Hamburg, Germany: The train takes the strain

August 9, 2015

TWO CITIES, so close and so unalike. I could have ridden from Bremen to Hamburg but it hardly seemed worth it. There'd be some good bits but an awful lot would have been riding out of one city and then into an even larger one.

So I took the train. It took me through a couple of hours of flat countryside that never once had me wishing I'd ridden.

And you know what's funny? I bought my ticket and one for the bike and walked through the station concourse to the lift for my platform. Immediately I began to worry. I was eighth or ninth in the queue, so who knew how many had gone before me or would follow? If only half wanted to go to Hamburg, we were going to have a problem. More selfishly, I was going to have a problem.

There were cyclists all over the place on the platform. I stood where they stood, because they seemed to know, and I angled myself into what I hoped would be prime position to barge on to the train.

What makes it funny is that there were two entire carriages just for bikes. Not odd corners, not spaces by the door: two entire carriages with hooks and bike stands. I don't know how these things work round your way but it came as a heart-stopping novelty to me. A railway company that loves cyclists. Whatever next!

Two entire cars for bikes. And to think I worried there wouldn't be space

If Bremen was badly hit in the war, Hamburg was devastated. It was fire-bombed for eight days and nights. The destruction and killing wasn't as great as in Dresden, where thousands simply suffocated because blazing wooden houses sucked air from the streets, but not much remained. Just, ironically, the warehouse district.

The warehouse district was all that survived the bombing

The warehouse area is now a tourist attraction

Hamburg took a different direction from Bremen. Rather than rebuild as it had been, it built a modern city. That means it lacks the faux-vieux beauty of Bremen but that's not to say it lacks charm.

As always in cities, I took a guided tour. The fashion is for the guide to charge nothing but hope for tips at the end. He may well make more money that way. Nobody wants to give less than the others.

We came from several countries. Our guide was Ukrainian and he asked in turn where we lived. Fifth in line was a lone woman with bobbed black hair and a stylish bag over her shoulder.

"I'm from Rrraahsha," she said.

"Whereabouts in Russia?" our guide asked brightly. Ukraine was once in the Soviet Union.

The woman hesitated.

"Moscow", she said.

There was an awkward silence. Things haven't been good between Ukraine and Moscow.

"Sorry," she said.

The guide shrugged and smiled.

"Welcome," he replied.

We wandered the streets, pausing before a dark metal plaque by the entrance to a low office block. In this building, it said, Zyklon B was distributed to death camps.

"It's not hard to imagine the reaction of the people who work in the building now, is it?" the guide asked. "Every day they come to work and they have to walk past that. And the people who have the offices there now complained to the city council and said it was bad for trade. It put off customers. There was a row but the city insisted and the sign's still there."

A man prays in the ruins of Hamburg cathedral

Little was left of Hamburg by 1945. As in Bremen, the sturdiest building in the centre was the cathedral. Curiously, much of it fell but the tower remained. The church has been left as a wreck, just as Coventry left its own cathedral a wreck. It's a war memorial. Walking back that way, I saw a man on his knees, praying in a murmur. I watched him for two minutes. He was still there when I left.

Plaques in the pavement remember where Jews were sent to gas chambers

Because you'd kick yourself if you didn't, I walked out to the Reeperbahn. Like most places famous for sin and depravity, it's either not what it was or people were more sensitive back then. Like Pigalle, it's simply seedy, although Pigalle has the edge when it comes to plain bad taste.

There are sex shops and conventional bars, and self-professed night clubs where signs on the door warn that a Coca-Cola costs 18€ and other drinks accordingly. Large men in tight suits are available at night to point that out to visitors landed with outrageous bills they hadn't expected.

I walked back to the riverside, where much of a warehouse now houses the world's largest model railway. It's hard to say what disservice the words "model railway" do. There are trains and mountains and an airport and ships that sail through rivers. There are several countries, with freight trains and Amtrak expresses running in and out of what may be Las Vegas and, thanks to the compression of history and geography, beside pioneer villages and the faces of presidents carved from a mountain.

There are cars that move and stop at traffic lights, and a Tour de France that doesn't move at all. Night falls every 15 minutes and lights within the models change. It's billed as the Miniatur Wunderland and there's no exaggeration.

Static models in transparent cages tell the story of Hamburg over the centuries. Interestingly, the Nazi era has red flags with a central white dot. No swastika.

Why?

Because even in miniature, it's illegal to fly a swastika in modern Germany.

FOOTNOTE: Hamburg has more bridges than Amsterdam. It has more than Venice. It has more bridges than Amsterdam and Venice put together. In fact, it has more bridges than any city on earth.

Today's ride: 4 km (2 miles)
Total: 3,493 km (2,169 miles)

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