Hanseatic Holidays

Standing in the Reeperbahn at 1:00 in the morning going into Saturday is an experience unlike any other.  The bright lights illuminate the streets, packed with people. The area is enormous and seemingly never ending. Around every corner lie more bars and clubs with every possible theme; Irish, English, Japanese, 99cents, etc.  One must be weary of the stubborn prostitutes who legally stand on the streets and beckon wandering men to spend 30-45 minutes with them for a bargain price of 30 euros.  What is most astounding of all, is the acceptance of all of it as ordinary.

9 hours earlier, on Friday the 1st of November, I was getting off the train at Hamburg-Altona station where I was met by Anton. It was really great meeting him again. It had been 1 and a half months since I left Stockholm for Mainz so I was looking forward to some social contact.  In addition, I had a very inconvenient train trip.  Granted, the first hour was great. The train drove along the Rhine past beautiful scenery such as the Loreley and the many fortresses built into the hills along the river.  However, it soon got worse.  As we were entering the Ruhr, the scenery became duller and the train became fuller.  Since it was a holiday, the Deutsche Bahn decided to cut 5 wagons off the train thereby rendering all reservations meaningless and allowing many people to stand. As a result they asked everyone heading towards Hamburg to change trains in Dortmund and then to switch again in Hannover to get on a train towards Hamburg.

After dropping off all of my things at Anton's house we headed out to the city for some late afternoon sightseeing.  We went to the Miniatur Wunderland, the largest model railway in the world with 13km of tracks laid down.  The area is divided into different themes covering Switzerland, Austria, different parts of Germany, an airport, Scandiavia and the USA.  The attention to detail was extraordinary. At every street corner there was some sort of activity associated with daily life.  The trains, cars and airplanes moved according to some highly complex program that made it seem just as in the real world.  I found one of the most interesting exhibits to be a timeline of Germany history where small 1x1m show casings were made to show a certain time period, starting with hunter gatherer times all the way through the 20th Century.

As an unforeseen but very foreseeable consequence of going out the previous night, we woke up in the afternoon that Saturday.  As a result, it was not going to be much of a sightseeing trip but rather one for hanging out and chilling which was perfectly fine.  That evening we had a fantastic dinner prepared by Anton's grandmother. It was a lamb chop with a side of beans and tasted very good. And all together it lasted two and a half hours! The time just passed by without anyone seeming to have any objections or becoming restless of the other's company, which I found very nice.

The next day there wasn't a lot of time to procrastinate.  My train was leaving at 11:24 from Hamburg's central station.  All in all, I was effectively travelling from 10:30 to 17:30 until I finally reached home. However there was no doubt that the trip was worth it and that it was simply far too short.