This morning in 5 sentences--
Woke up.
Ate breakfast.
Checked out of the hotel.
On train to Hamburg.
Arrived in Hamburg.
Elizabeth and I made it into Hamburg and checked into our hostel and grabbed a bite to eat at its adjacent cafe. We are staying in a great funky area of town and had a great funky veggie lunch to go with the whole vibe. Again, very Euro-chic. :)
While Elizabeth went to an eco.meeting of some sort, I spent the afternoon walking around Hamburg taking in the sites--the Rathaus (city hall--I find it amusing to be called Rat-haus) and wandered along the shopping streets and visited the beautiful St. Nikolaus Church memorial to the War (another church left bombed out) and then sat in St. Michael´s church resting my feet after I had ridden to the top and enjoying the view with several loud Italian men. It was not the men that made it enjoyable, but the amazing view and the fact that the sun was finally breaking through the clouds. Finally I was going to get the sun in Germany that we have been hoping for!
I walked to the St. Pauli U-Bahn stop and went back to the hostel where I met up with Elizabeth. We then walked a bit, had an amazing dinner at this great Asian place (which served no less than 800 items on the menu--I am not kidding) and made it back to the hostel where we found our Brazilian friend getting ready for bed. Haven´t mentioned him yet, but our roommate for the night was this sort of older guy (mid thirties) who was visiting from Brazil. Did not talk to us much and spent much of his time cleaning up things in the spotless room, locking the door every time he went in and out of it. His habits bordered on the bizarre (as opposed to strange or quirky as one might call it) but he was harmless of course.
Tomorrow we are off to Berlin--Elizabeth´s favorite German city. I am excited to get there and to see the hippos...