We were up relatively early and went for a little walk before breakfast, partly to see whether we could access the nearby park where I would want to run in the next few days. Andrea and Peter knew that parts of it were being worked on, but it turned out that a whole block of it was cordoned off. But I think I figured out a couple of running routes to both sides of it. The upshot was that we didn’t get very far into the park on either side, but we enjoyed the sunny morning and picked up a couple of grocery items on the way back. We all had yogurt and cereal for breakfast, hung out for a bit, and then set out for the city center. We were meeting our friend Karsten at a restaurant in the neighborhood of Hamburg University. The five of us try to meet up every year when we are in Hamburg, and it is always a really good time–even though the conversations are now always partly about getting older and the things that come with it. We did laugh a lot (Karsten is a fantastic story teller and would also make an amazing improv comedian, but that also means that there is no way of capturing in writing what was so funny about our conversation).
After lunch, we wandered through a comic store and then on to campus, pretending to be aging students–the irony being that I was the only one who actually attended Hamburg University. But we went to the main humanities building, a brutalist 15-story tower romantically named “Philosophenturm” (philosopher’s tower) where most of my classrooms had been, and Karsten had a funny story about attending a lecture in one of the lecture halls and taking notes for his son when said son was sick and asked him to get notes!
Then we said goodbye to Karsten and went on into the nearby park, Planten un Blomen (formerly a botanical garden but now just a rather elaborate public park). Since it is prime time for blooming flowers, especially roses and poppies, it was quite lovely. We had coffee near a little lake and then walked through most of the park to an area called Komponistenquartier, where some very old (17c) houses can still be seen–they partly survived, were partly reconstructed, and some were even moved to the area from elsewhere in the city. Since most of Hamburg, especially the area near the harbor, was completely destroyed by bombs during World War II, it is rare to see parts that predate the war, and most of the residential areas that were not affected by the bombs are townhomes and villas from the late 19th century (like the one by the university pictured above). So it was really interesting to see a couple of narrow, winding streets with tudor-frame houses and lots of brick in that area.
We made our way from there to the nearby harbor area, and Peter and Andrea took the subway home from there, but Mark and I wandered around for another 45 minutes or so, because we love wandering along the water’s edge, and watch various kinds of boats and ships go by. It was pretty busy with happy tourists enjoying the sunshing, but did not feel crowded. We headed home around 5 pm and grabbed a few more things at the grocery store on the way.
I made us another salad, so our dinner was pretty much like yesterday, except that we added a delicious dessert: fresh local strawberries with plain vanilla ice cream and dark chocolate flakes (much superior to sprinkles). After dinner and dishes we sat and watched some of our slides from last year’s vacation together, and that was a nice way to end a lovely day!