(There are too many pictures in my post for this day, so I had to split it into several posts.)

Today we had official permission to skip school (cue the Cops theme song again) so that we could tour Hamburg and the University of Hamburg. Our day was exhausting but truly wonderful. So many people here are genuinely dedicated to making sure we have a great experience and get the most out of our time here.

The Americans (minus Josh– sadly he was waiting at a different place and we weren't able to meet up with him until after the first tour) met at a train station in Hamburg, and we were joined by Gerd, who is our program director here, Gerd’s friend, who wanted to accompany us, and three of the German buddies, Raphaela, Martin, and Marjam. Our guide said that these tours were originally developed for the people of Hamburg, but that they also appreciate sharing it with people from other places as well. Our tour guide was very nice and taught us a lot, but I think he became a little frustrated if we changed the pace by stopping to take pictures or something.

Now I’ll take you on a mini photo-tour and share some of the things I saw and learned while walking around Hamburg!

The monument below was built to honor German soldiers from WWI. It’s message says something like, “It is okay that we have to die so that Germany may live." Uniformity is a key theme of the memorial. Our tour guide commented that he did not like the statue and wished that it was not still there.

The memorial in the photo below was built to honor deserters who were killed in WWII. There is an audio feature inside that reads the names and death dates (and perhaps birth dates) of those who were killed. You can walk into the middle of the memorial, and from there, it is more obvious that it is built in the shape of a triangle. This is a reference to the triangles that some concentration camp prisoners had to wear on their clothes.

The two photos below are part of the same memorial, and all three of these memorials are mere meters away from one another. Unfortunately, I cannot remember who this memorial honored (sorry!), but perhaps I can find out and update this later.

Just across from these three memorials is Planten un Blomen, which is an extensive and beautiful park. A glimpse into the park is featured below!

The street in the photo below is now called the Colonnaden, but it used to be known as Kaiserstraße (Kaiser Street). In German, Kaiser means emperor, but it’s odd that Hamburg would name a street Kaiser because Hamburg is historically a citizens' city and hasn’t had an emperor. Kaiser is also a popular last name in Germany. I was a little confused about the next part of the explanation, but it sounded like someone said, “I don’t know any Kaiser (referring to the last name) who lives on this street," so they decided to call it the Colonnaden instead.

Next we walked over to a big open space overlooking the smaller part of the Alster (which is the body of water in the photo below). Companies aren’t allowed to advertise with big colorful signs in this area, but Nivea had fairly big blue poster outside of their store here. They got away with this because it is made of overlapping pieces of blue plastic, and they claim that it is art and not an advertisement.

The photo below of of the view across from the Alster, just opposite of the picture above. (Sorry, Gerd, for the pano distortion.)

We walked past some really expensive shops, and we each bought a few Rolexes as souvenirs. Psych – we saw one that cost about 40k euros, and apparently there were some for hundreds of thousands of dollars

The paintings below were were near these shops. The were covered for a while but were rediscovered, and they are quite old. They indicate what kind of shops existed beneath them, which were shops for baby food and tea.