Our third day and what better way to
start it than with a boat tour of the harbour. Well after breakfast
that is. We have the route into the city off pat now. We learned
yesterday that the tour that leaves at midday has an English speaking
guide. The strange thing about German is that you can just about
understand it, but not quite. I do understand a bit, but not when it
is spoken very fast. It is very easy to get around the city. The
system is quite similar to the way it is in England, with
diagrammatic train routes. The different lines are number and colour
coded which means all you have to do is follow the right indicators
and you are there. Easy peasy.
Today seems a bit cooler and certainly
is a lot more breezy that yesterday, but that didn't stop us.
Yesterdays bus tour had given us a pretty good idea what spots we
wanted to have a look at. When The man came here in 1989 it was the
port's 800th birthday, how's that for age. We walked
through the city's biggest warehouse district, the Speircherstdt,
with its neo-goithic buildings. Through areas with exotic names, such
as Wandramsfleet,, named for the Dutch cloth makes when used to
stretch their fabric out on frames to dry. Since about 1989 the area
has been undergoing a makeover turning these old brick buildings into
modern offices.
Further along we watched as a suited up diver
standing in a small cage was lifted from the deck of a working boat
and was gently lowered into he muddy waters of one of the canals. The
guys on the boat were too far away for us to shout a question and we
probably wouldn't have understood them anyway.
The tour-boat has two decks of
comfortable inside seating and we found a seat at one of the large
windows. The boat is not full, though I imagine that in the summer it
would be chocca.
The guide proudly told us that Hamburg
port is the second biggest in Europe and the 10th biggest
in the world, handling about nine million containers a year. Now
that's a lot of cargo in any mans language. The Guide directed us
to look at this building and then that. Some commercial and some
residential with astronomical rents. One large glass construction
atop an already tall brick warehouse was we learned will be the new
concert hall. Already an impressive structure.
Several container ships we being loaded
and unloaded, their towering sides made us feel rather insignificant
as we got up close to them. Around the corner and we were faced with
a vessel with what seemed to be a tangle of pipes and wires, which
according to The Man was a drilling platform.
All too soon the tour-boat was nudging
back into its berth.
We found a bit of green space to have
out lunch in, but didn't linger long as there were quite a few tramps
round. From yesterdays but tour I had seen a tall statue and with
his uncanny knack The Man found it easily. It was a memorial to
Bismark, no not the ship, but one of early Hamburg's leading
citizens. . A real shame that it has been defaced by lots of
graffiti. The is a great deal of it here, much more so than we have
seen in London, though the work here seems to be more art than
defacement.
Fed and watered we continued to wander
about the city, making our way towards one of the two lakes. Where we
watched a barge moving through a set of gates from one level down to
the other.
A stop for coffee at my favourite
coffee shop saw the a short sharp shower come through, but by the
time we were ready to walk again it had just about stopped and pretty
soon the sun was shining on us again. There in front of us was the
Rathause (city hall) The front of it is adorned with statues of some
of the cities emperors It is a very impressive building and
beautifully decorated outside and in.
No comments:
Post a Comment