Advertisement
We arrived, unbeknown to us, on the eve of the "Schlagermove" festival or "love" festival as we were told by the lady at the Tourist Office. Always held on the last weekend of June, it is a parade of 45 party trucks, all decorated with balloons and all blaring out schlager (German pop songs of the 70's). The parade of trucks make their way through the streets of St. Pauli and around the Reeperbahn (famed red-light district and also where Beatles performed in the famous Star Club in the early 60's). Typically, about half a million schlager fans descend by train to the festival, all dressed in bright and bold patterned bell-bottomed trousers, bright afro wigs and Gary Glitter boots - I'm sure you can imagine! Well, along with that image, add singing, drinking, shouting and dancing in the streets. Also quite a few groups donning the same outfits. Greg and I walked up and down Reeperbahn taking in the sights. Pity we could not join in the singing! The long Reeperbahn is lined with sex shops, peep shows, bars, erotic paraphernalia and big tough looking minder guys patrolling their turf. We stayed for the procession but escaped before we were
crushed by excitable merry-makers.
Had a couple of enjoyable meals in the Saint George area, walkable distance from our hotel. This area had far more than one "only gay in the village". We later read that it is the centre of Hamburg's gay scene. No wonder it had so many good eateries! Enjoyed a fabulous Portugese meal in Saint George.
We bought a Hamburg card which enabled us to use unlimited public transport for 3 days. As well as walking we were able to ride on buses and on the subway and underground network. This was appreciated as the weather is still quite cool and showery. I had to nip into H&M to buy a cheap windcheater. The cheapest one I could find was 10 Euro and has a big Mickey Mouse on it. Oh well!!
We went to a few museums, one which filled us in on the history of Hamburg and also to two small music museums - Telemann and Brahms. A city tour on a double decker bus also took us around the key areas of Hamburg, including a new suburb called Hafencity. This area is a huge development, extending the city to the
River Elbe by transforming the old city docklands. Included amongst the new buildings will be a huge Elbphilharmonie by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron.
Bus tours always delight in taking you to where the wealthy live which is invariably by the water and so we were driven along the "Harvestrude" where we were informed that land is worth 14,000 euros per square metre. Mostly huge white mansions with manicured gardens.
Because we had unlimited transport, we decided to hop on the train and head to an outer suburb of Hamburg called "Blankenese". A very pretty hilly area by the Elbe river where there are many lovely cottages and villas. There is also sandy areas that people use as a beach in the warmer weather. Needless to say, none were sitting there when we were there!!
Our hotel has many TV (cable) stations including NHK (from Japan) and one from Cuba!
Hamburg is a very interesting city but 4 days is not enough to discover all its attractions. Glad we were able to see what we did! Here is a statistic about the Hauptbahnhof (Hamburg's Central Station) - 400,000 people go through it every day!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.048s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 35; dbt: 0.0252s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Hj
non-member comment
Sounds wonderful- love reading your blog Litsa ;) I can imagine many things you discribed! Sp much fun hehe