This past weekend I traveled to Hamburg with Nora and her parents visiting from Spain.
My trip up from Wolfenbüttel was spent watching “2001: A Space Odyssey” while seated in this tacked-on wagon from the 70’s.
It kind of reminds me of the vision of future travel from a 50’s documentary.
Base camp for our trip was Oldenburg. Upon arriving at the train station, we found ourselves confronted with a potential omen of things to come.
Ok, since this post has a ton of pictures, click the link below to see what happened because of our confused ticker display (what a cliffhanger!).
Luckily everything went well and we got a table while the proletariat stood jealously about. Heh 
…and we’re in Bremen
…and we’re in Hamburg with plenty of time to be tourists.
The last time I was in Hamburg I played the role of poor student and no other choice than to hoof it. This time we sat aboard the tourist’s preferred mode of transportation, the obligatory double-decker bus.
After nearly an hour of touring the city’s “don’cha just hate some people” rich sections (i.e. they have castles there) we stopped off at the harbor.
It was really nice but harbors are not renowned for their wind protection (yeah…ok, they are, but for ships). After I chipped away the thin layer of ice that had formed on my beer as I ate my krakauer and fries, I took a final swig and we were on our way.
The tour came full circle at the Hamburg Main Station and we headed over to the adjacent Christmas Market.
The overwhelming number of people combined with the recent decline of qualified trash(wo)men led to quite a number of games of communal Jenga.
Looking at all that rotting garbage really got me thinking about grabbing some eats.
A chocolate crêpe set me up for awhile and we watched some of the street entertainment.
This girl played and played and played… Love the wood block action.
I snapped a pic of these Dr. Seussy birdhouses because they made me smile.
Little did I know, they were copyrighted.
I should have known and fully understand. Having people share such pictures risks having the recipients smile and/or inquire as to where they could buy such a thing. Doof.
As the sun abandoned its post, people began to gather near the Gluhwein (warm spiced wine) stand.
Next to this monstrosity was a nightmarish trio of dancing santas singing not-old-enough-to-be-cool-again Christmas songs.
Children present: 0
Speaking of creepy, two of a trio of displays at a department store resembled a LEGO mash-up of the Simpsons and the Shining.
They redeemed themselves with 8-bit looking polar bears which I wish would’ve been for sale.
Saturn was still busy as we were leaving (a European best-buy of sorts). Lousy store didn’t save me an ADSL2 modem to bring home to my shiny new Freenet 16000 connectionn. Ok…sorry about that burst of nerd anger.
…and we were off to the train station to head back to base.
It was another fly trip but well worth it to see Hamburg during the Christmas insanity! This post brought to you by the nearly three hour train ride back to Wolfenbüttel.
I bet it was a lot of fun trip. Thanks for sharing man.
We did a “historic” tour of hamburg, so I don’t remember much of what you have pics of. I think I rememeber a really nice square..but that could have been a different town. None the less thanks for the pics they were cool to look at, and I have this ever increasing desire to ride a train