Days Six and Seven: Hamburg

After five days in the Berlin area, it was good to get a change of scenery and go to Hamburg.  The weather was there was worse than what we've had in Berlin, but I still managed to enjoy myself.  When we arrived on the first day, I immediately noticed how different Hamburg is from Berlin, and from what I was expecting.  I barely knew anything about the city before we went there, and for some reason I didn't expect it to be nearly as industrialized as it was and I totally forgot that it was connected to the Nordsee.  It was a fantastic city, and in some ways I liked it even better than Berlin.  It was less crowded and less touristy, and some of the churches were amazing.

This one was particularly awesome.

While walking around on our first day there, my group walked around for a long time trying to find an U-Bahn to take us to the Hostel, and we found lots of interesting stuff.  First we found a massive statue of Otto von Bismarck, which had probably the most graffiti of anything I've seen in Germany - and that's saying something.  We all agreed that the walk up to the statue (which was on top of a huge hill) was brutal after doing so much walking these past few days, but I think it was worth it in the end.  After we saw that, we accidentally passed through the red light district, where we saw a McDonald's attached to a brothel.  I didn't take any pictures of that for obvious reasons.

Bismarck statue with just a little of the graffiti visible.

  I was pleasantly surprised by my first stay in a Hostel.  That night we watched German television, including German dubs of several American cartoons.  The only bad part of staying at the Hostel was that I forgot to bring a towel, so I had to dry off after my shower using a pillowcase.  Other people used sheets, but I guess I wasn't smart enough to think of that.

Day two in Hamburg we went to Miniatur Wunderland, which was amazing.  I can't imagine how long it took to make all those little sets, particularly given the intricacy of every piece.  I would definitely recommend it to everyone.  I took pictures, but they don't really do it justice.  After that my group walked around the city some more, but the best part was going through the underwater tunnel that led to the view of the entire Hamburg skyline that you can see at the top of the page.