Saturday, May 7th
Up at 4:30 am to catch a 5:10 shuttle bus to Terminal 1, where we flew the cramped, cruddy, but cheap easyJet to Hamburg, Germany, by way of Gatwick, outside of London. Using a clean and efficient Metro and help from unexpectedly friendly natives, we found our way to Hotel Smolka in an upscale section of the city. We'd tried to book something more central, but a hard rock music concert and a football game had usurped all the rooms.
A previous, on-line traveler had accurately described the 37-room hotel as a five-star B & B. Our room easily accommodates a huge armoire, two easy chairs, a six-foot writing table, and ample walking-around space. The toilet is down the hall in a separate room with its own tiny wash basin, and further down is another room for the bath. The latter is as large as Versailles with lighting designed by a someone used to working on a Broadway musical. The bath itself has state-or-the-art German engineering that requires someone with an advanced degree (or Bob) to figure out how to use it.
At 5:31, my grand niece, Kalynda, whom we had not seen since she was a little girl, arrived for drinks and dinner with us. Now an accomplished young lady of 26, she is completing a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Hamburg. Since we had more or less lost contact with her side of the family, we had two or more decades of catching up to do.
Because we're in town so briefly, we have no way to judge the city fairly. Both of us had been here forty years ago and had harbored bad memories of it, but the warm, sunny weather, which we're told is rare, helped us revise our opinion. Because it has one of the world's largest harbors, it was almost totally leveled in World War II. Today, totally rebuilt, with almost half of its area devoted to lakes and 1,400 parks and gardens, it's the greenest city in Europe. It's also called “the Venice of the North,” because it boasts more bridges than Venice.
While we were here, the city celebrated its harbor's 822nd birthday, which dates back to the time that Emperor Barbarossa granted it exemption from various customs duties. Unfortunately, we missed the highlight of the festivities yesterday, a tugboat ballet with the wonderful German name, Schlepperballet.
The feel of the city, based on our brief stay, is 180 degrees different from that of Madrid. Where the former was dirty and choked with traffic, both automotive and pedestrian, this one, at least in our neighborhood, is clean and orderly. People keep the streets clean and do not jaywalk or race the do-not-walk signs; they wait patiently for them to turn green, even if there is no car in sight or other people to see them.
On the sidewalk outside our hotel are brass plaques four inches square with the following information: “Hier wornte/ Johannes Kahn/ JG 1870/ Deportiert 1942/ Theresienstadt/ Ermordet 1.3.44.” The one for his wife Jenni added the line, “1944 Auschwitz.” Later, we noted similar plaques in front of many other handsome houses in this stately, tree-lined neighborhood.
