Day 10: More on Our First Day in Hamburg

Hamburg as a City-State has its Own Flag © 2018 Bo Mackison

From journal notes, October 3, 2018:

Hamburg is called the Gateway to the World. Germany’s largest port and the second-busiest in all of Europe, tucked in a well protected spot on the Elbe River, 60 miles from the North Sea. It’s also Germany’s second largest city with a population of over 1.8 million. Overall, a busy place, but not so busy our first day exploring because we arrived on German Unification day, a national holiday.

Info from hamburg.com: The impressive Rathaus or City Hall is Hamburg’s seat of government; It is where Hamburg Parliament and the Senate assemble. The eclectic, neo-renaissance building from 1897 was one of the more interesting buildings we explored.

Hygieia-Fountain ©2018 Bo Mackison

A passageway connects the City Hall to the Hamburg Stock Exchange. The newly renovated courtyard between these buildings resembles an Italian piazza and is decorated with the ‘Hygieia-fountain’ which was named after the Greek goddess of health and built in remembrance of the cholera epidemic that took place in 1892. At the feet of the goddess is a dragon and symbol of the defeated cholera.

At the base of the fountain are three male and three female bronze figures which symbolize the power and blessing of water–a fisher boy, a woman with a pitcher, a girl rowing, a boy with a model ship, a faun with the shell of wealth, and Aphrodite (she who was born of the waves.)

Four granite lions, sculpted by Carl Börner, sit at the entrance to the courtyard, welcoming you into the inner courtyard.

Entrance Hall on Main Floor ©2018 Bo Mackison

City Hall construction started in 1886 with 4000 wooden poles that had to be drilled into the muddy shores of the Alster Lake, in order to carry the weight of the 436 ft wide, 230 ft deep and 368 ft tall building. It is truly palatial, having 647 rooms. It is one of the few buildings that survived both the Great Fire of 1842 and the bombings of WWII which leveled much of the city.

Every city hall should have such fascinating art fixtures. There’s the copper water fountain…with the water spitter.

Clock and Tableau ©2018 Bo Mackison

There’s the clock above the main entrance’s door–a tableau with mother and child on the right side and the Grim Reaper on the left side. At quarter past the hour, the child’s figure strikes the bell; at the top of the hour the Grim Reaper strikes the bell. A reminder that life is fleeting.

The Brewer ©2018 Bo Mackison

And outside is a veritable sculpture gallery. There are hundreds of full-sized sculptures on the facade of City Hall. The gods and generals, saints and emperors are not the only ones given a moment in statuary fame; the common man is also featured. Bakers, candlestick makers, potters. Here, the brewer is toting a cask of his brew.

Manhole Cover with hamburg’s City Symbol ©2018 Bo Mackison

The city symbol is found everywhere — even on the manhole covers.

From the Stumbling Stones website: Since 1995, Cologne-based artist Gunter Demnig has been commemorating the victims of the German Nazi regime through his project “Stolpersteine” – Stumbling Stones. The artist has been laying small memorial stones all over Germany — in sidewalks and pavements outside the places where the people lived or worked who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime.

These stones were near the main entrance to Hamburg’s City Hall and were laid in 2002; the stones now number 5,000 in Hamburg alone. (We also saw stones in Kiel and Amsterdam.)

Just before returning to the ship, we stopped for a cappuccino. Every cappuccino at Fräulein von Elbe: Eis, Cafe and Leckerbissen (Ice Cream, Cafe and Delicacies) is served with a side of gelato. I approve of this tradition.

 

Day 9: Cruising the Kiel Canal

From my journal dictated October 2, 2018 19:00

The plan was to set sail and enter the Kiel Canal around 4 PM. However, due to strong winds, the ship had to wait for a tug escort, thus we were delayed by several hours. Still, it was enjoyable sitting on the Explorers Lounge, watching both the people waiting with anticipation and nearby ships plying the choppy waters.

We were scheduled to travel through the Kiel Canal all night long and reach Hamburg around noon. The 62-mile-long Kiel Canal links the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. More than 30,000 ships pass through the canal every year and it is ranked as one of the world’s busiest artificial waterways.

If you like facts and figures, this information about the Kiel Canal from the Encyclopedia Britannica is perfect:

Kiel Canal, also known as the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal (North Sea–Baltic Sea Canal) is a waterway in northern Germany, extending eastward for 61 miles from Brunsbüttelkoog (on the North Sea, at the mouth of the Elbe River) to Holtenau (at Kiel Harbour on the Baltic Sea). The canal has been enlarged twice and is now 526 feet wide and 37 feet deep and is spanned by seven high-level bridges that have about 140 feet of clearance for ships beneath them. The locks are 146 feet wide by 1,072 feet long. The canal constitutes the safest, most convenient, shortest, and cheapest shipping route between the two seas.

Here is Kiel Harbor on the Baltic Sea and the begining of the canal.

And here is the bow of the ship, nosing her way into the locks. The Viking Sky is 745 feet long with a beam of 94.5 feet so it was an easy fit inside the locks, but with the winds pushing us around it felt like we were much closer to the sides of the locks than in actuality.

Once we were inside the locks, the front gates slid into the side walls and we were free to pass.

After that sailing highlight, it was time for an eating/drinking highlight — the buffet offered a variety of German beers and German food including bratwurst. It felt almost like being back in Wisconsin!

And of course, the obligatory picture of setting sun, this one taken as we cruised through the Kiel Canal.

And here’s the sunrise, twelve hours later.

I was awake in time to see the ship exiting the locks at Brunsbüttelkoog and then we sailed the Elbe River making our way to Hamburg. We passed small towns with rows of terraced houses and views of the river. We arrived in Hamburg about noon.