“We don’t fly to Hamburg,” the woman with the fancy-schmancy cruise service told me. “It’s not a tourist destination. For an extra fee…”
I disagree. Not with the fee, though I didn’t like to pay it, but of course I did because I wanted to go visit my son in his temporary home, Hamburg. What I disagree with is the disdain for the touristability of Hamburg. This city has a lot to see, do, and–most especially–eat. It may not quite be a tiny, picturesque village, but what it lacks in castles, it makes up for in Franzbrötchen. Plenty of cathedrals. Views to die for. Bakeries up the wazoo. Places for children and places with no children allowed. Herein, I will make the case for Hamburg. The post’s a bit long, but at the end of my travels, so think of it as a summary of all things German.
Keep Your Apple Store, We’ve Got A Particle Accelerator
First of all, Hamburg has world class scientific facilities. Not in a giant megalith concrete building like in Thunderbolts or The Incredibles. This one’s in an office park, lined with lovely trees and walkable, rather than the car-park laden Silicon Valley offices, famous for refrigerators stocked with free Red Bull, bouncy ball pits, and 20-year-old millionaires.
I once visited the high-tech Apple campus in Cupertino for a technology-related business meeting, and our hosts made much of how our “free time” would allow us to visit the “popular employee” hangout, the Apple store. My thought was The employees’ favorite thing to do is to visit the store that sells their products? how brainwashed is that? At the time, my company, Bank of America, was rolling out text chat and it was a consortium with us, Apple, Disney, UPS, and AT&T and all I can say is that when Disney hosted, it was more fun. Anyway, I digress, back to Hamburg…the DESY campus is lovely, even if it doesn’t have a store.
Hamburg’s research facility-office park is DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron), where you will find the particle accelerators, FLASH 2 experimental lasers, and lots of mysterious looking black boxes. Visiting my son’s lab required us to don robes, hair covers, foot covers, and goggles–the first three for keeping our germs away from the dancing photons and the last one to keep our eyes from being burned by the lasers. Not a joke. I kept thinking about that scene in Willie Wonka where they shrink Mike Teevee. (Warning: Selfie family photo coming)
My son is doing his post-doctorate research here, research which involves shooting laser pulses at bits of metal to see if it can be made more superconductive without needing very cold temperatures. I have to absorb the technical descriptions he gives in tiny bits, so that’s probably close but not precisely accurate.
Still, in this visit, I asked why the table has so many lenses, arranged in this Rube-Goldberg-domino-toppling kind of way. He explained that the pulse comes out of the Black Box (his term not mine) at one frequency, and he has to adjust it by sending it through this complicated path of lenses to get the right frequency for his sample. It also requires him to order a ton of equipment to get these set up, and it’s taken a while just to get the arrangement. I can attest to that as I saw all the boxes in his office, and he said he also often orders them with snacks, so his office is full of lens boxes and boxes of protein bars and shortbread cookies. I’m telling you, Hamburg is all about the food.
DESY does give tours to the public, though not through my son’s office, so if you are in Hamburg, you can visit the campus and see the black boxes and maybe some of the particle accelerators. It is a lovely walk through the park. Plus, there might be snacks.
Moin Hamburg!
But Hamburg isn’t all about the research. It’s a major industrial center that grew to be the second largest city in Germany (behind Berlin) and the seventh largest city in the EU. While it’s quite a bit (100 km) inland, it’s also at the confluence of the rivers Ulster and Elbe. Kind of like Chicago which, I might note, is where Fermi did the atom thing.
Like Chicago, Hamburg’s location made it perfect for trade, meaning merchants, meaning money and growth. The name? Burg means town, and hamma might mean “back of the knee” as in between rivers or hamme might refer to the pastureland or hammen forests or heim home. Wherever the name came from, the Germans say “hom” as in “mom” and not “ham” as in “Sam.”
The Old Town area expanded around the rivers for trade during the 9th and 10th centuries. The city built a wall but was attacked multiple times. Still, it kept growing because the shipping into the northern heart of Germany was easy and lucrative. By the 12th century, it was established as a city-state, granted tax-free status by Frederick II (Barbarossa), and ultimately partnered with Lübeck and other cities near the North and Baltic Seas to create the Hanseatic League.
Basically, you can think of the Hanseatic League the way you might think of Google and Meta today, wielding political power via commerce and the need for others to use their services. On our journey along the river, we learned that nearby towns would often own the locks; you want to safely travel the river up or down? You pay. You want the goods Hamburg gets from around the world? You pay.
