Day 7, Friday – Exploring Hamburg! Pt. 2
(There are too many pictures in my post for this day, so I had to split it into several posts.)
The memorial below commemorates the death of German soldiers from WWI, and it depicts a woman comforting her child. It was destroyed, but it has been rebuilt.
The breathtaking building below is Hamburg’s Rathaus. Based on the name, you may expect this to be the dwelling place of d00k’s basketball coach (known affectionately by some as “rat face"), but it is actually Hamburg’s city hall. The building reflects some key historical and cultural concepts, as the statues on the building depict important emperors, values, and professions. The emperors are down low, between the lower set of windows. The statues on top of the triangles (forgive me for my limited architectural vocabulary) above that set of windows depict several different important professions of Hamburg, including a baker and a brewer. The four statues on the center tower of the Rathaus (more visible in the second photo) symbolize bravery, religion, something I can’t remember (sorry again), and wisdom. The Rathaus is still used as the seat of government in Hamburg.
Directly adjacent to the Rathaus (I think they are actually connected) is the Stock Exchange building. It is pictured below and surrounds a plaza with the statue below in the middle. The figures all around the bottoms of the statue relate to water in some way, and the statue in the middle depicts Hygiene (the woman) conquering cholera. I thought this was a lovely scientific metaphor.
We left the plaza through the arch in the image below; the arch is decorated with these two very fit infants holding fasces. If you zoom into the photo on the baby on the left, you should be able to see that he has a small nose ring. This was a mistake, but it was kept as a joke.
In the photo below, you can see an animal statue on the top of a building. Is that a lion? Tiger? Bear? Nope, that's a poodle. Our tour guide fooled us (or at least me) by saying that this was part of some extensive systems of poodle clubs that were part of Hamburg society a while ago. Actually, the wife of patron of the building had very curly hair, so he called her Poodle as a nickname. He put up the poodle statue to honor her, and they named all of their company’s ships with names that start with the letter P. One ship, the Peking, is in New York City.
We went inside an old shipping insurance company building. The photo below depicts the elevators inside that building. They moved without stopping, had no doors, and were made of wood. We weren’t allowed to go on them because tourist traffic would disrupt the company’s use of the elevators, but I think it would have been fun to try!
The tower in the image below is the St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg. At one point in history, it was the tallest church in the world. Hamburg was heavily bombed by the Allied powers in WWII, and the St. Nikolai Church was burned black in the war. Hamburg left it up as a reminder of why the bombings happened. Right now, it has scaffolding around it because of efforts related to its preservation.
There was a Great Fire of Hamburg in 1842, which began in a bakery. The location of this bakery was the building where the black sign is in the photo below. I think the sign says something like, “The fire started here."
The picture below shows buildings alongside a river where goods were shipped. People used to live in houses along the river, but these houses also functioned as their businesses. Boats steered by people holding long sticks went up and down the river, and cranes like the one two photos below raised and lowered goods into these boats. The water in the river was used as drinking water and a depository for waste.
The bases of the buildings in the image above, lining the river, are built with oak trees, and our guide told us that one might think that this material would rot over time, but as long as the oak stays wet, it maintains its strength. The picture below depicts a crane, which was used to lift and lower goods into boats in the river.
Love locks are famous in several European cities! I have seen some on several bridges in Hamburg, and Marjam and Raphaela told me that it was common in Amsterdam, too. We think the tradition began in Paris though.
This is a picture of a developing part of Hamburg called Harbor City. It is a huge project, and when it is finished, about 12,000 people will live there. (Imagine how many new schools they will need!)
Our group had a great lunch at a museum in Hamburg! This is fish, potatoes, and carrots in a curry sauce.
