Our trip to Hamburg - Donnerstag, 13.6.13

Our large group of Americans and Germans waiting for the ferry in Hamburg

On Thursday (6/13/13), we had the opportunity to go to Hamburg with the host siblings. At 9:30am, fifteen Americans and fifteen Germans loaded in a train to Hamburg. We were lucky enough on the way there to get to sit in the same area (we weren't as lucky on our return trip). We arrived at the main train station at 12pm and we ran around for a couple minutes searching for a bathroom. It seemed to be at the other end of the train station and cost 1 Euro to use.
As we convened together again, we, Americans did our count-off, "Eins?", "Eins" (Brynnen and Cassandra), "Zwei?", "Zwei" (Deborah and Lily), "Drei?" "Drei" (Hailey, Sam, Madelynn), "Vier?" "Vier" (Gunnar and Hannah), "Fünf?" "Fünf" (Jess and Sophie), "Sechs?" "Sechs" (Nick and Ryan). It seemed that we were not the only school group travelling around as we saw several other groups walking the streets.
Hamburg is known as one of the first hanseatic cities, which means that it was one of the first cities to trade goods with other cities dating back to the 12th century.
We walked from the train station to the Europa Passage (Oy-rope-ah Pah-sa-zsa), where we briefly saw sophisticated fashion stores and a small violin concert played by about 100 youth ages 6-12. It was very amazing (picture on link)!
Then we made our way to the Altes Rathaus (Ahll-tez Raat-hows) and took several pictures.
Despite our imagination, this building was built in the 1897 and one can see 20 emperor statues on the front of the building.
We took tons of pictures at the Rathaus and then walked on toward the Gedenkkirche St. Nikolai (Geh-denk-keer-keh Saint Nee-ko-lye). This church now serves as a memorial to the bombing of Hamburg during WWII. It was apparently the tallest building in the world from 1874-1876. Today, it is the second tallest building in the Hamburg.
After taking some photos, we kept walking towards our reservation at Miniatur Wunderland (Mini-ah-chur Voo-nda-lahnd). As a group, we had a reservation to enter this incredible display of the coolest miniature models of thousands of places around the world. (It is really worth checking out the link). There were exhibits that were indescribable. The "sun" (lights) even went down and all of the installations adjusted to be working in the "night". There are many photos on our link. One of my personal favorite was the many displays of the same location. Each location was a different time period (i.e. before, during, and after the wall came down). After a short hour and a half with the miniature world, we met up to walk to one of the many ferries to take a tour around the harbor.
The ferry system in Hamburg is another form of their public transportation, travelling from dock to dock around the harbor. The Hamburg port is the third busiest in all of Europe and we  had a chance to see the many boats and different docks. We got out of the ferry at the beach and neighborhood Övelgönne (Eh-vel-geh-nneh). We walked around looking at the interesting houses and view of the harbor. We found ourselves at a cute little cafe called Strandperle (Beach pearl), where they had just enough room for us all to sit. We hung out as a large group and ordered beverages as we relaxed on the beach, watching the boats go by. We started to walk back towards the city center and reunited with Lily, who had not had a chance to catch up with us at the cafe. We got on the ferry and it was looking like getting our train was going to be quite tricky. We still had 3 stops with the ferry and 4 stops with street car and we only had 20 minutes.
We arrived at the platform and our train was running a bit late, so we all ran quickly and half of us got on the train. The doors began to close and the conductor called out that we would not fit. I yelled through the train, "Portlanders! Portlanders! Get off now! We're not taking this one. Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!" All students ran off of the train quickly and again, we counted off and we took a deep breath of relief. We had everyone! Phew!
That meant that we'd catch the next train in 45 minutes. We wandered through the train station and found ourselves something to eat for dinner. We all made it back in time and we were able to get on the next train, but we were separated in three different sections. It was a relaxing ride back to Hannover and all of the students looked thoroughly exhausted. We have had quite a busy couple days! Tomorrow (Friday), students will get to present their presentations in English classes in school. I know that they'll do great! This group of students are just awesome!

Ryan is so excited to be at Miniatur Wunderland!

Photos from this Day