A View over Uberseebrucke

Location: Westbound in the North Sea

Here we have the next installment in the Hamburg series! Hopefully I am able to finish before we reach Antwerp.

–– Hamburg, Day 2: 9/6/13 ––

On my second day in Hamburg I decided to forge out on my own and explore the city. I had a few goals in mind as I swiped my ID card and disembarked the ship:
#1) Visit the historic warehouse district to and world's only spice museum, before perhaps going to the "Miniatur Wunderland" (a world famous model train exhibit)
#2) Find sunglasses to replace the ones that broke on me during my first day in England. Also locate some more snacks to bring back to the ship and a little travel sewing kit.
#3) Find a nice cozy place to eat breakfast because I woke up too late for breakfast on the ship.

So armed with my map of Hamburg and a moderately capable sense of direction, I headed down a friendly little tree-lined street toward a small park. Before too long I had found a nice cafe/ice cream parlor and grabbed a delicious breakfast of dubious nutritional value (aka apple pie and rum-flavored ice cream), after which I found myself meandering past St. Michael's Church. I remembered hearing good things about the place the previous day, so I wandered inside.

For a few Euros one can buy a ticket to climb to the top of the tower above the church and look out over Hamburg; for a couple more, one can also explore the crypt beneath the church. This seemed like an interesting way to spend my morning, so I got both. After descending into the moody vaulted crypt and perusing the pictures and objects in the informational displays (not much of the written information was in English), I climbed what turned out to be a massive amount of stairs to get the top of the tower. Surrounding the industrial-looking steps winding up it were numerous metal supports and beams: the climb felt less like being in part of a church and more like being in a factory of some kind. I'm not sure how old that part of the church was––apparently major repairs were needed first after the great fire which swept through Hamburg in the mid 1800s wiping out much of the city, and then again after a bombardment of WWII bombs did pretty much the same thing.

I did eventually reach the top, and took a bunch of what will probably turn out to be entirely uninteresting pictures of the expanse of Hamburg stretching out on all sides. I could even see the M.V. Explorer docked in Uberseebrucke harbor, which was neat.

After that I'm afraid my day gets pretty boring (well, even more so) to recount: I did find a grocery store to purchase snacks, and a sewing kit. The sunglasses took a bit longer, but I prevailed, and I managed to navigate myself back without relying on the map (though I'm pretty sure that was due more to luck rather than any skill on my part.) By the time I reached Hafencity (the old warehouse district) it was 3pm and the spice museum was closing early for a special event. So I hung out for a while in the area before heading back to the ship.

...Which brings us to the highlight of the evening! A few days before, I had signed up for a free SAS "Welcome Reception" which was to be held at a local family's home in Hamburg. I was under the impression that it would be a casual meet-and-greet with some snacks. (I was later looking through upcoming field programs and saw one described as a "Welcome Reception" in Casablanca, and the picture for that definitely showed a casual atmosphere, so I didn't just make that up out of nowhere!)

But nope, as it turns out this was actually a much bigger deal than I had realized. Not only were there students, but there were also some lifelong learners and members of the faculty (including our academic dean, who is a former astronaut, another guy who is a nuclear physicist, and apparently also another man who is in charge of the accounting for Semester at Sea.) Many of the men were wearing suits, and the non-student women were also dressed up. I felt bad that I hadn't known to come in more formal attire, but come to think of it I'm not sure I brought much in that department anyway, so it probably wouldn't have mattered.

The people who were hosting the event had a lovely home and were very nice. The husband (whose name I wish I remembered) is in the tea trading business. It is a family business which he and his brother inherited from their parents, so our hosts were both quite well off; I believe he even owns a tea museum down in the warehouse district. There were two server ladies who brought around glasses of wine and little cups of appetizers while we all hung out and talked. Then we were served a big tasty dinner and some desserts in more cute little cups. It was really great! I haven't quite been to something like that before, and I had a great time. As we left they gave us gifts of tote bags with little boxes of tea from the husband's company, which was also really nice of them. It made me glad that I stayed in Hamburg rather than going to Berlin, which is where most of ship (including my roommate) took off to that morning.

And that concludes Hamburg, Day 2! If you're still around, don't forget to comment :)