bretzelitos

We got up at 0700 in the morning… again very early. Our mood was accordingly, but not an issue.

My dad prepared a splendid breakfast that did not let us down in the morning at all.

We packed up our stuff and joined Obernburg train station at 0942. Our Regional train to Aschaffenburg arrived on time.

After changing trains in Aschaffenburg, we took our ICE3 train towards Würzburg – on time – and joined the capital of Lower Franconia after 40 minutes of uneventful ride time. Our connection train there – direct towards Hamburg – was announced late, but arrived eventually on time as well

The trip to Hamburg was absolutely uneventful and very comfortable in an ICE2 train. We arrived approximately in time.

Our hotel “Europäischer Hof” in Hamburg is close to the Central Station, just 5 minutes by foot.

We received our room after proofing that we are vaccinated. We refreshed ourselves a bit and decided to take a walk towards the city center and the harbour area. First, we have been passing the destroyed church of St. Nicolas. It became a museum for peace and remembering as it was destroyed in the Operation ‘Gomorrha’ bomb raids in 1943 and 1944 during the second world war. One remarkable piece was the ‘nail cross’ donated by the city of Coventry – that got severely destroyed by German bomb raids in 1940.

The obligatory ‘Hafenrundfahrt’ was a little more difficult to do this time as many of those touristic ships were still out of service. But eventually we found a possibility onboard of one of the smaller Barkasse type of boat for EUR 20 per person.

We thought that Hamburg harbour was a kind of empty, not a lot of activity indeed. And not as many tourists either.

After arriving back in the Landungsbrücken area, we continued exploring Hamburg St. Pauli by foot after taking Hamburg Stadtbahn for two stations. Our Hotel provided us with Hamburg travel cards that are valid in the whole area of Hamburg for every train, bus and ferry service – quite convenient!

After a short walk of Reeperbahn, we decided to return to our hotel environment and have dinner in the Paulaner restaurant.

Tomorrow, we will stay in Hamburg – let’s see what we are going to do, as far as we have heard, we will not have any rain – great!