{"id":5130,"date":"2022-08-08T20:49:52","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T20:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/?p=5130"},"modified":"2022-08-08T20:52:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T20:52:57","slug":"day-4-urban-hiking-in-hamburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/day-4-urban-hiking-in-hamburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 4: Urban Hiking in Hamburg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monday, August 8<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today was one of those days where the best-laid plans of mice and men did<\/em> go a-gley, but it was just an excursion that fell through, so we simply regrouped. But it did mean there was no ocean for us today! Here is what happened: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After breakfast, we left, with a carefully planned departure at 10:20 to-get-the-bus-to-take-the-subway-to-catch-the-train, the last of which was supposed to take us to the nearby city of L\u00fcbeck (about an hour from here) and then on to the Baltic coast for a hike along the coastline from Travem\u00fcnde to Niendorf–this would have been a full-day hike, and we were very excited. But even though we made it to our train with plenty of time to spare, it stopped 20 minutes short of L\u00fcbeck in Bargteheide, and they had us all get out (probably about 200 people) because there was a fire somewhere along the tracks ahead of us. The claim was that there’d be buses to take us from there to L\u00fcbeck (this is the “Schienenersatzverker” system that is typically in place in such a case), but by an hour + in, there were still no buses. Peter and Andrea, seasoned train travelers, were pretty sure that the train people would just let us wait, perhaps until the tracks were cleared again, and that we’d run out of time to get to the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So eventually, after hanging out in the we just took the train back to Hamburg and figured out an urban hike as an alternative: We only went one stop on the subway from the main station, to get to the Aussenalster, a large lake in the middle of the city made by the Alster, one of the rivers that eventually flow into the Elbe river in Hamburg. We watched the sailboats for a bit (and also saw the hallmark art installation in the lake, one of four “men on buoys” by the German artist Stephan Balkenhol, originally made of wood but now replaced by aluminum casts, and apparently popular with the gulls for a resting spot). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aussenalster from Schwanenstieg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Man on a Buoy (with Gull)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then we made our way back to Andrea and Peter’s neighborhood, 4.7 miles along various canals and then along the Wandse, another Hamburg river. It is always a bit of a distortion to say that Hamburg has “more canals than Amsterdam” and “more bridges than Venice” because at 1.8 million people on 291 square miles, it is much bigger than either, so these canals and bridge spread out all over the city. But it was so spectacular to be able to take a hike along a continuous body of water along a “green belt” that occasionally widens to a little lake, with landing spots, mature trees all along the banks, and some (very snazzy) house boats in some areas. The bridges are all different from each other, and various city parks with playgrounds and picnic spots are all over. We even saw a squirrel–they used to be very rare in cities, but I’m told are no longer quite so unusual. But in comparison to our campus squirrels at home, they are both much more shy–and very different-looking with their red coat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our urban hike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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At one of the little piers along the Wandse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Urban Red Squirrel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And at the end of our walk we came back by the blackberry bushes and picked more blackberries, this time as a team (Andrea saw the photo Mark shot of us three and said it was like on a construction site: one person’s working, the others are doing the quality check). It was a wonderful walk\/hike. I still can’t believe that I didn’t ever know about these “green pathways” through the city when I lived in Hamburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Blackberry harvest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once we got home, we had coffee and ice cream with broiled peaches for a yummy mid-afternoon snack, and stayed home after that except for a minor excursion to get some groceries we need at the near and some covid tests from the pharmacy (Euro 3.50, although the supermarket had some for half the price that Andrea found a bit suspect). When we got back, Andrea made gnocchi with a veggie-feta sauce and I fixed a salad to go with it. We had some cookies and chocolate as a simple dessert, and watched an interesting YouTuber that Andrea and Peter love, an artist \/ technician [?] named Laura Kampf. But I was pretty tired already so didn’t quite follow everything in the videos. A long day! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, August 8 Today was one of those days where the best-laid plans of mice and men did go a-gley, but it was just an excursion that fell through, so we simply regrouped. But it did mean there was no ocean for us today! Here is what happened: After breakfast, we left, with a carefully … Continue reading “Day 4: Urban Hiking in Hamburg”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2022-germany","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130","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\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}