Hamburg

Last weekend, I took a trip with my friend Natalie up to Hamburg.  I didn't know much about the city before we went there, but essentially it is the anti-Frankfurt.  Where Frankfurt is clean and upper middle class.  Hamburg is dirty and gritty and full of music and laborers.

Hamburg Rathaus (City Hall)

Hamburg Church

Counting house built by shipping barons

Another counting house, this one built to look like a ship

The Speicherstadt or warehouse city.  The city built this to unload cargo shortly before the invention of container ships, so it was never really used very much.  Today it houses cool museums and restaurants and stuff.

Me

One of the highlights of Hamburg is Miniature Wonderland - a 3 story museum filled with the world's largest model train collection.  This doesn't sound awesome, but it is.  These super detailed dioramas showcase different countries and cities.  My favorite was this scale model working airport with planes that land and take off, taxi, wait at the terminal and then depart again.  

I believe this was in Austria

Here was Las Vegas - the one scene I knew well enough to check accuracy.  Everyone knows that the Luxor is not across the street from Treasure Island, so this model is crap.

We went on a pub crawl in the red light district and ended our evening at this awesome Irish pub.

Every Sunday morning, Hamburg wakes up with the Fish Market where vendors hawk their wares - most commonly fruit baskets for 10 Euro.  At one end of the market, there is a hall serving breakfast and beer and featuring a live band.  While most of the guests were fresh for the day, but there were definitely a few folks still going from Saturday night.

On the Hamburg Harbor