamburg's historic warehouse district--
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
and the world's largest carpet trading
and storage area.

• St. Michel Tour
• St. Nikolai War Memorial Museum
• St. Pauli Fish Market
• St. Pauli Tour
• Speicherstadt Tour
• Spice Museum
• Strandperle
• Treppenviertel

Strandperle is where
we celebrated
German Unification Day.

Getting back to the question of a "favorite," I don’t have one thing I’d call out (although the Botanical Garden is a contender). 

Each time I see or do something new I relish the experience, but I'm always eager to see and do more.

I think I have some small fear that if I reach the point where something gets crowned “the winner,” I’ll stop exploring as much. And I have a lot more things I want to see before hitting the one-year mark in August!



p.s. I've written reviews for several of these attractions on tripadvisor.com if you want more information. You can also always drop me a line.

A Cheese-y Day Trip

One of the many reasons we were excited about living in Hamburg is its easy accessibility to so many other places. Although our vision of hop-scotching through Europe on regular weekend excursions has yet to come to pass, I did spend a whirlwind 18 hours in the Netherlands last week to see a friend from my job at POST, and tag along with her and her partner to visit the Alkmaar cheese market.

Alkmaar is about 40 km northwest of Amsterdam. This quiet, quaint town started its cheese trading in 1365. Even though its cheese distribution has now been modernized, every Friday from late spring to early fall, the town puts on a reproduction of their centuries-old cheese market traditions.

Over the course of the first hour, we heard running commentary--in four languages--from the cheese market MC, giving us an overview of the market's history and players (you can read a bit about it here).

In case you weren't sure which way to go,
they had these markers set up to lead you
from the train station to the market square!
[photo courtesy of Kathryn Hargis]

Bringing the cheese to the market

The market square. The day we were there they were partnering with Aklmaar's Beatle Museum (don't ask), so the carillion tunes at the beginning of the market were all Beatles songs (including "Michelle"!)

Quality check. They cut a wheel in half
and inspect it, then core out
samples for tasting.
(We were close enough to try it--yum!)

Each wheel of cheese weighs about 25 pounds!
[photo courtesy of Kathryn Hargis]

After the quality is assured,

the seller (left)

and buyer (right)

slap hands continuously,

negotiating until they

come to an agreement.

No easy feat to toss this cheese around to load onto sledges.

There's a lot of running with cheese
at the market. After it's loaded
onto sledges it's taken to the scales.

After it's weighed, the carriers trot off to take the cheese to waiting wooden wagons.

Yes, we tried that flourescent blue cheese you see in the back.
It's a pesto cheese with lavender giving it that unique color.
Very mild flavor--almost like a mozzarella with lavender accents.

All around the market square were different vendors, selling everything from waffles and Dutch shoes, to, of course, different types of cheese. It was the perfect way to spend a beautiful day, and I look forward to more chances to travel abroad for glimpses of the incredible history around me!

[photo courtesy of Kathryn Hargis]

p.s. If you go to the cheese market: it's about a 20 minute walk from the train station to the market square. We got there at 9:25 and had prime viewing. Although the market goes from 10-12:30, you'll want to get there early, because things slow down a lot after the first hour.

Happy Birthday, Hamburg Harbor!

Every year Hamburg celebrates its Hafengeburstag--Harbor Birthday--with hundreds of ships visiting from other countries. This year the harbor turns 827!

How does a harbor have a birthday? On May 7, 1189 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa issued a charter to allow Hamburg to sail ships up the Elbe to the North Sea without having to pay customs duties. 

And since the harbor is the lifeblood of the city, only the biggest harbor celebration in the world will do!

The promenade area was 3+ km of food, drinks, jewelry,
and souvenirs, with everything from carnival carts to
more elaborate pop-ups, like this bar made to look like a ship. 

It felt like half the population
of Europe was crammed into the harbor!

The one thing I wanted to see during the four-day celebration was the Schlepperballett--the tugboat ballet. So I made my way through the throngs of people yesterday to explore a harbor full of ships and enjoy the welcome 75° F day!

I went aboard this massive Russian ship and staked out a spot to see the tugboat ballet.

The "ballet" featured four tugboats initially showing off their maneuverability before they moved into some synchronized movements, do-si-dos, and close-quarters sailing. Over the course of the 45-minute performance, the background music alternated between classical, pop, and rock.

The tugboats are in a line and perform an about-face.

The tugboats are moving in a line,  rocking from side to side. You can barely hear it, 

but the background music for this is "Purple Rain."

The tugboats bid farewell, and the ships that moved out of this part of the river 

during the performance greet them as they come back in.

Ships? Sun? All smiles!

I'm less a fanatic about boats than I am a big fan of being on the water, but it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement. And some of the ships are truly sailing works of art. 

I would call Hamburg's Hafengeburtstag a definite bucket-list item for ship enthusiasts, and a great way for everyone else to see how proud this city is of its harbor heritage!