Couchsurfing Hamburg

Holiday-full May

So, there are a crazy number of holidays in Germany during May beginning with Labor Day on the first day of the month. The weather had been exceptional—70s to 80s—so my mood, as well as everyone else’s was up. On the sunny days & three days I had off from school I went on a hike, lounged around parks with friends, and went to a city barbeque (the summer season of Grillfests, as BBQs are known in Germany, has begun!) May 1st is a holiday when everyone goes bike riding or hiking and gets really drunk in the process.

A view that I felt depicted "typical" Germany. Green countryside mixed in between small towns. Windmills in the background providing green energy. Autobahn in the foreground.

Small, cute town of Oerlinghausen, which I hiked to one sunny day.

May 1st with my German girlfriends in Rheda-Wiedenbrück: Carina, Julia, and Anna.

Typical looking German outdoor festival. Throughout the summer there are tons of fests like this whenever there is a good excuse to have one.

Hamburg

I continued the long weekend in what may be my favorite German city: Hamburg. Lauren and I took the cheapest train up there to enjoy some sun along the water. We also had our first couchsurfing experience. Our gracious host was named Claudia, a recent emigrant now living in Baltimore with her love-at-first-sight boyfriend, and happened to be home for a few weeks packing up her things. The first night after meeting up, having coffee, going out for cheap, yummy Thai food, hanging out at a birthday party of a friend of her’s at a bar filled with soccer fans, and going out on the Reeperbahn (Germany’s version of Las Vegas strip mixed with Amsterdam’s red light district), we came home and climbed into bed only to have Claudia pop her head in 20 min. later and ask if we would mind if two other couchsurfers showed up in the middle of the night because they were currently sleeping on the street somewhere in Hamburg after finding out that all the city’s hostels were booked. Of course not!

Claudia, Lauren, and yummy Thai food (only to be found in big cities like Hamburg when living in Germany).

3 Euro Sex cinema on the Reeperbahn....gotta be classy.

None of these weapons are allowed when bar hopping or sex-show hopping on the Reeperbahn.

So, the next morning we woke up to a lovely breakfast spread that Claudia bought for us and two new traveling companions: Georg and Charlie, two Australian painters both currently living and working out of their studios in Berlin who had hitchhiked into town the night before and were oh-so-grateful for Claudia’s hospitality and warm shower. We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with the guys and doing some of our own wandering around the city. Claudia actually stayed with a friend and totally gave us her apartment for the weekend! Wow, I love open, warm, trusting and trustworthy people.

Our Aussie artist couchsurfing buddies brushing their teeth in the Hamburg sun.

Pretty Hamburg Alstersee.

Coffee and cake overlooking Alstersee at the chain cafe in Germany named "Alex"!

Georg and Charlie insisted we make hamburgers in Hamburg for dinner. We didn't complain.

Lauren and I had both been to Hamburg before, but we still got to do a lot of new things like go to the Sunday morning fish market at 6 am, check out the view from the St. Nikolai Church, and hang out on the Reeperbahn, We also did a few of my favorite things from last time I was in Hamburg: lay out in the sun near the Alstersee, enjoy coffee and cake in Café Alex on Alstersee, and take a boat ride on the Alstersee….can you tell I like the Alstersee? Of course, my opinion of Hamburg is influenced by the fact that I visited on two sunny, beautiful weekends, when the harbor city is supposed to be riddled with wind and rain for much of the year. I just know how to plan a trip (save all my major travel for good weather in spring and summer.) ;)

Early morning sun overlooking the Hamburg harbor.

At the Sunday fish market you can buy fish fresh out of the water from the fisherman on his boat...

...or smoked eel in large quantities from the singing salesman...

...or dä Butt fish.

Sunday morning between 5 and 10 am the Altona fish market in Hamburg is the place to be while the rest of Germany is stuck in quiet Sunday mode.

I fell in love with this tugboat and took a lot of pictures of it and wanted to share one with you.

A view of Hamburg from a boat.

A view of Hamburg from above, part 1.

A view of Hamburg from above, part 2: the harbor.

And to close, Lauren and me on the train ride home eating our giant gummy smurfs that we bought at a candy stand at the fish market much earlier that morning. The variety of gummy candies to be found in Germany is astonishing. It really is the land of gummy bears (Gummibärchen).