What to see in Hamburg: attractions

🙂 Greetings to travel lovers! Hamburg is located in the north of Germany. After Berlin, it is the second largest in the country. What to see in Hamburg? About this in the article.

This is a city where history and modernity are closely intertwined. He appears before his guests as a pompous snob, a fashionable hipster, or a careless port reveler … There are more bridges here than in Venice and St. Petersburg combined!

Attractions in Hamburg

Hamburg has two large rivers, the Elbe and the Alster. As locals say, the first river is needed to make money, and the second to spend it. This free city really knows a lot about trade. They know how to make money here and are always ready to suggest how best to dispose of it.

The city has stood for more than a thousand years where the Elbe flows into the North Sea, along which goods were transported across all of Germany. The port is the heart of the city, its breadwinner and the reason for its existence.

The port of Hamburg even has its own birthday. On May 7, 1189, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa granted the city the right to collect duties from merchants who carried trade items along the river. Every spring a big celebration is held in the port on this occasion – with a defile of ships inflating multi-colored sails and fireworks.

To appreciate the scale of the port, the largest in Germany and the third largest in Europe, with all its docks where ships are built and repaired, huge pleasure liners, colorful container ships and a palisade of cranes, you can take a ride through its water area on a pleasure boat.

But if you want to save 20 euros and are ready to do without the commentary of the guide, there is always the opportunity to take the regular ferry number 62. The ferry runs from Landungsbrücken berths to Finkenwerder on the other side of the Elbe. It belongs to the public transport system, and regular tickets are valid there.

Elbe

The best time to visit the port is early Sunday morning: 5-30. A fish market opens here. You can buy whatever your heart desires: from a monkfish caught in Asia just the day before and brought here by plane to porcelain angels in a souvenir seller’s tent.

The audience on the market is very diverse. Here you meet both respectable burghers who went shopping in the morning, and tourists who wandered around the bars all night and came here to refresh themselves with a herring sandwich.

A separate attraction is the Marktschreier. Market barkers, joking with customers, fill bags with various fruits in front of your eyes and sell this assortment for 10 euros.

The market ends at 9:30 am when services begin in the churches. At this time, the same bag of fruit can be bought for 2 euros, but it is too early to leave the port.

Cafes are already opening on Landungsbrücken, where you can drink cappuccino and order a burger with salmon or shrimp. Sandwiches like that are tastier at the tenth pier, on crispy buns.

If you want to find out what the real dockers and sailors eat, you need to go to the other end of the port. There stands, leaning heavily to the side, Oberhafenkantine – a diner with almost a century of history. The diner prepares labskaus from finely chopped meat and vegetables with scrambled eggs and potatoes. The dish looks peculiar, but nutritious.

Nearby is the Maritime Museum, which opened 10 years ago in one of the buildings in the Speicherstadt warehouse district. Most of these are now offices and showrooms.

One of the warehouses, after many years of reconstruction, turned into the Elbe Philharmonic. This is a concert hall and hotel, which are covered with a huge glass wave.

In Speicherstadt, you can choose a luxurious oriental carpet. And at the Coffee Museum, buy some coffee beans roasted in front of your eyes by a bearded master.

Alster

The gloomy architecture of the warehouse area and the neighboring Office Quarter is gone in the vicinity of the Alster, a tributary of the Elbe.

Dammed back in the XII-XIII centuries, this river turned into two lakes within the city limits – the Outer and Inner Alster. Once on the shores, you immediately understand where the money that the famous port brings to the city goes.

There are villas around the outer Alster. Local rich people have settled in them for a long time. 100 years ago, one in eight millionaires in Hamburg lived on Harversthuder Veg. It is still the most expensive street in the city.

You don’t have to buy a house to enjoy the beauty of artificial lakes. You can take a ride on a pleasure boat, stroll through the surrounding parks. Sit in a cafe drinking Alsterwasser – “alter vodka” or a cocktail made from beer with lemonade.

In winter, ice skating is possible on the Alster. True, only in those years when the ice reaches a thickness of 20 cm, and this happens about once every 10 years! But the lake freezes almost every winter.

