In the night of July 30, 1943, a devastating fire-bomb attack destroyed large parts of Hamburg and started a huge fire-storm. The fire in this neighborhood was so intense that it consumed all the oxygen from the air, causing the people who had taken refuge in one of the underground Read More …
If I had put my mind to it, I’m sure I could have found some distinguished and worthy historical personage to tour Hamburg “in the footsteps” of. But the fact of the matter is that when I am in Hamburg I tend to loiter around (or loiter about, as our Read More …
Recently I counted through and discovered that I have been to at least a hundred and fifty Adult Education Centers in Germany, either to lead workshops or do presentations or to speak with their IT people and have a look at the database system they were using. A hundred and Read More …
While I was riding around St. Pauli, near the harbor, the wind came up and the clouds started getting darker, so I found a sheltered place under a roof where I could lock my bike to a railing and walked down some steps to the Fischerhaus Restaurant. This restaurant has Read More …
The Alster is first of all a river, a tributary of the Elbe, which starts in Schleswig-Holstein and meanders for 56 km, in a general southerly direction, before reaching the Elbe in Hamburg harbor. In the year 1190 a dam was built near the lower end of the Alster, in Read More …
One day in Hamburg I went to visit someone in a district called Rahlstedt, which is at the far eastern end of the city. With the help of my ADFC cycling map I found my way there through the districts of St. Georg, Eilbek, Marienthal and Jenfeld. In Marienthal my route Read More …
Hamburg was the location of the first public opera house in Germany, which opened on January 2, 1678. The great composer Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) came to Hamburg at age eighteen and got a job playing the violin, cello and cembalo in the orchestra of the Hamburg opera house. He Read More …