Nine Months Later...

It’s hard to believe we’re ¾ of the way into our first year in Hamburg. At this time last year, it wasn’t even a blip on our radar!

Now, Larry is a regular employee at GGS (i.e., not contract) working on a new project, and I’m taking another German class and continuing work on my writing.

The all-American-themed
going-away party my coworkers
threw for me last fall.

How do you like Hamburg?

That’s the first question people ask when they learn I’ve moved here. That’s to be expected, but I’m consistently surprised by their reactions to my answer, which has evolved over time from “it’s different, but nice,” to “I like it,” to “I love it.”

Usually the response runs along the lines of an exchange I had with a gentleman at the flea market, who moved here from Ghana 20 years ago. When I told him I really liked living in Hamburg, he looked at me in utter disbelief and exclaimed, “But you came from America!”

Hmm. I guess I don't see my love of America and my love of Hamburg as incompatible. Besides, if there was one place in the world that could be everything for everyone, we'd all be living there, right?

What’s your favorite thing?

That's the next question people ask, particularly if they know I'm writing a blog about my experience here.

The flippant answer: Everything except the winter.

The short answer: Last week I was running some errands, and in the course of only two hours, I ran into people I know in three different areas of the city. Hamburg is large enough to be interesting, and small enough to feel comfortable.

The long answer: I suspect other expats ask this question because they’re looking for things they might do here, and people from Hamburg just want to know what an outsider thinks is great about their city.

How would you answer that question about where you live? It's hard, especially as different types of experiences bubble up into your mind.

So I decided to go back through my “bucket list” that I created when we first moved here, to see what I’ve done so far:

• Beer-tasting Tour
• Bergedorfer Castle & Vierlande Museum
• Botanical Garden 

The Loki Schmidt Botanical Garden is maintained by the University of Hamburg and includes planted areas of different geographies, a stone garden, a smell and touch garden, and a museum of "useful" plants 
(herbs, medicinal, food). 

• Bunkermuseum
• Butterfly Garden

The butterfly garden has a hothouse, outdoor garden, water garden
with coi, birds, bunnies, and more.

Kitchen at Chocoversum, where we got
to choose ingredients to make our own chocolate bar!

Let's face it, carnivals are pretty similar in the attractions
they offer. But we went to the Winter Dom to check
it out, then came back for the Spring Dom to enjoy the food!

• Café Vju
• Chocolate Museum
• Christmas Markets
• Dahlia Garden /Volkspark
• Doll Museum

• Dom
• Easter Market
• Ethnology Museum
• Fine and Applied Arts Museum
• Flea markets
• Harbor Festival

The Polizeimuseum is on the campus of Hamburg's
police academy, and provides a good history of the
city's law enforcement, complete with a hands-on forensics area.

• Historic City Centre Tour
• Isemarkt
• Kramer-Witwen Wohnung
• Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial
• Old Elbe Tunnel
• Police Museum
• St. Georg Steamboat Cruise

The St. Georg is an authentic steamboat that provides
tours on the Alster lakes in the heart of downtown.

Treppenviertel is this part of Hamburg --
nice homes nesteled in hills above a beach,
with steep, narrow, winding staircases
you can climb for a nice view of the Elbe

The Speicherstadt--
Hamburg's historic warehouse district--
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
and the world's largest carpet trading
and storage area.

• St. Michel Tour
• St. Nikolai War Memorial Museum
• St. Pauli Fish Market
• St. Pauli Tour
• Speicherstadt Tour
• Spice Museum
• Strandperle
• Treppenviertel

Strandperle is where
we celebrated
German Unification Day.

Getting back to the question of a "favorite," I don’t have one thing I’d call out (although the Botanical Garden is a contender). 

Each time I see or do something new I relish the experience, but I'm always eager to see and do more.

I think I have some small fear that if I reach the point where something gets crowned “the winner,” I’ll stop exploring as much. And I have a lot more things I want to see before hitting the one-year mark in August!



p.s. I've written reviews for several of these attractions on tripadvisor.com if you want more information. You can also always drop me a line.

A Cheese-y Day Trip

One of the many reasons we were excited about living in Hamburg is its easy accessibility to so many other places. Although our vision of hop-scotching through Europe on regular weekend excursions has yet to come to pass, I did spend a whirlwind 18 hours in the Netherlands last week to see a friend from my job at POST, and tag along with her and her partner to visit the Alkmaar cheese market.

