Germany Continued...1

The next day Sarah and I went into downtown Hamburg via train. (Their train system is sooo efficient, there is one new train into the city exactly every ten minutes!) The ride was pleasant and city of Hamburg is really nice. Through the architecture you can tell that it is clearly a working city, I would guess it is like Baltimore in a way. Hamburg is a huge port city; it is the largest in all of Europe but the city still values and maintains several of its old buildings. The first thing we did was visit one of the oldest of the four main churches in all of Hamburg, St. Peter’s. It is a Lutheran city so it is not that ornate, but the structure was amazing and within it there was this great old scale model of the church that the caretaker was very kind to open up for me and show me its detailed interior. He then managed to get out in English for us to “be slow, there are 536 stairs to heaven” as we entered the doorway to the never-ending stair wells. The walk to the top of the tower was very long, dark, and would never fit American safety standards but never the less we continued our hike to the top. Sarah was ahead about 20 stairs because my head cold was making it hard for me to breath, so she was constantly cheering me on. And a guy that was coming down from the top noticed that she was speaking in English and wanted to know if we were American. We talked for about two minutes and he told me that he is from New Jersey but is originally from Pittsburg. It was nice to see a fellow American.

So when we finally made it to the top, just our luck to have the windows all fogged up from the rainy weather, though I could get several images out, and they look eerie on the camera.

We then walked right down the street to the State House which is the building with the green roof. It is a little over 100 years old, but I think that it is one of the greatest buildings in the city. Outside of the state building there were Christmas festival booths being cleared out. The streets were busy and full of people shopping just enjoying the atmosphere around the State House. The building has all these tiny ornate details of ocean/shipping objects. There are flag poles with gilded sail boats on the top and the fountain in the center quart yard of the State House has gods and goddesses with an ocean theme. We continued to walk along the streets and bridges and there I learned from Sarah that the city of Hamburg is the European city with the most bridges and canals, it actually puts Venice to shame. It’s funny because I would have never thought that of Germany, especially Northern Germany. The integration of the city and the water/ports is clearly an aspect that the city appreciates. Sarah tells me that when it is cold in the winter months for about 3 weeks, the water in the harbor turns to ice and gets about 20 centimeters thick on average and that is when the city sets up booths actually out on the ice and people walk all around on the ice and shop. The city is clearly trying to make itself more appealing to tourists but you can’t help but enjoy yourself with the random 60 year-old opera singers standing on the street corners and quaint little cafes along the canals, it just puts you in the European mood.