Hamburgers in Hamburg

Although I was in Hamburg for an entire weekend, I didn't manage to eat one single Hamburger... But I did find a historic building within the city that showed the Hamburgers' undying love for our delicious American sandwich:
But not everything in Hamburg was about greasy fast food. It turned out that the city of Hamburg was filled with a rich history of destruction, reconstruction, prostitution, and refinement. Hamburg grew up (and continues to operate) as a port city on the river Elbe very close to the North Sea. As such, the sustainment of its trade operation was necessitated by its ability to satisfy the burly seamen who passed through from day-to-day. To this extent, a lonely street in Hamburg called Reeperbahn was able to develop itself into a haven for peep shows, strip joints, and other establishments of worldy desires... A walk down this street brought back memories of Amsterdam and the red-light-district, but it seemed that Reeperbahn was something different... The lights and sounds and thousands of tourists made it more of a "party avenue" than a back alley sex shop.

During WWII an Allied operation called Operation Gomorrah, targeted at demoralizing the German citizens into surrender was launched upon the citizens of Hamburg. The effect of this operation was the total destruction of Hamburg and a need to rebuild pretty much everything. From the top of the St. Nikolai Kirche I could see the whole city and thanks to some circa 1942 photos that were up there, I could also see how much the city had rebuilt since its leveling in the war. When I was there, there was still a lot of construction going on everywhere, but I think that most of it was no longer due to World War bombings. Instead, it was because of a new initiative to create a residential area in the middle of the Elbe called HafenCity. I didn't get a lot of details on Hafencity, but it looked like a sort of land creation project in which they were building a whole new district on concrete posts extending into the river. Joe and I walked around this area for hours seeing all of the construction being undertaken in the area. It was really pretty neat to see.

I've got lots of pictures of everything in my Picasa album here.

While in that area, I was also able to take a visit inside a Russian U-Boat parked in the Elbe river. It was really amazing to see the tight quarters that they had to live in for months on end while out at sea. And it was also a little unsettling to know that this U-Boat was probably primarily used to spy on (and probably prepared to attack) the United States during the Cold War. This fact was confirmed by a picture that was hung up inside the boat...