Just another Hamburg Sunday

As mentioned before, Sundays in Hamburg with my mom mean flea market. Today my mother went to sell some stuff herself, she has so much to get rid off after selling her house. That meant that we got to sleep in, yeah! We had a very slow breakfast and to my joy with Hungarian salami, my weekness. We strolled about the flea market and the kids each found more treasures. Johanna got a necklace of blue topaz and Sophie an old Swiss pocket knife.


We had all sorts of ideas about the activities of the day, not being sure if we should rent kayaks, a canoe or a paddle boat or maybe visit one of the many, many museums. We never actually did anything but relax, stroll through the neighborhood and take it easy. I think those days are important, even though I do have the tendency to fill them to the brim due to the pressure that we only have a few days here. It turned into an evening of extreme rain, so maybe it was fortunate that we did not spend so much money on kayak rentals. Hamburg is perfect for water sports though, with all the rivers and canals and the 2.500 bridges, more than any other European city.


There are some fantastic places along the rivers and canals, above is an example of a beautiful garden, albeit small, and the canoe just waiting for take off. Some places have fantastic villas and amazing gardens, there are also many cafes to stop at. It is very easy to spend a whole day on the water (and it is amazing at night too). Another past time is going for ice cream. There is a place with Italian ice cream at every corner with a multitude of flavors. They are bought by round scoops, usually two or three in a waffle cone and in a nice mix of flavor. Except for us though, we are absolutely hooked on woodruff (Waldmeister), which is awesome. It is a very local thing, I think it is just known in the north of Germany.


We also got a beautiful rainbow, we all agreed on its beauty and also its unfortunate placement in the sky while we were in the one ugly street in the area. Johanna wants to tear it all down and rebuild, I think maybe some planning and planting and communal effort is needed. Isn't it strange to have three beautiful districts of old houses meet at this one ugly street? It used to be an amazingly wonderful road, but was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt ugly and hastily. I wish city planners would put more effort into areas like that instead of huge projects for tourists and prestige. ... Come to think of it, maybe it is an unfortunate road with ugly buildings that needs a rainbow anyway.