Tuesday, August 6, 2012
Hamburg
At least Tuesday’s excursion left later than Monday’s. The
Hamburg excursion required a 90 minute bus ride from the port (Kiel). Rolf was
our “host” on the bus. He said nothing until he announced we were stopping to
pick up our “local guide”, Dessere.
We knew right off the bat that the tour guide was going to
be an issue, when we pulled into the first stop for a bathroom break. The
guide announced that the bathrooms are in “bridge #4” (we were parked by bridge
#6), but that she would guide all of us to the bathrooms. Sounds great!
Except that as soon as she and the front half of the bus
were on the sidewalk, she took off. By the time the rest of the bus were out, she was gone. Disappeared completely and we had no idea where she was.
Well, she was at the bathrooms, of course, under bridge #4.
While I dealt with the line at the bathroom, Andy went off to the Hard Rock Café.
Except he wasn’t at the Hard Rock where I got there, so I
went back to the bus.
People gradually returned, but not Andy. Rolf kept counting
the people on the bus, and at least twice I pointed out that Andy was not back.
He and I were texting back and forth that he was on his way. Great! Except then
the bus door closed and we started pulling away!
Squawking once again that my husband was still missing,
(“OH!”, said Rolf, “Is that him in the red jacket?” Yep, that would be him.)
the bus stopped and Andy climbed aboard. He was NOT late – he had arrived at
exactly the specified time.
Hamburg is as different from Berlin as night and day. Not
sure exactly what Berlin is, but it’s just a little weird. Hamburg is a wealthy
business city. None of the sites we saw sounded familiar. Except that it is the
place where the Beatles were “discovered”. To remember this, here is this...thing:
near the location of the club where they played. In the
seamy section of the city.
We drove through the city center. Hamburg is pleasant
enough, but there just wasn’t anything exciting or as interesting as Berlin.
We had lunch in a restaurant under City Hall. Today’s lunch
was chicken, eliminating the pork issue.
We had a little time to wander around. We asked Rolf if he
knew where we could buy chocolate. His suggestion was the supermarket across
the street, but another person in our tour group told us there were two
chocolate stores across the plaza. Off we went – but we could only find one
chocolate store. For Godiva. Nope, that doesn’t work.
We were running out of time to meet the bus. As we headed in
that general direction, we saw The Best Street Performers:
I think that was the best part of the day.
Tomorrow: Copenhagen
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