We had a wonderful Hamburg adventure day today, and—finally, after a week of cooler, cloudier weather, it got sunny and warm and we had to think „shade“ and „sunscreen“ for the first time in quite a while! We had a leisurely breakfast at Andrea and Peter‘s apartment and then took off a little after 9 am for Kaltenhofe, a place I‘d never been—even as I lived in Hamburg for four years as a student, Andrea and Peter always know of the most amazing little nooks and corners I never even heard of. This one is a nature preserve on a little island upriver from the harbor where an old sewage treatment plant was converted into a nature preserve and bird protection area. The 19th century pump stations at the 22 basins that are now little lakes have been left to decay, and the main building, a beautiful Victorian brick building, has been turned into a museum and info center. We walked around the areas that are not fenced in to keep trampling feet out, and loved how peaceful and pretty it was—even as we were so close to an active freight harbor and all kinds of industry—on the other bank of the river is a huge container storage facility, and practically next door to the preserve is a brand new natural gas power plant! Then we walked along the Elbe for a bit toward a little cafe/picnic area near the pier at Entenwerder—the so-called „Golden Cage,“ which is a „walkable work of art“ with a little coffee station nearby. Hard to describe! Just a two-story metal (brass?) structure that has holes all over, with places to sit and look out. We got coffee / juice and had our picnic food there, and while we were river watching, we saw the brand-new amphibian tour bus, the riverbus, get into the water! A & P said that it’s constantly booked out, even though the tickets cost 40 euros. I can imagine why! All of this, near the part of Hamburg called Rothenburgsort, is only about 5 km (3 miles) from the city center, and we could actually see the giant Elbphilharmonie and the bridges across the harbor from where we were.
We then decided to check out the other „end“ of the harbor activity by going out to Wedel, last Elevated station that still belongs to Hamburg in the East (even as it is technically no longer Hamburg, but already in the state of Schleswig-Holstein). From there, we took a 1-mile bus trip to the Elbe, to a place called Willkomm-Hoft, or welcome station, where all the big freighters coming and going get announced with country of origin and flag they fly under, tonnage, and destination, and then their national anthem gets played. We only got to catch one of these partly, because it was a very slow harbor day and we eventually started on our planned walk instead of sitting around waiting for more big ships to come by. We walked along the river, which has sandy banks so that there was even a little swimming area (complete with a beach bar that features potted palm trees), and then Hamburg‘s small-boat harbor (the Yachthafen). After that, another nature preserve begins, all along the dyke that separates the river from the marshland behind it. You would have never known that we were so close to an urban area, with the sheep on the dyke and the marshes with reeds and birds everywhere. Just beautiful. But we were not up for any additional walking (we were probably at about 5-6 miles by then and still had to go back), so we turned around and then hung out a bit more in the shade by the welcome station, watching smaller boats go by. It was very relaxing.
We took the bus, the El, the subway, and then again the bus to get back home (that took over an hour total) and arrived around 7. We had a simple pasta/leftover dinner here and sat around for a bit and chatted—but I crashed way earlier than the others and went to bed at 9:30, while they stayed up and talked photos and life in general until 11 or so. It‘s so nice to be with friends who can just go with the flow that way!