Thursday, October 25th - Shopping in Hamburg
Bob: Our first order of business was to turn the car into Avis before 11:00 a.m. because if we didn't they would charge us for an extra day, and after that we decided to do some shopping in the city. We picked up some outdated maps of Germany, France, and Austria for 1 Euro each as well as a book of German folk songs while we wandered around the central shopping district of Hamburg. In one of the small squares we found a curious set of temporary buildings and a small ski slope piled up with real snow. It turned out to be part of an ad campaign to encourage people to visit Austria, and I went along with it by purchasing one of those big soft pretzels with mustard. We took the subway back to Barmbek, passing the harbor area along the way. We said good bye to the Cap San Diego, the Rickmer Rickmers, and all the other ships in the harbor as our train went rumbling through on an elevated section of track. I even saw a ship high and dry in a floating dry-dock just across the river from the Landungsbruecken where we had started our Volksmarch through Hamburg several weeks back. It all brought back nice memories and we were sad to leave, but we did have to get back to Heinke and Gustl's place not only to enjoy dinner, but also to try to pack all of our accumulated stuff into the two wheelies and two carry on bags that we had allowed for this trip. After much shoving and hauling, we managed to fit in the five dolls that Monika had accumulated and the 10-15 CDs of German songs that I had accumulated along the way. We did not, however, manage to fit in all the books and maps that we had accumulated, so we asked Heinke for a box and managed to pack all that away to mail back to the U.S. |
Monika: Today we had to return the car. Heinke thought we needed to vacuum the car, and lent us their hand vacuum cleaner that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I thought a car without additional scrapes, was a lot more important than a clean car, and after all, the rental agency needs something to do too. We filled up the car a last time and got to the rental agency without a problem. When I gave the car a last once over, I found a last empty bottle. Next to the rental agency was an Aldi, so I got my 25 cents deposit on the bottle back immediately. After that I was up for a last walk around the city. At one place, where in December they have Christmas market, they again had little wooden huts. This time it was advertising for Austria vacation. I wanted to go to the music store, that was next to Opera House to see whether I could find some more songs for us. I was really disappointed when I could not find it at all. I did go into the store that was there now (some fancy clothing store) and they told me, the store had been closed for at least three years. However, a smaller version of the store that had only the music but no instruments was just a block away. So we went over there. Bob did find another book of folk music but I did not find a good book with Operetten music. Pity. We walked back past Karstadt, and noticed that both Karstadt and Alsterhaus had gone upscale on us, and they are really not as much fun as they used to be. But in Karstadt in the book section we still found some sales, in particular they had European maps on sale. Since we do plan to drive some more through Europe, we picked up maps from Greece, Italy, France, Austria, and England for 1 Euro each. Back at Heinke and Gustl's place, we decided that it might be wise to pack up the books and mail them so that we had less bulk and less weight. Heinke had a little box, that was just the right size. So we started packing. After the books had been taken care of, it was only a matter of fitting 2 beersteins, 5 dolls, and 10 CDs into our two suitcases. It wasn't easy, but by golly we made it! |
| Prolog | Germany Map | Cruise Map | Epilog |
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