Hamburg

We left Amsterdam with another train adventure. About 10 minutes before our train was supposed to depart, we realized we were at the wrong train station. Luckily at that moment, we were talking with a woman who worked for the train company. She was very helpful in setting us up with another train that would meet up with our original train. We made it to Hamburg easily enough.

Katinka, the girl whose apartment we were staying at, picked us up at the train station. She was amazingly cool. When we got to her apartment she sat and chatted with us over beers for a while, gave us some good advice about the city, and offered to make us dinner – we decided we would order pizza though. She ordered it for us and then sat us up to watch the rest of the Eurocup game France Vs. Sweden (Sweden won, but France still advanced, I’m not sure how that worked).

The next day Abby and I walked all over the city. Hamburg is Germany’s biggest port city and it reminded me a lot of the east bay. There were statutes of tall ships everywhere, which greatly pleased me. 

There was a lot of new mixed in with some scattered old. The city hall was really cool, but the highlight of Hamburg was St Michael’s Church. We decided to walk up the 500 steps into the bell tower. It was an incredibly 360 view of the city. 

 City Hall

The View from the top of St. Michael's Church

Around lunchtime we were both so hungry we just stopped at the first place we found. Turned out it was an all potato restaurant. By the time we realized this we had already ordered drinks and an appitizer. I ordered an egg dish thinking the eggs would be on the side, and Abby a fish dish, thinking the fish would be on the side. Boy, were we wrong, both of us only managed to eat a few bites before we were just overwhelmed by potatoes cream and butter. 

 Abby's "Fish"

 My Supposed Eggs

As per usual with our weather luck, it rained for a bit in Hamburg. It was towards the end of the day though so we stopped at a little market to pick up some stuff for a salad and headed back to Katinka’s.

Both Abby and I agree, Katinka was the best part of Hamburg – which is definitely a one-day city.

Some other things we spotted in Hamburg:

 

 The Kony Movement (we found one in Paris too)

 A cigarette vending machine. Apparently my life has now been completed, I've seen it all.

 

 Seriously, seen it all.