A Taste of Hamburg

Let me start by complaining about the exchange rate. It sucks right now for those of us with U.S. dollars. It's a real game trying to decide where to exchange your money, where you'll get the best rate and how much to change. It's a real bummer to hand over $100 USD and get about 80-something euro in return. Heavy sigh. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, we landed in the morning, so we couldn't get into our rooms right away. We decided to investigate our surroundings. First we walked around the hotel and stopped in a convenience store where I bought a Coke Light.

This devoted Coke fan was not pleased. We then took the train and checked out Hamburg's downtown. It's beautiful.

I also took this picture because I was being silly. At first I thought it was a restaurant, but it's a bank. In my mind, I kept pronouncing it Spark Ass. On the train, we saw a little boy maybe 6 or 7, get on with his scooter. After a few minutes we realized he was by himself. As we watched, he pulled out a cell phone and had a conversation. If you saw a kid doing that in the US, someone would call the cops. In our rooms, we discovered the only channels available in English in our hotel in Hamburg are CNN, BBC and financial channels like CNBC and Bloomberg. Some of us are way too addicted to having the television on for the background noise. I'm one of them. We also had these. How did they know I was such a gummy fan?

We had dinner at a resturant the folks at the front desk recommended. As we were eating, local musicians were trickling in and setting up. Interestingly, to us anyway, they sang in English.

As much as it's exciting to see and experience new places, it's also good to see a little bit of home.