Alkmaar is about 40 km northwest of Amsterdam. This quiet, quaint town started its cheese trading in 1365. Even though its cheese distribution has now been modernized, every Friday from late spring to early fall, the town puts on a reproduction of their centuries-old cheese market traditions.

Over the course of the first hour, we heard running commentary--in four languages--from the cheese market MC, giving us an overview of the market's history and players (you can read a bit about it here).

In case you weren't sure which way to go,
they had these markers set up to lead you
from the train station to the market square!
[photo courtesy of Kathryn Hargis]

Bringing the cheese to the market

The market square. The day we were there they were partnering with Aklmaar's Beatle Museum (don't ask), so the carillion tunes at the beginning of the market were all Beatles songs (including "Michelle"!)

Quality check. They cut a wheel in half
and inspect it, then core out
samples for tasting.
(We were close enough to try it--yum!)

Each wheel of cheese weighs about 25 pounds!
[photo courtesy of Kathryn Hargis]

After the quality is assured,

the seller (left)

and buyer (right)

slap hands continuously,

negotiating until they

come to an agreement.

No easy feat to toss this cheese around to load onto sledges.

There's a lot of running with cheese
at the market. After it's loaded
onto sledges it's taken to the scales.

After it's weighed, the carriers trot off to take the cheese to waiting wooden wagons.

Yes, we tried that flourescent blue cheese you see in the back.
It's a pesto cheese with lavender giving it that unique color.
Very mild flavor--almost like a mozzarella with lavender accents.

All around the market square were different vendors, selling everything from waffles and Dutch shoes, to, of course, different types of cheese. It was the perfect way to spend a beautiful day, and I look forward to more chances to travel abroad for glimpses of the incredible history around me!

[photo courtesy of Kathryn Hargis]

p.s. If you go to the cheese market: it's about a 20 minute walk from the train station to the market square. We got there at 9:25 and had prime viewing. Although the market goes from 10-12:30, you'll want to get there early, because things slow down a lot after the first hour.

Happy Birthday, Hamburg Harbor!

Every year Hamburg celebrates its Hafengeburstag--Harbor Birthday--with hundreds of ships visiting from other countries. This year the harbor turns 827!

How does a harbor have a birthday? On May 7, 1189 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa issued a charter to allow Hamburg to sail ships up the Elbe to the North Sea without having to pay customs duties. 

And since the harbor is the lifeblood of the city, only the biggest harbor celebration in the world will do!

The promenade area was 3+ km of food, drinks, jewelry,
and souvenirs, with everything from carnival carts to
more elaborate pop-ups, like this bar made to look like a ship. 

It felt like half the population
of Europe was crammed into the harbor!

The one thing I wanted to see during the four-day celebration was the Schlepperballett--the tugboat ballet. So I made my way through the throngs of people yesterday to explore a harbor full of ships and enjoy the welcome 75° F day!

I went aboard this massive Russian ship and staked out a spot to see the tugboat ballet.

The "ballet" featured four tugboats initially showing off their maneuverability before they moved into some synchronized movements, do-si-dos, and close-quarters sailing. Over the course of the 45-minute performance, the background music alternated between classical, pop, and rock.

The tugboats are in a line and perform an about-face.

The tugboats are moving in a line,  rocking from side to side. You can barely hear it, 

but the background music for this is "Purple Rain."

The tugboats bid farewell, and the ships that moved out of this part of the river 

during the performance greet them as they come back in.

Ships? Sun? All smiles!

I'm less a fanatic about boats than I am a big fan of being on the water, but it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement. And some of the ships are truly sailing works of art. 

I would call Hamburg's Hafengeburtstag a definite bucket-list item for ship enthusiasts, and a great way for everyone else to see how proud this city is of its harbor heritage!

Neuengamme

Although yesterday marks 71 years since Hamburg surrendered to the British in World War II, I thought it more fitting to post the final entry in my war series today, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

About 25 km southeast of downtown Hamburg sits the former site of Neuengamme, the largest concentration camp in northern Germany.

Neuengamme operated from 1938 to 1945. It began as a satellite of Sachsenhausen, then become an independent camp with more than 80 satellite camps of its own.

After the war, Neuengamme was used by the British, then turned into a succession of prisons, until politicians finally listened to complaints that the site’s history was being dishonored and deliberately overlooked.

I strongly debated visiting the Neuengamme memorial, but feel it’s one thing to encounter the horrors of the Holocaust through books and pictures and movies; it’s another thing to stand on the soil where tens of thousands of people lost their lives.

