{"id":1364,"date":"2018-06-26T07:07:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T07:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2018-06-29T16:57:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T16:57:35","slug":"monday-june-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/06\/26\/monday-june-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, June 25 (from Eckernf\u00f6rde to Hamburg)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Miniature Wonderland hippie camping scene<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Miniature Wonderland circus performers in snowy “Norway”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
The spectacular Elbphilharmonie at the Hamburg waterfront<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Inside the Elbphilasrmonie, observation deck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
The old Elbtunnel, built in 1911, and completely tiled. This is one tube; the other is being renovated<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Departure day after a week on the Baltic\u2014admittedly, we could have had warmer weather but it was beautiful anyway! We got up, packed and had breakfast, but then still had quite a bit of time to doofle around, because Kai was still packing up and he, Imke, and Dorothee weren\u2019t scheduled to leave until 11:50, so Mark and I strolled around the promenade and through the downtown one more time. We took the returnable bottles and glasses back to the store (got 3 Euro and 10 cents back), and went to a little store right below Imke\u2019s rental where I had seen a beautiful thing for Kati, so I was buying that just as Imke came down with some trash! So we spent a few minutes upstairs with them and then returned, at about 10:15, only to find out that we should have been out of the apartment by 10! I somehow had thought checkout time was noon, as it was for the other apartment. But we scrambled just a little and were out by 11 (the owner reassured me that it was fine\u2014I e-mailed her right away, obviously). Mark took Kai and me and all the luggage we had to the train station, and we unloaded and waited for Mark to get Imke and Dorothee and THEIR luggage, since the little Kia is so small that four people\u2019s luggage would never fit. We repacked Mark and my suitcase, plus all the leftover food etc. that needed to travel with us, and left the others at the train station to catch their train to Osnabr\u00fcck and Hanover, respectively. Kai will stay with Imke for a few days because he feels he didn\u2019t get enough Osnabr\u00fcck time\u2014he loves the town\u2014and we are taking a couple of extra days to spend in Hamburg and Oldenburg.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So we took off for Hamburg just after 11:30, and miraculously got through to our destination (Andrea and Peter\u2018s apartment in the Barmbek area of Hamburg) by 1:15, surprising everyone by not getting into any traffic jam (\u201eStau\u201c in Germany is an everyday experience, especially on the crowded freeways), despite a few construction areas. We had made ourselves sandwiches for the road because we fully expected to be stuck, but we ended up eating them at Andrea and Peter\u2018s place for lunch at 1:30. Then we took off for the harbor area of Hamburg\u2014really the heart of the city\u2014a little bit ahead of Andrea and Peter, to go to one of Mark\u2018s favorite places in the world, the Miniature Wonderland (MiWoLa). We went four years ago, but he really wanted to go back, so we got time-stamped electronic tickets for 3 pm while we were still at Andrea\u2018s\u2014so easy! It is basically a gigantic model railroad over two flights of a huge building, but the fun parts are the elaborate scenes that are built with teeny tiny buildings and people, and the tech\u2014which doesn\u2018t just extend to hundreds of model trains that get controlled from a control room, but also the cars, which have an intelligent system with individual microchips, and even an airport with a series of airplanes taking off and landing (we got to watch the space shuttle land). I enjoyed miniature Hamburg most (miniature \u201eAmerica\u201c is very strange and seems to consist of Vegas, \u201ecowboy land\u201c with canyons and deserts , Florida (with Everglades and Miami Beach), especially since it features the buildings in the Speicherstadt, the red-brick harbor storage buildings, which are now a gentrified shopping and living district, where the miniature wonderland is located\u2014so you could see the building we were in in miniature size in front of you. We had a good time (it wasn\u2018t quite as crowded as last time we were here, but it is always very busy), but next time, Mark wants a behind-the-scenes tour.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We left a little before 5, and met up with A & P outside the building; we then went a few hundred feet further to the Hafen City section of the harbor, where the newest and most famous building of the harbor area now sits: the Elbphilharmonie, the big Hamburg philharmonic with its unusual shape and famously fantastic acoustics in a huge concert hall for classical music. It opened a year and a half ago, and they still sell out for every concert, and the building\u2019s features and location attract a huge number of visitors. There is a visitor deck for which we needed tickets (they are free but limit the number of visitors a bit), but A & P had already gotten those for us). There were hordes of people going up, between deck visitors and people coming for a 6 pm concert, and even though it was grey and drizzly, it was really interesting to go up and to be up there.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Then we took a little coffee break (I was surprisingly tired) and walked over to the old tunnel under the river Elbe\u2014\u201eder alte Elbtunnel\u201c. A & P had showed us that last time we were here, but for some reason we didn\u2019t have enough time to actually walk through it, so we did that this time. The 450-meter tunnel was built, for vehicles, in 1911, with huge car elevators and two tubes, one for each direction\u2014currently, one tube is being renovated, so the other one is open just for bicyclists and pedestrians. The early 20th-century style of the tunnel is just beautiful\u2014it is all tile, with occasional decorative majolica tiles that show either local fish and other animals (flounders, lobsters, etc) or \u201ecaptains of industry\u201c type of stuff, celebrating Hamburg\u2018s industry. There was even a tile with a zeppelin and a double-decker airplane. I really find this thing fascinating, even though it no longer leads anywhere people need to go (obviously, there are some bike paths on the other side since there was a constant stream of cyclists going both ways)\u2014and I still cannot believe I never even knew this existed when I lived in Hamburg for four years!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
After our tunnel adventures, we decided to take the U-Bahn (subway) back home, because we still had some drizzle, and were back at the apartment about 7:30. We had a wonderful dinner of pasta with meat sauce and salad, with \u201eEis and Hei\u00df\u201c (vanilla ice cream with a hot mixed-fruit topping) for dessert. We sat up and talked for a little bit, but I was pretty yawny, and glad to be in bed before 11.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Departure day after a week on the Baltic\u2014admittedly, we could have had warmer weather but it was beautiful anyway! We got up, packed and had breakfast, but then still had quite a bit of time to doofle around, because Kai was still packing up and he, Imke, and Dorothee weren\u2019t scheduled to leave until 11:50, … Continue reading “Monday, June 25 (from Eckernf\u00f6rde to Hamburg)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}