We took it pretty slow today. After a run that was needlessly frustrating because I took a couple of wrong turns and ended up mostly running on streets although I had wanted to get to some green space, we had a lovely breakfast with Andrea and Peter, comparing different styles of yogurt (“traditional,” Greek, and Turkish). Andrea took a picture of us in habitual “computer mode” before breakfast, with St. Marx watching over us.
Then Mark and I took off for Hamburg’s City Park, a large and wonderful green space in the middle of the city (think Central Park in New York). I used to live in a dorm really close to it, so everything always looks somewhat familiar, but that’s also been a very long time, and I did not appreciate trees and birds as much as I do now. We walked by the lake with integrated swimming pool (I recall scaling the fence with other students after it closed at night and going for an impromptu swim), a range of semi-interesting sculptures and cafés that date back to the time when the park was first opened in the late 1910s/early 1920s. There is also a playground with a splash pad where I remember going with my Hamburg aunts and cousins as a kid (now with fabulous long swing!), and the planetarium that used to be a water tower. We also found some beautiful dark forested areas, yet another rose garden, and wildflower beds.
After our ramblings in the park, we returned and made a lovely meal of pasta with a vegetarian tomato sauce, rested for a bit, and then had coffee with some pastries to get ourselves ready for the evening adventure–we returned to the “Feldstrassenbunker” in Hamburg’s working-class harbor district. This is a World War II-era bunker and air defense place that could just NOT ever be demolished given its size and solid concrete constructions, and is really as ugly as ever, but now repurposed with a hotel and green spaces on top. We went last year after it had just opened after years of renovation, and went back for the fabulous views. (The thing itself is, as Peter said, like your ugly aunt, but with a brand new hat!)
Then we wandered across a night flea market nearby, but were very disappointed because it was 90% clothes, although we spent a lovely 5 minutes looking through old vinyls for nostalgia-inducing album covers (Tubular Bells or The Year of the Cat, anyone?), and to the nearby Schanzenviertel, a popular night spot where we found a lovely restaurant with dishes from Southern Germany (and a hamburger for Peter), and had a (for us) very late meal. We also saw, among the many graffiti, dozens more versions of the graffiti tag we found yesterday (some research needs to be done & will be inserted here later). A couple of samples:
It was pretty late when we started to make our way back to Andrea and Peter’s. As we took the subway home, we saw the last rays of the setting sun shine on the harbor buildings and realized, walking home in the twilight, that Mark and I had FINALLY managed to stay up until sundown, for the first time since we got here. Sunset was at 9:52 pm, a couple of days before midsummer.