European Travels

This last week has been entertaining, spending time with friends and enjoying the few and far between moments of sunshine. Hopefully, some pictures are to come of our barbecue in the park, our walk along the beach, and what Copenhagen looks like in sunshine!

However, I am off tomorrow, and my blogs may be more scarce than sunny days!

How my summer looks from now on:
June 1-5: Krakow
June 7-9: Vienna
June 9-21: Budapest, and all the other fun places Andrea will be taking me around Hungary
June 21: My birthday!
June 24: Moooooom arrives!
June 24-July 14: Denmark, Olso, Helsinki!
July 15-August 1: Adventures in the UK
August 1-August 14: Brodsworth archaeology field school
August 15: Home, phew!

At some of these places I will have my computer, so I will try to keep things updated as current as possible, but, I may just be having too much fun ;)

Thanks for following my blog - I hope you've had as much fun with Denmark as I have! :)

Hamburg, Pt. 2

Monday

Welcome to Hamburg, home of Europe’s sharpest corner!

This should be Hamburg’s new phrase. We actually caught the walking tour this day, although it was lucky. We arrived on time, but turns out there are several Starbucks around the city hall, so we were waiting outside the wrong one. We then tried to find the information center to just get a map or brochure and find another, non-free tour, but turns out they’re closed on Sundays and holidays. Well, that’s smart. So we came back out to the city hall, and Megan spotted a big group of people. We snuck up to them, discovered that the guide was speaking English, got closer, and realized it was the tour we were trying to catch! So we got to go on it after all. It was an amazing tour – the company does tours in several places over Europe (and in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv), it’s called Sandemann’s tours…the tours are all tip-based, and I have now decided that it would be amazing to do that for a summer, either in Edinburgh or Paris (our guide was Dutch, so I now know you don’t have to be a local).

The Hamburg tour was about three hours, and it was really interesting. I love learning the random, tiny facts about places, like the fact that one of the counting houses has the sharpest corner in Europe. Nice claim to fame.











Europe's sharpest corner!

Hamburg had a bunch of random statue/figures everywhere...





Right before it started storming








Two-thirds of the way through, it started thunderstorming. I was actually having a blast, because I’ve really missed thunderstorms, and everywhere I live seems to have them only as soon as I leave. The guide even ended up giving us his umbrella for some reason. He himself didn’t have an umbrella, and though he HAD a jacket with a hood, he wasn’t wearing it. Megan and I both had hoods, but he still told us to take it. That was nice of him! At the end he even put on a pseudo-play with people from the tour acting out the story of this German Robin Hood/pirate (who, by the way, is so cool…I don’t actually remember his name, but he was a pirate who stole from the rich and gave to the poor and shared out all the treasure equally with all his men and himself…though he prevented Princess Margarethe of Denmark from conquering Sweden/becoming Queen of Denmark – her ambition, since they wouldn’t let her rule, being female and all…).

Soaked

The tour guide's favorite view of Hamburg



Future opera house of Hamburg, supposedly going to be its defining feature - "It's the Sydney Opera House of Hamburg!" Weird...

Performing a play about a pirate

Outdoor escalator!!!

We came home completely soaked, but it was so worth it. Though I suppose it was a little backwards that in my last day in Hamburg, we finally took a tour of the city. Ah well, I think it worked out great with the weather the way we did it!

Tuesday

Sitting in the train back from Hamburg, there is a Danish family sitting behind me. It’s comforting to hear the language. I can’t understand much, but it’s MY language I can’t understand, not another unintelligible language. I’ve heard it so much that I can pretend I know what’s going on. In Germany, not knowing the language was okay – I was with Megan, and I know they almost all speak English – but it was still weird, and definitely different from not knowing Danish.

This German train is extremely nice! Very open-feeling and with a lot of wood in the hallways…Also, it’s high tech. I am always amazed at how the ticket checkers can remember who they’ve checked already, as they always check my ticket and then walk back and forth several times in the journey but never ask me again. However, here, at the seat numbers, the screen that says whether the seat is reserved or empty or whatever completely turns black after they’ve checked! It’s so fancy! Originally, my seat said “Hamburg to Fredericia” and now it says nothing, so that’s how they know who they’ve checked! So cool! I’m easily impressed, but I love it…

Wooo, I’m in Denmark! No ferry this time, but this train is nicer so I like staying in it. And no passport checks. Phew. I still can’t believe it completely slipped my mind…that could have been disastrous. But it wasn’t and I’m back (or at least in the correct country…), and the sun is shining.

