StoNur on the Road – Hamburg

The world will look to Hamburg these days, where the leaders of the world’s major nations will meet for their G20 summit. Reason enough for the Streets of Nuremberg to pay a visit to one of our nation’s most fascinating cities. A city crossed by a major river. A city with a rich maritime history, with one of Europe’s major harbors. A city full of old historic buildings, of mind-blowing  modern architecture, and plenty cross-over old made new in between. For a collection of photographic impressions of Hamburg continue after the jump….

We spent a weekend in Hamburg last summer, which is a perfect city for a weekend trip. As camera I brought my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 14-150mm F/4.0-5.6 travel zoom. One camera, on lens, the goal was to travel light. And for city sightseeing where you need to shoot wide as well as zooming in on details this is my preferred camera/lens combo. All but two images were taken with the Oly, only the two monochrome street images of the Guitar Hero and the Bar shot (that you might have seen before on this blog) were taken with my iPhone.

We started out with a walk on the Binnenalster, one of many Hamburg waterways, with its palatial buildings and a historic steam ship cruising by.

A good opportunity for shopping is the Europa Passage shopping center at the Ballindamm.

To the other side of the shopping center many historic merchant homes line the streets, and there are plenty o places to sit down an relax.

One of Hamburg’s architectural pearls is the city hall with a beautiful courtyard well worth visiting. As Hamburg is actually one of Germany’s federal states, it is also the home of the parliament.

Sankt Michaelis (or Michel as said by the locals) is Hamburg’s principal church and the landmark of the city. It’s huge bell tower offers splendid views across the Elbe river, city and harbor. Well worth climbing the many stairs!

Around Sankt Michaelis are also a few of the remaining historic town houses that survived the destructions of WWII.

Back down towards the inner city passing beautiful administrative buildings like the Hamburg chamber of commerce and many high-end boutiques and other shopping opportunities.

The Landungsbrücken, Sankt Pauli and the Reeperbahn are the main locations for entertainment and nightlife. Hamburg’s has also a few Musical theaters where you can see major shows like the “Lion King”.

The next day we did went on a harbor cruise, the best way to explore the city and the harbor from the water and get the real maritime feeling that Hamburg offers.

Historic ships that also can be visited are moored to the Landungsbrücken, the Docks of the city. Always visible is the latest architectural and cultural pearl of the city, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall (I already did a separate post about this).

Despite being 100km from the mouth of the Elbe, the harbor is a major seaport, the 3rd biggest in all of Europe. Regular ship routes connect Hamburg with 900 cities in 170 countries. The world’s largest ships enter the port at high tide.

The harbor cruise also offers plenty views of the nice beaches near Blankenese as well as of modern structures like the Dockland building that looks like a ship itself.

Returning to the docks we were treated to beautiful views of the skyline and the Sankt Michaelis bell-tower.

Finishing off our Hamburg trip we strolled through the Speicherstadt (see first image of this post) with its old brick warehouses and the adjacent modern Hafencity with its splendid apartment buildings, moored boats and yachts and the famous Elbphilharmonie towering above the river at the end of the island.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of Hamburg and get some impressions about the city where the leaders of the world meet for their summit this Friday and Saturday. The summit pretty much shuts down the city. Also many protesters are expected. Let’s hope Hamburg get’s through those days alright.

Have a great Thursday!

Marcus

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