Week 175 · Hamburg · Außenalster · Elbe Beach · Groningen · Friends from Korea
Groningen &
Another UK bank holiday weekend and since I had just been to the USA for the prior week, I decided to go see my friends from Korea who had recently moved back home to the Netherlands. They live in Groningen — my first time in Holland outside the Rotterdam/Amsterdam corridor. Groningen is a very nice town and very livable — at least during the hottest May weekend in the history of Holland.
I also spent a day in Hamburg on the way back. Great weather and I didn't realise what a wealthy city it was — similar to a Pittsburgh in that a lot of industrial production generated wealth in the 1900s. The industrial base was destroyed in the war but the nice part of town was relatively untouched. My tour bus guide noted: "You from USA — you OK, you bombed the port and your bombs exploded. The Royal Air Force (UK) bombed the workers and 40% of the bombs didn't explode and we are still finding them." I told him I worked in the UK and had to remove several UXOs from my construction site — which was in a residential area. So still some "discussion."
Overall Hamburg would be a great place to live if you have money (and it is the hottest May on record) to live in the nice part of town — but much more to see from a tourist perspective in Berlin or Munich.
Hamburg is Germany's second-largest city and its most important port, handling approximately 9 million shipping containers annually. Operation Gomorrah in July 1943 — a coordinated RAF and USAAF bombing campaign — created a firestorm that killed approximately 40,000 civilians and destroyed over half the city; it remains one of the most destructive conventional bombing campaigns of World War II. The RAF bombed primarily at night by area bombing while the USAAF bombed by day targeting industrial facilities — the guide's distinction about which bombs hit which targets reflects this tactical difference. Unexploded ordnance (UXO) from WWII is still regularly discovered across Germany, requiring evacuation of city blocks; Hamburg alone uncovers several significant UXO incidents per year. The Außenalster and Binnenalster are artificial lakes created by damming the Alster River in the 13th century; the Außenalster area is one of the most expensive residential areas in Germany with reportedly more millionaires per square kilometre than anywhere else in Europe.
My friends have had some big changes since I saw them last in Korea — they were free and independent and Korea was an adventure for them. Now they have baby twin girls and are living 10 minutes from each of their parents — quite life-changing but I was glad to see they are very happy. Of course with twins everyone has to pitch in — they had assumed since I had 2 girls I knew exactly what to do and handed me the babies. That was last century for me so I struggled a bit.
My rental was a BMW 1 series — none were available so I was "upgraded" from a BMW to a Ford station wagon. But it was fast on the Autobahn.
On Sunday we went to a WWII historical site for a hike — a collection point transfer station for the Holocaust, now a memorial and park. My AirBnB host, in addition to directing me to the great shot of the sunset, asked me: "So — America, they just want out? They want us (Germany) to build up our military again?" I couldn't answer.
"You from USA — you OK, you bombed the port and your bombs exploded. The Royal Air Force bombed the workers and 40% didn't explode and we are still finding them."