We woke to cool and cloudy but rain-free morning weather and decided to go back to Altona (where we’d been a couple of days ago), this time just with Andrea, to go to an annual flea market that is part of a district-wide cultural festival. We had a really good time, partly because there were plenty of non-antique dealers selling their random stuff, and of course that is always the most fun. There were still plenty of old cameras, porcelain, and books to look at, and we rambled around for a couple of hours in a surprisingly big area reaching all the way from the train station to the town hall, through a wide street, across several plazas and a park. Then we met with a friend-of-a-friend that I only knew through social media (a good friend and former colleague of my friend Jay, who passed away unexpectedly last year). I had seen a post recently that he had moved from the US to Hamburg, and then found out that he was actually in Altona, so we decided to all meet in person. We had lunch/cake at a little café together and he had great tips for good restaurants, even though he’s only been here a couple of months.
Then we went on a lovely walk from the “Altona Balcony” above the Elbe heading west rather than East, along a series of parks and mansions and the famous “Elbchaussee” (sort of the Park Avenue of Hamburg), eventually making our way from high above the river and the harbor to walking along it until we reached Teufelsbrück, a pier where we caught the boat back to the harbor. I love taking the “ferry bus” as a form of public transportation! We even had to change ferries. But we didn’t take any photos, because the harbor looked pretty much like it did two days ago EXCEPT that at the very end we ran into a massive music event / parade. I had never heard of it–it is called “Schlagermove” and has been happening for years, apparently, getting bigger every year, so that this year, 500,000 visitors were expected across the two days that include pre- and post-parade partying. The parade consists of massive party trucks / buses going through a crowd so tightly packed that it made me (and Andrea) quite nervous, and it doesn’t help that the music they play is deliberately chosen because it is the worst of the worst–German pop from the 1970s that I grew up hating but can absolutely sing from memory, because it was always on the radio. It is embraced by the Schlagermove visitors as campy and fun, and goes with hippie gear in wild neon colors that has clearly been recently made and sold for just this occasion. It all seems very engineered to make a money and involves quite a bit of drinking, but my main objection were the dense crowds.
We did see a lot of security and the roads were blocked off by massive semis, to prevent someone driving into the crowd, so that was reassuring, but still… Fortunately, since we were heading away from the parade as people were still arriving to join it, the subway traffic was not too bad, and we were home shortly after 5 pm. I made us salad and warmed up some rolls and pita bread, and we had a lovely dinner and then just hung out at the apartment. Our time here in Hamburg is getting quite short, and so we want to take advantage of every hour together while we can.