Hamburg, Germany

 We were in Hamburg, Germany on Thursday, April 28th.  We took a shuttle bus into town, then walked a lot of steps the rest of the day. Hamburg was beautiful, with much to see.   But the people were less than friendly.  That evening, I wrote in my journal: "I don't care if I never go to Germany again.  The people are not nice."

As we looked at the map, we decided we would like to see the four beautiful churches in town, and whatever else we could see along the way.  That required a lot of walking.

Bucerius Kunst Forum

The shuttle dropped us near this beautiful building.  From there, we did a lot of walking, seeing a lot of beautiful sites.

Notice the Ukranian flag.  We saw it everywhere we went.

This modern apartment building is an interesting design.  Hamburg is a mixture of old and modern architecture.

The blossoms were beautiful

Our first goal was St. Michael's church.  It was quite a long walk.

The spire reflected in the modern building across the street.

We arrived at about 11:45am  The greeter outside the door of St. Michael's church said that a service was starting in about 15 minutes.  He said we could go inside if we planned to stay for the service.  So we went inside intending on taking a few pictures and staying.  But two other guides inside the church came and talked to us and explained that the service would be all in German and said we could leave, but needed to do so in five minutes.

So we took pictures, and then chose to leave.  When we got outside the man at the door was furious.  "You said you would stay. Liar!"  Whoa!  Stinging words.  The church was beautiful, but his rudeness colors our feelings about it.  I guess he wasn't looking for converts to his church!  

St. Nicholas' church

All throughout the city were statues honoring individuals.  The verbiage was in German, so we're not sure who?

Benches were a blessing.  Ken's leg was very painful and my back needs frequent rests.

St. Nicholas' spiky spire

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Don, Ada, and I went inside a miniatures museum- Miniatur Wunderland.   How do I describe it?  It was dioramas of many world cities and habitats with trains running through them.  It was three floors full of these displays.  I took pictures of a few of them.  It was a miniature train lovers paradise.

Rome

The lights would lower periodically and you could view what each display looked like at night.

However, the night pictures didn't turn out too well.

This was one of my favorites- an amusement park in Germany with SO many people.

A football stadium

A scene from our area of the world.  It was depicting the Grand Canyon area.

Hamburg

Masks were required.  I was grateful for that as there were so many people in there.

Austria

Ken didn't want to go inside, but chose to wait on a bench outside.  It was a LONG wait.  He had some interesting conversations with fellow bench sitters.

Ken's view from the bench.

St. Catherine's church

Speicherstadt- Hamburg's warehouse district

I thought this UPS tricycle was interesting

St. Peter's church

One of the most moving things we saw were these little plaques embedded in the sidewalk.  Each one commemorated a Jewish person taken from Hamburg during WWII and never returned.

Lake Alster

Views from our balcony

Beautiful skyline

As we got off the shuttle bus that took us to the city center in the morning, the driver told us the shuttle busses would pick us up in that same place.  We waited and waited there in the afternoon, but no busses came.  Finally we flagged a full bus down and the driver got out and told us the waiting spot was down a side street about a block.  We walked there to find a very long line of people waiting.  We waited in a long line for about 45 minutes.  By the time we got on the bus, we all really needed to go to the bathroom.  But then we got caught in rush hour traffic and the trip back to the ship was painfully long. the traffic was stop and go, but mostly stop.  It made for a rough ending for our day.  Never were we so glad to get back to the port!