Blogs from Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, Europe

From Kassel to Lübeck We have noticed that there are many interesting historical towns in Germany. We must say that there are surprisingly many towns with preserved historical city centres considered that the allies severely bombed many German towns in the end of the Second World War. But we actually noticed that not everything that looks old necessarily is old. In one place when we visited the "historical city centre" we felt that something was off. When we looked more carefully we could see that the buildings were all new. After the war they cleared the rubble and built a new town in the old style. But since we noticed it they obviously made a poor job at it. In this blog entry we are going to write about what we did in the last couple ... read more

From Winespeed, this is an article about Eiswein: Even though Ontario’s wineries have only been making commercial ice wine since the 1980s, today they average a total of 224,500 gallons (850,000 liters) produced annually. Ice wine, however, has been around since at least 44 AD when the Roman writer Pliny reported on wines made from frozen grapes. In Germany, where it is known as eiswein, the sweet elixir is documented for the first time in 1830. After a sudden frost, winegrowers discovered it while attempting to save their grape harvest rather than feed the frozen grapes to their livestock, as was typical until then. Canadian ice wine is made from very ripe grapes of at least 35° Brix (in Germany, grapes need only reach 26-30° Brix depending on the region) that have frozen naturally ... read more

Hamburg - or how to squeeze in Paul McCartney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Greta Thunberg in one blog Here is the third and last blog entry from when we were in Germany. It will be focused on what we did in Hamburg. We can start by telling that although Hamburg was part of the Hanseatic League there is no trace left in the city of that era. If you want to see well preserved Hanseatic League cities Tallinn in Estonia, Visby and Stockholm in Sweden and Riga in Latvia are excellent places to go to. Hamburg has a lot of other things to offer, as you will see in this blog. So let us go to what you can see in Hamburg instead of what you can't. Speicherstadt The district Speicherstadt used to be an important part ... read more

John left Peggy in bed recuperating from last evening and went to visit the Convention. He had a few meetings and spent a good deal of time looking at the various projects that Rotarians are doing all over the world. Extremely impressive. John and Peggy hooked up in the mid afternoon and went downtown for tea and an early dinner at a nice German restaurant, Casse-Croute Bistro, where Peggy tired their schnitzel to her satisfaction. A peaceful walk back to the barn and catching up on emails and this blog … then off to bed.... read more

A few hours after going to sleep it was time do get up. Despite the many beers drunk and the very few hours slept, I felt surprisingly chipper as did Zanne. She put it down to German beer being of better quality than the crap we get in the UK. We drove to the central Hamburg station, the Sunday morning roads being very quiet, we got there quickly, but no David. Being overtired and unsure, he disembarked at another Hamburg station and was a further 19 minute drive away. We found him looking rather sheepish and worn, but after the food Zanne had brought him and a rest in the car, he soon was laughing and joking about his epic adventure that will give him much to talk about at parties for years to come. We ... read more