Bob:

All four of us set out after breakfast to visit an open-air museum at Volksdorf, a town which was conveniently located a half-hour bus and subway ride North of Heinke and Gustl's condominium. The basic entrance is free and you can wander around the grounds at will, but tours of the interiors of the old houses and workshops are only given on specified days and times. We weren't there on the right day, so we settled for wandering around and taking pictures of all the buildings.

Besides a basic thatched-roof farmhouse, the museum included a smithy, a mill, a house apparently dedicated to spinning and weaving, a barn, and a couple of buildings I just couldn't figure out. The smithy was clearly a working smithy, and I was sorry to not see a blacksmith banging away at a piece of iron. That has always looked like fun to me, at least for the first 5 minutes!

Monika:

Bob:

I'm not sure if the mill was originally a water mill, wind mill, or powered in some other fashion, but it was also apparently functional because a large grindstone was propped against the wall out front. Out in back we found a set of wooden wheels mounted on a spindle that clearly would be used to transfer power by means of large leather belts. There was some kind of machine under wraps next to that assembly which was presumably driven by it, but I could not discern exactly what it was.

The barn had a variety of very friendly animals that were apparently used by the local children as a petting zoo. We saw goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and ducks, some of whom were clearly hoping for a handout. The pigs and sheep, however, just seemed to want affection and so we petted them a bit. The mother hen was, well, acting like a mother hen and was worried enough at our approach that she shepherded her chicks out of reach of us.

Monika:

Bob:

After a quick trip back to Barmbek for Mittagessen, Monika and I set out again to downtown Hamburg where we wanted to do some shopping and take a canal boat trip. The 3:45 canal trip was sold out, so we bought tickets for the 5:45 trip and filled in the time with shopping and snacking, always a pleasant combination. Monika finally found a white, porcelain, 2-cup coffee pot that she badly wanted so we purchased it despite my misgivings about dragging the thing around during the upcoming month of traveling without breaking it! For dinner we bought some "belegte broetchen", ready-made sandwiches made with different types of rolls and fillings and took them down the the dock to eat before we boarded our excursion boat. We each had one roll with the crusty German bread roll that resembles a small French baguette, and one with a dark, heavy pumpernickel bread roll covered with sunflower seeds that really stuck to our ribs!

Monika:

Bob:

Our canal trip turned out to be perfectly timed to coincide with a beautifully clear, sunny sky and ultimately a gorgeous sunset. The canal network in Hamburg connects a network of feeder rivers to the main Elbe River and the harbor are. This network is so extensive and has so many bridges that Hamburg has the nickname of the "Venice of the North". Our trip involved mainly the Alster River, which has been dammed to form two lakes in downtown Hamburg, and some side canals.

We departed from the main dock on the smaller Inner Alster Lake and chugged along underneath the triple-arched railroad and automobile bridge to the 5.6 kilometer long Outer Alster Lake. On any sunny day with even a bit of wind, the Outer Alster Lake in Hamburg is a beehive of activity. Most of the activity is in the form of small sailboats gliding gracefully on the water, tacking this way and that, and, in our case, trying to avoid hitting our excursion boat, which technically had the right-of-way.

We saw a regatta of the Optimus Pram type of sailing dinghies, a plethora of the smaller 10-15 foot sailboats, a sprinkling of some 15-25 foot sailing sloops, and one crazy catamaran. The catamaran was about the size of a Hobie Cat, and its captain really knew how to put it up on one hull and keep it there. In general, he was not only faster than any other sailboat on the Outer Alster, but also faster than our excursion boat, which was steaming along at the maximum allowable speed.

Monika:

Bob:

Our captain slowed down when we turned off the lake into a side canal running basically East-West. These canals were too narrow to be practical for sailboats, but they were a haven for the sculling crews that were charging along all over the place. The largest shells were sculled by eight persons and resembled huge water-beetles moving rapidly along with their exactly synchronized rowing rhythms. As the blades came up from the water in careful unison, the ends of the paddles gleamed white against the evening sun. More common were the 4-person or 2-person sculls, which where obviously more maneuverable. We also saw the occasional single-person kayak or canoe, and one guy was paddling one of the original rubber-skin-over-wooden-frame Faltboot (folding-boat), something that was developed in the early 1900s in Germany. I remembered reading on Wanderung 12 in the Deutsche Museum in Munich how the inventor had carefully devised the framework for the Faltboot so that it broke down into lengths that could legally be carried as "hand luggage" on the German trains because hand luggage was free whereas anything larger would have had to travel as checked luggage and cost money! Clever, that.

Watching the parade of passing water traffic, we made a loop in the canal network and came back past the Volkspark (People's Park), which is an old park that has an absolutely huge outdoor swimming pool still used by Hamburgers in the summertime. At the outer edge of the canal network the canals became noticeably narrower and shallower. They were so narrow, in fact, that we had trouble passing some kayakers and canoeists safely, especially a group of 3 canoes who seemed to have novice paddlers and couldn't control where they were going very well! On the other hand, some of the young, male kayakers were clearly engaged in some friendly racing and zipped by us on either side with the narrowest of margins in their quest to be the first to their goal.

Monika:

Bob:

Returning to the Outer Alster Lake, we were just in time to see the sun set over the trees on the western shore. The golden sun reflecting off the lake with the sailboats still gliding hither and yon made for a beautiful scene, and we were really sorry to come to the end of our 2-hour excursion. But we packed up our cameras in our old kit bag and headed off through the dusk toward a park made from the old defensive city wall.

Monika:

Bob:

Our goal was the light-and-water organ at Planten and Blomen (Plants and Blossoms) that I had last seen during my very first visit to Germany in 1973. I didn't remember any details except that it was very impressive, and I wanted to see it again. The very slow northern dusk required about an hour to transition from sunset to total dark, so the show didn't begin until 9 p.m. (10 p.m. in the summertime). In the meantime we huddled together on a parkbench to try to keep warm and watched the ever-hopeful ducks waddling around begging from the audience.

But when the show began, it was well worth the wait. The show is a live performance of two people, one who literally plays the water jets, spouts, fountains, and so forth, and another who plays the multi-colored lights that change the color of each jet of water from white to gold, to red to green to blue. The mixture of light and water is extraordinarily graceful, and when correctly choreographed to the music it is very impressive indeed. This particular session was 4 selections of classical jazz music, that is, jazz pieces stemming from the 30s and 40s, and I thought that the abrupt changes in pace, melody, and instruments were particularly well suited to corresponding changes in color, height, and pattern of the water jets. After the performance we hustled home as quickly as we could, arriving home shortly after 10 p.m., at which point we just washed up and fell into bed.

Monika: