Fröhliches Weihnachten Hamburg (Merry Christmas Hamburg)

Well a quick one is a fast one they say – and this is a quick update for the super speedy overseas trip for the Christmas Markets in Hamburg and Lübeck. This trip was so quick in fact that we were away for one night.

Of course it was only girls allowed or, only girls that wanted to go, so Claire, Amy and I got up early one December morning for our el-cheapo journey to Hamburg. We dropped our bags at the hotel and headed straight for the markets. Of course, stopping for some Wurst (sausage) on the way. Little did we suspect that food and drink would feature so much on this trip. A few metres down the way we had our first glühwein (mulled wine).

Prost!

After glühwein, came hot apple cider, and then onto the hot chocolates with all the flavoured liquors under the sun – peppermint liquor being the best. For us geeky tourists, you can keep the mugs as souvenirs. The Christmas Markets kind of make sense in Germany – it is starting to get cold, and they are an ideal way to make shopping less stressful. All the locals meet up with their friends to eat and drink along the way.

We made our way back to the hotel where our room was finally ready. It was a bit of a shock as we discovered that the door to the bathroom was glass, with the toilet right behind it! Yes, alright, it was slightly frosted, but it still left little to the imagination. So whenever anyone had to go to the ladies, everyone was ordered to the other end of the room! Ah yes, love travelling and all of the surprises that the hotels bring you!

That evening, we headed out to Minatur Wunderland – a massive miniature railway located down at the harbour.

This railway covers about 4 warehouse sized rooms and tries to emulate different places around the world. But the trains are not really the big attraction. There are all sorts of buttons to press things to work – a crane here, a musical outdoor theatre and ballet concert in another place, and boats that travel through the water. The best part, I thought, was the lighting, which switched from night to day from one end of the warehouse to the other. This includes all of the lighting during sunset and sunrise. When the sun set on one area, the street lamps flickered on just like the real thing. All of the car lights or the cars and trucks are also zooming around on the road, would turn on. They would even stop and give way at the intersections!

The next morning, we made a train journey about an hour north to Lübeck. This was not entirely intentional – this had been the first trip that I booked for Europe and discovered that the reason that the flights on Ryan Air can be so cheap (10€) is that they advertise that you are going to one city, and then fly you out of an airport which is actually an hour away from the city. But this was OK, we went to another Christmas Market, and ate and drank our way around there. This was really the only thing we could do, as although Lübeck is a beautiful medieval city, nothing is open on a Sunday.

We actually had to catch the bus out to the airport early as we had done all the shopping we could and we got a little bored. But that is OK, I had to keep my energy for New Zealand – next!!