U-434

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A bit of on the far end of the fish marked at St. Pauli, the U-434 has found its last harbor. The russian military submarine has been securely fixed at the harbor and is now serving as a museum. You can enter the ship on your own or take part in a guided tour. I can only recommend the guided tour, as you get of course good explanations of what you see and you also get more to see, as the guided tour is the Read More +

Only by Lift

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The “Alter Elbtunnel” is a fully functional tunnel for cars and pedestrians. But despite the fact that you can drive through it, below the Elbe, there is no ramp to the tunnel. Instead, every vehicle that likes to pass the tunnel has to use one of four lifts to down to the ground level of the tunnel. The tunnel itself is quite nice to visit also for pedestrians as its walls are covered with white porcelain, its quite bright and friendly down here. Also there Read More +

Huge

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Every thing is a bit larger here. At least if it can float on water. On the harbor tour, some very impressive ships, cranes and docks can be seen. From a bit of a distance, those cranes look like toys. But once approached with the ship, there real size becomes immanent. Some of those cranes are designed to lift several containers at once in order to be more effective in unloading and loading the panama class ships. With all the technology used here, e.g. also Read More +

Staircases and Paternosters

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This guided city tour was a bit special. Of course I also learned something about the city, e.g. the big fire, which destroyed a third of the houses of Hamburg and resulted in a completed rebuilt of the affected areas. But the main topic of this tour was to show the “Kontorhäuser”, houses of the merchants. Typically those buildings where built by red/violet stones and named after their builder. Some of the merchants also built multiple houses, so the second or third house got a Read More +

Walkabout at Warnemünde

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Quite obviously I am not the only one taking the train from the city center to the harbor area at Warnemünde, a district of Rostock at this Sunday afternoon. It’s a bit like a mixture of a party and a tourist site. There countless boats offering food and drinks on one side of the path and on the other souvenir shops and shops selling luxury articles hope for customers. At the beach, there is even quite a crowd of people. But the main beach activity Read More +

A Cool Tour

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There are quite interesting Wikipedia articles to read on the smart phone for the objects surrounding one. There is not an explanation for all sites, but it’s quite impressive, what contributors have created. But of course hearing the story from a local guide is more personal and individual. So, like in other places, I took a guided city tour through Rostock. Luckily, the weather was quite nice – as most of the time on my trips – but also quite cool. It was not a Read More +

For Pedestrians Again

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After the arrival in the late afternoon, I took a first opportunity to get an overview of Rostock. I used my favorite approach, the random walk, to get along the city. As I quickly discovered, this city, at least in the center, is again very well suited for being discovered by foot. My first steps outside the hotel, which is situated quite in the center, brought me right through the pedestrian zone. At first, I though, this looks quite similar to Rheinfelden AG (in Switzerland). Read More +

Flat Mountains

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As I learned the two days before on a guided tour at Leipzig, every change in elevation over 10 meters is considered a mountain here. So the “mountain” forming the outer wall of the Elbe around Loschwitz, which elevates 84 meters is a true giant in the local terms. Of course I could have easily walked up that elevation, but there is a nice handing railway, the first of its kind, bringing one up a bit more comfortably. Arriving on top, one has an excellent Read More +

Not Blind But Without a Visual Memory

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It looks like the German Museums perform a strict “no picture” policy, which has its good and bad sides. On the positive side, of course is that you don’t have other people disturbing you in looking at the exponates, but of course your on visual memory in forms of personal pictures gets a blank page. The “Rüstkammer” for which I found at least some nice images on the official museum homepage and wikimedia and the “Grünes Gewölbe” are there no exception. At the first place, Read More +

A new city

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My first impression of Dresden, after walking around the old city center was a bit different from what I now think of the city at the end of a sightseeing tour day. The well restored “Frauenkirche” and other monsterenous buildings built in sandstone and often decorated let you think you are in a different time. But after a bit of reflection, one recognizes that most of these buildings where badly destroyed in the second World War and have not been maintained during the DDR. So Read More +