Thus, Hamburg still has a major international harbor, downtown is dotted with bridges like Venice, and the vintage warehouses (a UNESCO-site) are seven stories tall. Hamburg welcomes tourists with Moin!–a greeting shared across Northern Europe– but embraces merchants and traders even more. Modern downtown also now is full of investment banks, insurance companies, and high-end clothing stores. We didn’t spend much time in the malls. We spent a lot more time in restaurants.
Just Here for the Food
I never ate a hamburger in Hamburg; it’s not really known for it. That is, Hamburg invented a kind of dish made with chopped beef, but by the time it emigrated to America, the high end “Hamburg steaks” became something else. Once the food cart owners downgraded the type of chopped beef and stuck it on a roll for factory workers, the American beef dish turned into something else. There are hamburger restaurant in the city, but those are mainly American. Hamburger is not the specialty food.
The protein that Hamburg does specialize in is fish. The revelation for me was the Bismarck herring sandwich, the thing you see dangling from the gull’s mouth. Pickled herring! My Dad used to eat that out of jars, and it sounded disgusting, but the sandwich is delicious. Like a lobsta roll, with a nice bread–not too soft, not too crusty–a little crunchy lettuce, and topped with remoulade.
The fried fish sandwich, Fischbrötchen, is also delightful–any fish really, on a sandwich or off. My son’s favorite fish sandwich place, Kleine Haie Große Fische, is a famous hole-in-the-wall, and my son’s other favorite place, Fisch Pauli, had the best meal I had in Hamburg (Fish plate II). You could get a decent Fischbrötchen anywhere along the touristy waterfront in stalls next to the boat rides, fountains, ferries, and souvenir shops.
We also sampled a local labskaus in The Old Commercial Room. Like Tadich’s or John’s Grill in San Francisco, it was a place with dark paneling, dim lights, and padded booths, a place where deals get made. Labskaus here was beef brisket, thought it’s also traditionally corned beef pureed with potatoes. The sailors used to eat it to prevent scurvy because potatoes are high in vitamin C and corned beef stored well. We also had plenty of wursts at the biergartens, like at Klampau’s Paulaner Biergarten, another pretty park near rhe DESY campus. There was also tasty Chinese food at Half the Sky in Altona (I used to work near SF Chinatown, so I know my way around authentic boiled chicken with garlic and chilies); great tapas at Altamira also in Altona; and great pasta and pizza at a tiny place near the Altona bus exchange and train station.
I got a diploma for sampling the labskaus, as I had for mixing herbal salt in Scharburg, grinding wurst in Regensburg, and sampling paprika in Budapest. The diplomas are touristy, but food is food. I didn’t know Germany was such a foodie place, but that’s on me. Especially because of Diese Bäckereien.
Backen Ist Der Neue Yoga
Germany has 2.4 times as many bakeries as it does gas stations. America is the exact opposite, with 17 times as many gas stations as it does bakeries; even California has twice as many gas stations as bakeries. We have so much obesity and yet so few proper bakeries? Something is wrong with this picture! Hamburg does this right with over 600 bakeries, roughly 35 bakeries for every 100,000 people. German bread in general is great–crusty, properly dense, sometimes with nuts, and always a nutty flavor.
Even better are the pastries. The famous one in the city is the Franzbrötchen. Imagine if a croissant and cinnamon roll had a one-night stand. The Franzbrötchen is like a squashed croissant: it doesn’t rise like a yeasty roll, but has all the layers of cinnamon sugar spread throughout the pastry, without the need for any kind of that sticky, plastic glaze in the mall shops. Even the gas station Franzbrötchen was better than any Cinnabon roll I’ve had. As the tea towel said, Baking is the new Yoga!
The pastry shelves also contained plenty of streudels, flat Auszognes, Berliners, stollen, lebkuchen, Linzer Auge, and Nussecke, just to name a few. Not all are unique to Hamburg, but they are German, and they were in the bakeries. My son and daughter-in-law were partial to Junge Backerie, a chain, but a good one. If you don’t favor pastry, there are also potato pancakes (Reibekuchen), Lakritz (Licorice Fudge), and Rote Grütze (berries, cherries, and vanilla sauce). You might need to test a lot to decide which you like best.
