Hamburg

*This is separate from Hamburg, but I wanted to post about it - Over Presidents' Weekend, Brian and his brothers figured out how to 3-way video chat, so we got to video chat with Eric and Alicia and Andrew and Kate! We had a great time talking with all of them! It was so fun to just hang out for awhile. Here's a pic of how it worked - pretty cool!


Brian had a project in Hamburg, so on Friday, February 25, I drove up after work to meet him there for the weekend! It was about a 5 hour drive, so I got in a little late that night. I had a little trouble with the GPS, which was weird because we've never had problems with Nancy, so I was a little frustrated by the end of the trip. Brian was so sweet and surprised me with a bottle of wine and some delish chocolate truffles when I arrived! That definitely took "the frusties" away :) Brian had worked about 12 hours that day, so we decided to stay in and eat at a restaurant that was connected to the hotel called Trader Vic's. The food was really great, and Brian and I shared a "barrel of rum", which was a rummy drink for two people with the biggest straws I've ever seen.

After the restaurant, we were on our way back up to the room and found these chairs in the hotel. I think they're the tallest chairs I've ever seen - apparently this hotel was on a mission to have oversized items throughout their property!


The next morning, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and breakfast in bed/chairs beside the bed! We never have breakfast at our hotel, but the view from our room was too good to leave.


We spent Saturday exploring Hamburg! We made our way through downtown, stopping in shops that caught our eye or ones that looked like a good place to warm up when we were starting to feel like icicles. Hamburg is quite cold! But we were so thankful that the sun was out, we ate outside at this cafe.

The view was great and there were blankets to keep us warm :)

After lunch, we visited Hamburg's beautiful Rathaus, or city hall.

Inside the Rathaus

Rathaus courtyard

Then we continued our walk to St. Nikolai church. On our way, we passed the cutest ice cream shop that had old fashioned milk jugs as the light fixtures - super cute. I wish I had taken a picture, but going into an ice cream shop just sounded too cold to do at the time :)

St. Nikolai church was really cool to see. Unlike other churches in Germany that have been rebuilt completely after WWII, this church was left in ruins. So there really wasn't much of a church, but the bell tower/steeple still remained. It was a really impressive structure, and I think it's important to be reminded of how Germany looked after WWII.


We were walking around the church to see it from all angles, and the front of the tower is covered in bullet holes.


After St. Nikolai, we made our way to the harbor. Part of me really wanted to see it, but then the really cold side of me knew that the wind would be even stronger. Time to power through and suck it up! And I'm glad we went - the views were great.




As we were walking along part of the harbor and looking at the boats, we noticed one was open, and the sign said they had hot gluhwein! Warm drinks on a sail boat?? Definitely time to take a break.


After we left the warmth of the boat, it was time to make our way back to the hotel. On our walk back, we found a couple of fun kitchen stores that had all kinds of neat gadgets. Brian and I love looking through stores like that, but I have to constantly remind myself that I don't really need any of it :)

That evening, we had dinner plans with Jens and Barbara, Brian's dad's cousins who live close to Hamburg! They met us at our hotel and drove us to Rive, a gorgeous water-front restaurant. We had the best dinner, and I got to try lots of Hamburg specialties, including poached quail eggs and raw fish with corned beef mashed potatoes! Everything was delicious, and we always enjoy Jens and Barbara's company. After dinner, we all went back to our hotel and enjoyed famous Mai-Tai's at Trader Vic's bar. What a fun night!

The next morning, we enjoyed round two of a beautiful sunrise and yummy breakfast! Then we made our way to the Hamburg Dungeon, which we understood to be a famous haunted house. Probably not the most appropriate thing for a Sunday afternoon, but we really wanted to see it! So we waited in line, took a picture of me chopping off Brian's head (we didn't buy the pictures, sorry!), and started the tour through the dungeon! There was a group of 36 of us braving the haunted house together. As it turned out, this dungeon was actually a bunch of scary rooms where scary people told scary stories...in German. Needless to say, I was pretty lost most of the time :)

When we walked into the first room, scary guy #1 started yelling at us in German, and then he pointed at me, yelled "YOU!" and then continued to yell in German. I sheepishly told him that I didn't speak German, so he proceeded to yell in German and then quickly summarize what he was saying in English. I had to pick a button to determine what level of the dungeon we went to, and then I had to go into the new dark, scary room by myself. In the second room, after the other 35 people in our group joined me, scary person #2 started to yell at us in German, and she picked me out of the crowd again! This time I had to get into a torture cage and Brian had to sit in a torture chair. We decided to hide among the group in the rest of the rooms :) The dungeon took us about 2 hours to get through! Quite an experience.

We survived!

Next we made our way to Hamburg's Nautical Museum where we had lunch and enjoyed learning about boats and the ship industry. Jens had also told us that Brian's dad's family left Germany from the same harbor where the museum is located!

The world's largest collection of model boats

The museum also had nautical military displays. We thought this one looked really cool.

All of the model boats were so amazing! Brian likes this picture of his face in the glass, watching me creepily :)

Coffee break

This ship was suspended in the main atrium. It was huge!

Argh! Pirates!

After the museum, it was getting pretty late, so it was time to head home. I was really glad to have Bri in the car with me for the drive back to Frankfurt - he's such a great road trip buddy! It was a really fun weekend.