I had a transfer time in Fredericia of 6 minutes…and my train? Delayed 5 minutes. So a whole bunch of us ran out of the train and all the way to the opposite side of the station, but no luck. Our train had already gone. Luckily they let me on the next train with the same ticket without a fuss. One guy people were asking “What do we do?” was giving people a hard time, but the lady on the train didn’t even ask me anything. And I get free internet on the train!

Hamburg, Pt. 1

Friday

Megan's apartment building

Lake right by Megan's apartment

Train station

It was a beautiful day in the morning. Megan, her sister Sarah, and I went to the Hamburg zoo, which according to the tour book is world-renowned. It was a really great zoo. You were able to feed some of the animals, most especially the elephants! Sarah managed to find two peanuts on the ground, so we were able to feed them too.

The zoo was also really nice in it felt like the animals were happy and not cramped. And they had several free-roaming animals, including an animal that we at first thought were dogs, really huge rabbits, kangaroos, or a mix between the three. They liked basking in the sun and never were really close enough to get a good look at them, but they were some really funny creatures.







Summer!

And they had dinosaurs??

Sunbathing

Chickens lined up to watch the cheetah

The dog-bunny-kangaroos

Yay!

Tapirs are hilarious creatures



Grocery shopping for dinner was amazing – my eyes were wide at all the prices. Megan took us to a discount store, so everything was even cheaper, and I just kept thinking “Man, why didn’t I study abroad here??” And we finally got home and had an amazing chicken parmesan dinner. We were all really happy to finally have food:



Saturday

The traveling King Tut exhibit was in Hamburg, which was a fun surprise. We checked it out, though it was really complicated to get there. You had to buy your tickets at a different location, and then to get to the actual exhibit you had to wind around several corners.

It was a nice exhibit, but I think I had higher expectations in my mind from when the first one came around however many years ago, and I saw it in Phoenix. They actually had King Tut’s mummy at that first one, and in this one it was really difficult for me to figure out what was original and what were copies. I ended up just assuming everything in a case was real and everything outside wasn’t, but the labels all said “Original in gold/wood/glass/etc.” whether it was in a case or not, so I could not figure out what it was trying to say. But I’m assuming they wouldn’t put replicas in a case…and they wouldn’t put originals out where they could be touched (and I did see people touching some off the coffins and things). The audio guide didn’t teach me anything I didn’t know, but I have an unfair advantage of having heard the story many many times. It was still fun!









Containers for King Tut's organs

Servants for the afterlife

King Tut's sandals?



And then because Megan and I both have a Starbucks addiction, we stopped at one nearby and hung out. It’s perfect frappuccino weather, finally! And the sad thing is, I paid less for my drink than I would have for a hot chocolate in Copenhagen..almost half the price, in fact.



Sunday

We were up very early Sunday morning to go to the fish market, although we didn’t end up leaving for a while after we were supposed to. We did catch the end, though, and I’m glad we did. It was fun – it’s part street market, part almost country-fair. There were tons of stands outside with fruit and chicken and bunnies and fish and touristy things, but then indoor there were food and beer places and lots of benches and live music, in which older German men sang fairly terrible covers of American oldies. I got fish and chips because I figured at a fish market I should eat fish, and Sarah ordered us all this traditional fish market drink that’s beer and sprite. It was disgusting…so I had to keep alternating – eat some fish, wash it down with beer, then get rid of the taste with more fish…:-D Nah, the fish was okay and fairly flavorless for me (Megan told me it was really good fish). The funniest part was when he asked if I wanted tartar sauce, but in German, so Megan had to translate. I said no, and he said, “Nein?!?” He couldn’t believe that anyone wouldn’t want tartar sauce. So he asked if I wanted ketchup…which ended up not actually being ketchup but a weird tomato-curry sauce. Germans are strange!















A huge carton of grapes - the standard unit of purchase at the fish market

Hamburg food

Sarah bought two baskets of fruit

We ended up missing the free walking tour, but it worked out, because we then went on a harbor boat. One of the boats is basically a bus, and so we could use our bus pass to get on for free, and we took it its entire circuit. Hamburg’s harbor is absolutely gorgeous. The whole city is really beautiful. It’s a nice mix of old and new and there’s lots of green trees! And it’s by the water…It’s maybe not the typical European-tourist city, but it’s a wonderful city as a city. The weather was beautiful again, so the boat ride was fantastic. I am also convinced that after all these days of sun, I am now more freckly.

I liked all of Hamburg's trees!







On a boat!

My camera decided to not focus for most of the boat ride :(





Sunbathing!







Hamburg's quite a lovely city (considering I don't usually like cities...)