One epic trip on a long weekend with the school is over. My cameras stayed busy, my legs stayed tired, and my days stayed awesome. We left Friedensau Thursday morning headed for Hamburg. For those of you whose Germany geography was like mine before this trip, Hamburg is up north. Pretty much north-est. We actually went almost all the way north on another day. It is officially the most northern I have ever been in my life discounting the brief stint I had in the Iceland airport. I felt I could almost see Santa's workshop and little elves running around busying themselves. Of course that is absurd, but I did see the oldest lighthouse in Germany and from up there everyone was small so that may count for something.
I recently stated that Berlin was my favorite city at that time. I am sorry Berlin, Hamburg may have you beat on account of how pretty it is there. Hamburg is on a river and has one of the biggest harbors in the world (10th biggest to be exact). It also has canals running through it like a northern German Venice. I spent a lot of time doing nothing but take pictures.
The first day there it was raining. I wasn't too sad since me and rain have never been nemeses in the strictest sense, but I cannot say that I was ecstatic. No matter, we spent most of the day in a tour bus exploring the city and seeing the awesome sights through a rain beat window. That is when I got a glimpse, albeit a small glimpse, of how pretty Hamburg is. That night we went to get something to eat and I experienced another first. When we were walking through the city we kept seeing police vehicles. I noticed that it was an inordinate amount. We got to the City Hall and there were 18 parked out front, but the issue was not there. It was outside our restaurant. There was a protest going on. From the sounds of it, it was a pretty charged environment. What better to do then to get as close as I can and get video. When I got closer I got a look at the police presence, the immediate group of protesters had a big group of police isolating them from the rest of the public, by standing in a square around them. They all had what looked like Storm Trooper helmets from Star Wars on and we saw two trucks with water cannons. Around that group was a group of onlookers, some beginning to join the protest from outside. Then there were police scattered throughout that group for control, but it couldn't be blocked off since it was a city square. I was secretly hoping to see a riot break out and was mildly disappointed when I saw they had all dispersed by the time we were done eating.
Later we went to Lübeck and then on to the coast where we had coffee and cake. Pretty much my favorite German cultural thing. Basically it is another small meal. I never have another problem with an added meal time. We were drinking coffee and eating cakes by the sea. It was cooler (what most people call cold) that day so the coffee was nice to hold on to.
One of the days was what I like to call chilly, for normal people this is below the comfortable temperature by a lot. I was loving the promise of winter in the air, however my poor cameras cannot take the cold air as well as I can so I had to shield them all day. I looked like I was smuggling things. I had to do that the night it rained too, which was inconvenient because we were walking through stores in an outlet mall and the door alarm kept going off when I walked through it. Combine that with the bulge in my coat looked incriminating. Fortunately no one confronted me because my German comprehension only translates to someone talking normally not unhappily. I began to suspect the cause of the alarms going off whenever I walked in or out of the stores. I hypothesized that it was the transponder in my pocket. The transponder is basically a UFO shaped object on our keychains that we have to get into doors and pay for meals here. It constantly sends off a low frequency burst, I surmised, because we just wave it in front of things at school and sometimes we have to press the button. After I figured that out, I left it in my hostel room and didn't take it with me the rest of the week.
This week wasn't as exciting in my war with gravity. This force with a mind of it's own decided this week that it would just behave. This is nice because I was around water a lot and I was carrying a lot of camera equipment. However I will be ready for the next time this G-Force monster rears its ugly head again.
This Wednesday we are going to Berlin again. I plan to enjoy sights such as the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, and anything else I can cheaply get to in that area. It will be Berlin's chance to have another word in the battle for my heart. It will be a hard battle but I will go with an open mind.
For those of you who haven't had a chance to talk with me directly, and are only reading this as a means to keep up with me, I am doing well, I absolutely love Germany, German people and their culture. I haven't had too hard of a time adjusting however I have had a time of it occasionally. I definitely still keep up with football, and when I think of America and of all the people there that I know, I know how you will love to hear the stories that didn't make it into these blogs and see pictures that didn't make it online and I will be more than happy to oblige. But for now, these will keep coming as regularly as I can.
