Wanderung 30

After flying back to Hamburg from Washington, we had the usual day of recovering from the aftereffects of the flight and the jet lag caused by the time shift. So we decided to use the day to wander around some of Monika's old, familiar places and enjoy the fine weather. Our first step was to take the subway over to Altona, where we set off on foot for the small cemetery where Monika's parents are buried. Since the burial plots in that cemetery, as in most German cemeteries, are treated as small, personalized gardens dedicated to the deceased, they each feature a unique mix of plants and other decorations such as photographs, candles, or personal objects.

Such a plot requires maintenance, of course, and although you can hire folks to do that, the tradition in Monika's family is for the survivors to take care of each plot. Heinke and Gustl tend the plot normally, but we were glad to take a turn doing some of the necessary weeding and watering for the gravesite. I found it very satisfying to make the gravesite look neat and tidy, kind of a small way of honoring the memory of Monika's parents, I guess.

Afterwards, we decided to do some shopping and took the train back to the Central Business District of Hamburg. Unlike many cities, Hamburg's downtown remains quite vibrant and economically viable, filled with boutiques and larger department stores. The department stores are, of course, the high-line ones like Macy's in the U.S., and their prices are commensurately higher than what we usually pay. BUT, some of them also have a "sales" floor, somewhat like a "Filene's Basement", where high quality goods are sold at a steep discount.

Monika was looking for a light sweater, so we headed for the "bargain basement" (literally) of Karstadt and started to root around the racks. I was trying to help Monika find something when I came across several racks of really nice, medium-weight, men's sweaters made from a mix of cashmere wool and silk. The sign said "1/2 Off" and the prices were marked way, way down to $40, which I thought was quite reasonable for that fabric in a nice style and color. But when we went to check out, we found out that the "1/2 Off" actually applied to the already marked-down price, so the sweater was $20! For cashmere-silk??? So I could not resist and picked up two V-necks and a light blue cardigan. Actually, at those prices I would have purchased more (these sweaters feel VERY nice against my bare skin!), but I was acutely aware of our suitcase space problem: we both just had one carry-on for a month-long trip. Monika did also find a nice woman's sweater, but this is one of the few shopping trips where I have purchased much more than she did--such an unexpected turn-about!

Returning to our hotel, I carefully sorted out and removed all the "bicycle trip" gear from my carry-on, and then stuffed my newly-acquired sweaters into it as I intended to use them on the cruise back to the U.S.. We had to minimize the bulk of the clothing we took for the bicycle tour because we really were limited to what would fit in our pannier bags on either side of the rear wheel, so it was a fine line of judging whether we would REALLY use each article of clothing. (As an aside, by the end of the bike trip I did end up using every bit of clothing that I took with.)

That evening, we rolled our little wheelies back past the huge Ohlsdorf cemetery and the adjacent, much smaller, Jewish cemetery, to get to Heinke and Gustl's home. Heinke graciously fed us another wonderful dinner and donated her saddlebags to Monika for the bike trip because the ones we had purchased on Amazon.de did not fit our bicycle luggage racks! That's one problem with mail-order shopping; you can't actually try something out until it arrives in the mail. But Amazon.de, like Amazon.com in the U.S., has a generous return policy, and we ultimately got our money back!. Heinke's saddlebags worked great on the trip--> It's wonderful to have helpful relatives, let me tell you!!

Detlef and Susanne had come over for dinner, and we enjoyed talking with them afterwards until just before dusk, when we hopped on our bikes and rode back to the hotel. There we locked the bikes up in the garage (no parking charge for bikes!), and brought down the clothes for the bike tour to pack them in our saddle bags. Fortunately, everything fit with room to spare, because our experience on our Spring tour had clearly shown me that I needed to have space available to carry food for most of our meals. As prepared as we could be, we retired to our room for the night, but I have to say I was anxious about taking off into Denmark again, not because of the Danish people, who are uniformly helpful and nice, but simply the "unknown" factors, the chief of which was that I was riding a bicycle with "Made-in-China" reliability into a foreign country where I did not speak the language. What could go wrong? (Let me count the ways.)