Family reunion

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After 15 months of business travel that turned my and our family's life upside-down, I've wrapped up my international client engagement and we're celebrating with a 3.5-week family vacation to reconnect with our loved ones in Deutschland.

This week, we're all together in Schenefeld, outside Hamburg, to see Anne, Lars, Andrea, and Ulf, our German family. Truly they're enough like our siblings that it's just easier to describe them that way, except Anne was our daughter for a year, so "niece" doesn't quite cut it, but whatever, family. 😊

Tuesday, our arrival night, was a comedy of drowsy. Greg and I got in about noon from Amsterdam and were whisked away in a taxi by Ulf and Laura, who arrived here last week. A couple of hours later, Barb and Joe arrived from Reykjavik and were greeted and taxied by Andrea and Anne. We had made plans to stay up to watch the USA-Belgium FIFA World Cup knockout match, which sadly wouldn't start until 22:00 CEST.

My position on jet lag is that I mostly don't get it. That's a lucky thing for someone who's been traveling abroad once a month for more than a year. (It helps that I can't do arithmetic in my head well enough to have any idea what time it is back at home.)

What I do get, that kicks my ass, is that any trip from Seattle to Europe is basically like pulling an all-nighter, and I have been way too old for that since probably actually before college. We got up early Monday morning, dropped off Vanya at Auntie Suzy's (he was so excited to be there, he didn't even care that I left), rode to the airport with my folks, fought with stupid long security lines and stressful coffee queues, flew to Amsterdam, enjoyed a long and boring layover at Schiphol airport, hopped to Hamburg, and by the time we taxied to Schenefeld it was midday Tuesday and we'd been up a really long time, with ten hours to go before our 2+ hour football match was even scheduled to start. Zzz.

Everyone heroically stayed up until we just couldn't anymore and succumbed to naps. About halfway through last year, I started ignoring that "never take a nap" travel advice and I am not sorry. Naps are great if you time them smartly. We slept for a few hours and woke up, if not cheery and refreshed, at least functional.

Our hosts wisely do not have a Fernsehen (TV) at home, so we hiked to a nearby bar to watch the game. Our hale and hearty German family walk everywhere, so ~2 miles was no big deal for them, and the exercise was unusual for us but not unreasonable. Homes and cars throughout Hamburg are draped in German flags in support of the German national team, but we found the bar nearly empty. No one in this little village on the outskirts of Hamburg is too excited about a late-night contest between two irrelevant teams taking place late on a weeknight. Just us and the Germans we dragged with us. (American media has commented on the fact that Americans have never cared about world football except occasionally when the US Men's National Team qualifies for the World Cup. Honestly, that's us too. But now that we care about it, we'll probably keep caring about it, and the Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC should both make that quite an enjoyable decision.)

Unfortunately, the only place to sit and see TVs was the smoking section (completely enclosed in glass to keep the smoke away from the rest of the bar). Stinky, but not much active smoking happening inside, mostly because of the aforementioned nearly emptiness of the bar. They served us fantastic beers and acceptable bar foods. We sat through the full 90 (except for the kids, none of whom had just pulled an all-nighter but all of whom were bored, so they walked home early... and some of us adults might have napped at our table), and the game reached full time still at a nil-all draw. By then it had become very obvious that the bar was trying to close and wished we would leave, and as it was nearing midnight and we were facing a 30-minute overtime period, we just couldn't justify camping out any further. So, we left, and Greg monitored the progress of the game on Google Now on his fone. Naturally, all of the exciting gameplay occurred in overtime, and the USMNT went down valiantly 2-1, a done deal before I had a chance to boot up the laptop at home to finish watching online.

Wednesday, we set out to see Hamburg with our expert tour guide, Ulf.

First, a bus from Schenefeld to Bahnhof Altona (Altona rail station), short walk past the Stuhlmannbrunnen (a big ol' fountain) and the Rathaus (old town hall) to the scenic Altonaer Balkon ("Altona's balcony"!), a little park overlooking the harbor. Altona is a district in Hamburg now, but at one time it was an independent city and rival of Hamburg: so pretty much Ballard. They're both even fishing towns. Down the stairs from the Balkon, we boarded a municipal harbor ferry at Dockland and sailed to Finkenwerder where the ferry turns around. This is by far the best way to see the harbor; it's inexpensive and covered by the bus and rail pass Ulf already bought us. We returned to Neumühlen where a small museum sits on the dock, and an antique ferry now serves as a little cafe. Delicious Kaffee (coffee) and Kuchen (cake) were had by all.

We set off again by ferry to the tourist-friendly Landungsbrücken waterfront piers and walked to the entrance of the Alter Elbtunnel. This tunnel under the Elbe River is more than a century old, and cars access it two at a time by elevators at each end. The roadway inside the tunnel is delightfully narrow: just enough room for one small European car to navigate very carefully between the curbs, and little sidewalks on each end for us to walk single-file. Aboveground at the other end of the tunnel is a small park with panoramic views of the Hamburg waterfront and skyline.

We walked back through the tunnel and began the arduous climb (well, arduous if you're a sedentary American) up a bunch of stairs on our way to Hauptkirche Sankt Michaelis, a.k.a. St. Michael's Church, a.k.a. the Michel. It's considered one of the more ornate and beautiful Lutheran churches, but it doesn't come close to the grand Gothic and/or Baroque Catholic cathedrals like Kölner Dom or Katedrála sv. Víta or even Wieskirche. I think Protestants intentionally rejected the expensive art and decor because it went hand-in-hand with church corruption and was wasteful, so based on my personal values I ought to like the plainer northern churches better, but I'm a soulless tourist now so the great art has to win. (Back at home I'm proud of our city's Holy Box.) Finally, behind the Michel lies a tiny narrow street with just a bit of the oldest surviving architecture in Hamburg, the Krameramtswohnungen (Grocers' association widows' apartments).

We finished with a scenic train ride from the Baumwall elevated station overlooking the Speicherstadt ("warehouse city", old harbor district), and from there buses back home. Tired, a lot more walking than we are used to, but plenty of opportunities to fall in love with this fantastic city.

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Comments

[J&J]

Good travelblog!
Can imagine the jet lag and wanting to see/hear everything there. You take good pictures! Love the way you describe places and things. Saw that the town of Altona became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1867. Isn't that about where Agnes parents lived?