Many of the original buildings were destroyed, but the rubble
from the demolished prison that later sat on the camp grounds
has been arranged to show where the wooden 
inmate housing blocks once stood.

Closeup of the rubble from one
of the rows of barracks.

I expected my visit to make me sad. Instead, in the beginning, I was angry. 

I was angry at the teenagers on a field trip who were laughing and pretending they were researching the camp's rail system just to get away from the main group. 

I was angry at the man who wanted his smiling photo taken among the ruins of one of the infirmaries. 

I was angry at the kids running up the ramps of the brickworks building.

Then I was angry at myself, for being angry and judgmental. 

I didn't know why these other people were here and what they were thinking, any more than they knew why I was typing notes and taking pictures and constantly checking my phone (turns out there is a Neuengamme app that provides information for each of the 100+ signs around the site).

Who’s to say what is the right way to honor, mourn, or reflect?

This willow tree was planted as part of a garden that was closest to the road and camp entrance.
Inmates maintained the garden, but could not use it. The SS guards called it The Oasis.

I walked the grounds first, to see what was left of the original camp buildings, before going inside one of the barracks buildings for the main exhibit. The world felt disjointed, from the incredible rainbow completely encircling the sun, to the beautiful, quiet countryside complete with a nearby town of thatched-roof houses. It felt like a make-believe place where the things that photos and quotes and archaeological remains said had happened, could not have happened.

Neuengamme was originally founded for brick production. Inmates dug clay from pits like this one to transport to the brick-processing facility on site. Work expanded to include making armaments and supplies for the Nazis, 
and even running an angora rabbit farm.

Commemoration site for the crematorium. Some victim's ashes were buried nearby; 
many were scattered on the grounds of the camp's plant nursery.

Le Deporté by French sculptor Françoise Salmon

It wasn't until I got to the memorial area, near the site of the old nursery, that I got my first punch of reality. It came in the form of the painfully beautiful sculpture, Le Deporté.

I actually gasped when I saw it, then walked around it again and again, to take it in from every angle. 

This, I felt, was the soul of Neuengamme. It reinforced and reflected every word, every image, every emotion around the loss of humanity in this place.

Then I went to the House of Remembrance, where I saw the camp's heart--laid out on red walls with long white banners listing the names of the confirmed Neuengamme dead, beginning with Kurt Urban on February 22, 1940.

Panoramic view of the walls of the House of Remembrance

By the time I got to the main exhibit building, I was emotionally exhausted. But there was more to learn. Like the convergence of two worlds around Operation Gomorrah. 

During air raids, the Neuengamme inmates were beaten and rapidly forced into the few buildings with basements, causing many to be trampled, and those remaining to suffer from insufficient oxygen. Later, in the aftermath of the bombing, inmates were sent to clear debris from dangerous ruins and recover the bodies of bombing victims.

The stories of the Holocaust differ in their particular, local atrocities, but run on the same themes of degradation, malnutrition, medical experimentation, and murder. I learned something new here, however. Neuengamme had a “special barracks”—a brothel—where a dozen women from another camp were brought and forced to be prostitutes.

The memorial area includes a tower, large stone plaques for the 25+ countries of inmates' origins, and markers for villages, individuals, and homosexual victims of Neuengamme. But there is nothing to recognize the shameful treatment of these women. Every time I look at one of my pictures of Le Deporté now, I see them, in their silent, unacknowledged agony.

History shows us over and over the human capacity for cruelty to others. For the tragedy at Neuengamme I feel an unfortunate kinship, given the history of African Americans in the United States. Still, when I left the memorial, I wondered how these things continue to happen, even today.

How does someone disavow or disregard the suffering of a group they feel is different from themselves--forgetting that they, and their friends, and their family are all "those people" to somebody else?

I had thought this exploration of the past might gain me insight into Hamburg and its persona. But each person here is part of that mosaic, with experiences that may have everything or nothing to do with 1200 years of invasions and fires and floods and bombings and concentration camps.

So I'm looking upon my time here with renewed vigor. To continue to explore and learn and-- yes--compare, but also to discover more about Hamburg on an individual scale. 

Because among the many things that I take away from Neuengamme is this overarching lesson: when we lose sight of the fact that each name and every face around us carries its own story, we lose sight of our common humanity.

"Your suffering, your fight, and your death
will not be in vain."

This is the last of my three posts about world wars and Hamburg. If you missed the others, you can read them here: Ein Mädchen im Krieg and Bunkering Down.