In November, you can observe how the swans are relocated. When cold weather sets in, Olaf Niss, whose job is called “swan pope”, first drives them to the Little Alster – a small section of the river near the Town Hall – and then takes them by boat to an ice-free pond upstream.

Swans are a symbol and pride of Hamburg, but they are not the only ones that attract tourists in the Alster area. The main shopping streets of the city are located here. This is Mönckebergstrasse, going to the train station, Jungfernstieg, from where the Alster arcades begin, stretching along the Alsterfleet canal and very reminiscent of Venice.

You can walk in the center for hours, moving from store to store without going outside. Hamburg is a shopping arcade. If the recently built Europa arcade is not to your liking, then visit the Mellin with its painted walls and ceilings. “Mellin” is one of the main attractions of the area.

Deichstrasse

In the old part of Hamburg, it is difficult to find houses built earlier than the middle of the 1842th century. Not only was the city very destroyed during the Second World War, but it also burned several times, including during the Great Fire of XNUMX.

You can see what Hamburg used to be like on Deichstrasse. Ironically, that fire started right here. This is evidenced by a plaque on one of the houses. Some of the buildings still survived, as the wind drove the fire in the other direction.

Now this street consists almost entirely of restaurants and small shops with a rich tradition. Here you can eat Breton pancakes or buy a yellow Friesennerz raincoat that hangs in the closet of almost every inhabitant.

Having looked at the signs, it is important not to miss the small passage between the houses. Along it you can go to the canal and see Deichstrasse from its non-ceremonial side.

Schanze and Karo

You can really wander here endlessly, but by eight in the evening the shops and part of the cafes are closed. Therefore, life moves from here to the Sternschanze and Karolinenviertel districts.

In Hamburg there is also the Reeperbahn, famous not only for the figures of the Beatles who played here or the Salon Harry hairdresser, where they cut their hair, but also for its vibrant nightlife. Plenty of entertainment options for every taste. For example, Red Light Street. However, the locals for the most part bypass the Reeperbahn.

It is much more pleasant to stroll from the Kennedy Bridge separating the Outer and Inner Alster towards the Plantin un Blomen botanical garden. Passing the exhibition center with TV tower, you will find yourself in the meat market area. There, in the red brick buildings where cows and pigs were once sold.

They now house a brewery and a coffee shop, where you can drink coffee and buy freshly roasted beans. Here is the Bullerei restaurant owned by chef Tim Meltzer, a local celebrity with his own TV show.

Nearby, around the former slaughterhouse, the Knust music club has settled. There is a flea market on Saturdays – one of the best in the city. And what could not be bought on the market can be found in the neighborhood in Schanz and Karo. This is the colloquial name for the two most fashionable districts of Hamburg.

There are a lot of small shops in Schanz and Karo. They offer designer clothes, bags, furniture and whatever a designer can think of. There are enough cafes and bars.

In recent years, the appearance and reputation of Schanze and Karo have changed a lot. Especially in the vicinity of Karolinenstrasse, which became quite bourgeois. Schanzenviertel is still holding on. Just look at the Rote Flora building, painted with graffiti and sometimes covered with vague slogans.

The former theater, taken over by squatters in 1989, became the political and cultural center of the area. It is likely that in a few years Schanze will look completely different. Therefore, you should hurry up to find these streets in all their stupid splendor.

At the confluence of two rivers

Of course, the Alster flows into the Elbe a little to one side from here, but nevertheless, it is here today that two Hamburgs meet – a port, noisy and slightly sloppy with a bourgeois and prim Hamburg of snow-white villas and expensive shops.

The abattoir at the meeting point is no longer there. Here you can buy a T-shirt with a stupid lettering. Bargain at a flea market, or just have a cup of coffee.

Video

This collection of videos contains interesting and additional information “What to see in Hamburg: attractions”

Want to know more? Here’s another video of what to see in Hamburg.

Friends, have you been to Hamburg? Write about your impressions. We look forward to your advice on what to see in Hamburg. 😉 Enjoy your travels and make new friends!