En route to Berlin, a stop in Hamburg

Our time spent in Amsterdam flew by, and after much deliberation as to whether we should cancel the rest of our travels and stay in Amsterdam for the remaining two and a half months, we decided that we must (sadly) carry on with our itinerary. So that meant that the next stop was Hamburg, Germany. 

I take full responsibility for our travelling to Hamburg. I met a number of German exchange students at USC last semester with whom I conversed with and mentioned that I would be travelling through Germany. I inquired where I ought to visit. "You must go to Hamburg," was the unanimous response. "Munich is okay, Hamburg is a must, and you can see Berlin in a day or just skip it. Nothing special."

We've had a lot of conversation as to why that was the advice I was given, essentially trying to decipher their perspective (assuming they were being honest).

There isn't much to see in Hamburg. It's an industrial town, the Port of Hamburg is the second biggest/most active port in Europe (second to Amsterdam, I believe), they speak High German (the most formal of the German dialects), and it's widely considered to be Germany's party town. After a short walk around the city, we axed one night in Hamburg and decided that we were for sure going to go to Berlin (which we did not originally intend on doing).

On that brief walk, there were some highlights:

Above, the enormous Otto von Bismarck memorial statue. I'm standing at the base so you can perhaps see its scale. I think the thing is visible from distant galaxies.

Above, the lake in the middle of Hamburg whose name escapes me at the moment. It is adjacent to a really ritzy, upscale downtown/financial/shopping district, which was pretty cool to stroll through. But I wouldn't necessarily write home about it.

I suppose the reason Hamburg receives such high praise from its locals is that the city definitely has an active and bustling night life. We went out both nights and had a good time on both occasions... One of the main draws for the Hamburg nightlife is the Reeperbahn, or the red light district. All of the bars we went to were there, and a lot of them were great. Unfortunately, we were fresh from Amsterdam so needless to say the red light district in Hamburg just could not even step to Amsterdam's. The first night it was just the two of us and the second night we met another American couple and had a really good time partying with them; nonetheless, it's just not a two-some or two-couple kind of place. If we had a solid group of 6-10 of us, I bet Hamburg would have been a blast.  There were some German college kids who stayed at our hostel and I was so bitter when they came back to the room at 6am not because they woke us up but because they were having so much more fun than I was. One guy didn't even make it to his bottom bunk; he seemed far more content on the linoleum floor. Germans drink a lot.

One highlight from Hamburg was the Pennymarkt, where we happened upon a cache of delicious Ritter chocolate and cheap Hamburg beer (below):

I know Ritter is available at some select food stores in the States... if you can find some, I recommend you get it. I think it's some of the best price-for-quality chocolate there is. 

It's sad that one of my fondest memories of Hamburg is the fact that I bought a bunch of Ritter bars there. Oh well. Onward to Berlin.