0249 Hamburg City Hall
0282 Diana at Miniature Wonderland looking down at a huge concert.
0292 This is the Bavarina Spring Festival. Note the large beer wagon at the center of the parade and the May Pole in the plaza.
0314 This is the Bavarian Inn and Biergarten. Amazing detail.
0329 This is a small village as seen at night.
0365 St. Catherine’s Church Hamburg
May 11 – Aboard the Queen Mary 2. Another day ‘as sea’ as we sail up the English Channel turn into the North Sea, past some drilling rigs, turn into the Elbe River and sail up the river to Hamburg. Because we’re traveling light for trains it only took me about 45 minutes to pack. I spent the rest of the day reading and just generally goofing off. Our German, tablemates Jürgen and Nicole are a lot of fun and very interesting to talk with.
We saw the movie ‘The Woman in Black’ with Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter. It was not badly acted by Daniel, in fact he did well. But it stuck to the traditional horror film style, more scary scenes, less gore so it had a somewhat lukewarm reception. The director or the editor did a lousy job with the sound and should have corrected the under the breath delivery of many of the characters. I liked it but wouldn’t see it again.
May 12 – Hamburg, Germany. As disembarkations go todays was fine. I think it helps that only part of the ship was leaving today. Those who boarded in Southampton are for the most part staying on for a 10 day cruise of the area. We were called to the gangway only 10 minutes after the schedule said we would be. Taxi to the hotel, stow the luggage there and off to see the city.
I booked the Europaischer HOF Hotel because it’s right across the street from Hamburg HBF, the train station we are using to head to Berlin tomorrow.
They are celebrating the 824th birthday of Hamburg. It was an important city in the Hanseatic League from about 1200 to the 1600s. The league was an organization of merchants that reached from London, in the Southwest to Novgorod, Russia in the Northeast. There were large estates of the merchants when we visited Tallinn, Estonia. The rise of the Swedish Empire put an end to the league in 1669 but three members held on until 1862, Hamburg was one of them.
It’s a great city, good transportation system including U Bahns (Subways to us) and S Bahns (tram systems or trollies to us). The U3 has a circular track around the city that can take you to the Harbor Town or Old Town sections.
We are heading to the Old City Hall first. It’s an interesting building with a tall clock tower with what is claimed to be the largest clock face in Europe although you could not prove it by me. Set in niches around the second floor façade are statues of past kings of various German states and city states. After all the German Empire was not formed until 1871 and the German Republic didn’t form until 1918. Hard to believe the USA is 100 years older than Germany. There’s a nice fountain in the courtyard that commemorates a cholera epidemic in Hamburg sometime in the 1800s.
Then it was another trip on the U3 to the Harbor town to see the world’s largest display of model trains, the Miniature Wonderland. It’s on three floors of a large building. It is constantly being updated and expanded. Half of the second floor is closed because it is under construction. The scenes are so realistic and there’s action everywhere. Trains, cars, busses, trucks, aircraft, gondolas, trams, ski lifts and elevators are all in motion. Lights are on everywhere from the individual head and tail lights of vehicles and flashing lights on emergency and police cars to the torches in night skiers hands, lights are all over. They have a series of red, blue and white lights in the ceiling that allows them to simulate night, day, dawn and dusk realistically. The nights are much shorter than the fully lit days but it does allow you to appreciate all the lighting included in the display. The displays represent many countries, not just Germany. The USA, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and others are shown, usually using an actual local in the design.
The USA section is quite large and is mostly the desert Southwest and Las Vegas, but they did have the Mount Rushmore faces carved into the side of a mountain. The only real imaginary things I saw were some fairies flying in a small scene that must have been from a folk tale and a very large and formal railroad station in Las Vegas. There is no train station of that type anywhere near Vegas. I don’t know if it’s still there but the Union 76 Casino used to serve in that capacity. We spent quite a few hours touring the entire display.
I only remember some of the statistics about the place. The display covers 43,000 square feet. It has 930 trains, over 20,000 train cars, 1,300 kilometers of track (that’s over 700 miles) of track. That’s not scale miles, those are actual miles. There are over 250,000 people around the display. Some of the crowd scenes are huge. There are people everywhere. In the Alps they had a little Inn with a small biergarten in the back, pretty simple, just three picnic tables with Bavarian flag design tablecloths. There are 13 people in the area with food and beer on the tables. Some are seated, some standing, the hausfrau is carrying large steins of beer to a table. One group is having a turkey meal; another is sharing a bunt cake. I don’t remember what scale they are using, it looks smaller than HO but nowhere near as small as N. The display has over 335,000 lights.
Some of the elements are historical. For example, in the valley below a large castle there’s a jousting tournament going on. It is entirely possible, however that it’s actually a Renaissance Faire recreation that just happens to be near a castle.
The display with the largest crowds it a representation of Hamburg’s airport. Planes actually taxi out from the terminal and the scoot down the runway to takeoff. The display right next to Las Vegas is Florida. They’ve recreated a short art-deco hotel street like Miami. They have a water ski show in progress and right next to that is a space shuttle blasting off toward the ceiling every so often. See I told you some of the displays are historical.
On one floor they had a series of dioramas in a larger scale that show the same little section of a river throughout the centuries, starting with hut dwellers and ending in a modern city. Another set of 6 static displays shows an intersection in Berlin from just before the Berlin Wall was set up until the day it was torn down. This second set seems about the same scale as the main display. Very nice, a great place to visit!
We decided we needed something to drink so we headed to the café in the building. They had a section set up like a train car with train seats and a window with a picture that looked like a train’s window. A fun place to sit and have a cup of coffee.
From there we walked along the river bank and across a bridge to get to Saint Catherine’s Church. The original building was destroyed during WWII but was rebuilt in the same style in the 1950s. It has a wonderful organ with almost 5,000 pipes. The shortest pipe is 1 centimeter (about 1/3 of an inch) and the longest is 10 meters (a little over 30 feet). 428 of the pipes are from the original organ, the rest are new. These 428 pipes are important because Bach played the organ here and those pipes would has been heard by him. Cool. I love the mathematical precision of his music. Huge fan!
We met a nice lady there who represents the church. She was there to facilitate setup for an evening youth service being presented by theological students from a local seminary. She had a very authentic British accent but had been born of German parents in Switzerland. She didn’t want to be thought of as Swiss, she definitely wanted to be German. “I’m not to blame!” she asserted when speaking of her Swiss birth. She was very friendly and gave us a lot of information about St. Catherine’s.
From there we headed to Saint Nicholas’ Church. It was also destroyed during WWII but was not rebuilt. It was decided to leave it pretty much as is as a reminder of past indiscretions. Right now the tower is standing as well as the entry and the circular walls of the apse. The rest is gone. They do have some scaffolding up around the tower. It probably needs some care to keep it from falling down.
From there it was on the U3 to retrace our steps to the station in the Hamburg HBF directly across the street from the hotel. We had lunch at McDonald’s so we thought we’d cap the day off with dinner at the Subway.
Then it was back to the hotel to rest up for what will probably be an exciting three days on the train to get to Moscow. In the morning a train to Berlin to catch a train to Warsaw. The next day we catch a train from Warsaw to Moscow that takes about 24 hours. We do have a room reserved but I have no idea what the room will be like. That could be the exciting part.
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