What Hamburg Has Going for It
Maybe you don’t just like to eat (who are you anyway?) You want stuff for the kids? Try Mini Wonderland: a model train diorama on steroids that brings the Swiss Alps, the Colorado Rockies, Patagonia, Rome, and Venice to life. An entire floor just for Hamburg–downtown and the ENTIRE airport. What it lacked in completeness, it made up in whimsy (it’s the ENTIRE WORLD* *except for California, New York, Africa, and oh Asia–no China, India, or Russia–but that airport!) No San Francisco, but look! ET flying across Pike’s Peak! No Beijing, but dinosaurs a-plenty! At the mini concert, there was a mini line to the women’s port-a-potties.
You want stuff for history buffs? Try the seven-floor Maritime Museum that has everything from gold-plated miniatures of the Santa Maria to life-size versions of Shackleton’s life boat from the Antarctic. All you ever want to know about ships. There is Composer’s Row, where Brahms, Mahler, Telemann, and Bach (Carl not Johann) lived. Free concert series! There’s a Portugese Quarter and a Jewish Quarter. A philharmonic building that is a tourist site just for its architecture. A way to walk UNDERNEATH the Elbe river; we did it twice. My feet still hurt.
You want stuff for football fans? Two teams, and two stadiums, Hamburg SV and FC St. Pauli. Apparently, the Hamburg team is older but less fun than the new team, whose stadium is right next to DESY and the biergarten. Stuff for adults only? St. Pauli is the red-light district, with a vibrant night life and stores right out of San Francisco’s Broadway and Columbus district–sorry, couldn’t take pictures of those, NC17.
And everywhere, superb mass transit. Four days of traversing the city and we got everywhere on buses and subways. Subways were clean, well lit, and had great signage. Buses came every few minutes, with the main lines coming every 10 minutes even on Sunday night. The grocery stores were closed on Sunday, but the buses were running ! So let’s tally this up:
- Bakeries
- Excellent transit
- Fish
- Interesting buildings and other things to lok at
- Sausage and mustard
- Fresh air
- Particle accelerators
- Not very expensive
- Bread & Franzbrotchen & croissants & apple streudel
In short, Hamburg has something for everybody–except for a few important things.
Be Prepared Because…
No free, cold drinking water. The Europeans who occasionally read my blog will again give me crap for this, but honestly I don’t get it. Americans might have too many cars, but we do have drinking fountains and free water in restaurants. I don’t understand having to pay for water at the table, buy it in environmentally-unfriendly bottles, or having to resort to the bathroom tap. If you don’t like ice in your drink, don’t put any in, but I would like water and with ice in it. For free. Drinking water is healthier than drinking beer, and I don’t care what they drank in the Middle Ages. A tour guide in Vienna made a big deal about how safe drinking water in Vienna was available everywhere, and I thought he was making a joke, but now I get it. It was an outlier.
Few free bathrooms. Public bathrooms are always going to be dicey, but I shouldn’t have to pay for a WC, too. Conceptually, don’t we all want people to use the appropriate facilities. I actually saw two guys from the window of a tour bus just peeing on a tree. Is this what we want? You can go into a larger bakery or cafe, buy a cappuccino, and use the facilities, but Hamburg just needs more free WCs.
Unfriendly bus drivers. OK, well, this is true of all bus drivers, but if you’re going to have buses everywhere, than the drivers should stop when you ring the stop button, open the door when you push the “open door” button, and not look at you like you have two heads when you ask and point “is this FroheKirche?” There must be an international bus driving school where they learn specifically how to be rude, drive by pumping the brakes constantly, and fly at 80 kph through a 40 zone.
So many cobblestones. It’s quaint, Germany, but so dumb. Hamburg, like most of the cities we walked through, has kept a lot of its cobblestones streets, which means every other step risks a sprained ankle. There’s more I didnt care for. Naked men wandering around in the sauna and swimming pool ante rooms; unpredictable drizzle; airport agents that search every carry-on bag–mine was swiped down for suspicious history books; rabid bicyclists; lots of cigarette smoking; obsession with beer; and very little English.
If you do tour Hamburg–and I highly recommend it–just learn to say the important things. Fischbrötchen. Labskaus. Franzbrötchen. Any kind of brötchen, really. Hauptbahnhof (train station). HVV (transit system). Kaffee. Though you might have to drink your cappuccino in a glass, it will at least come with a cookie. And you can use the WC. Just don’t ask for water.
Moin!
