Weekend Excursion to Hamburg

Last weekend I traveled to the city of Hamburg, which is in the Northern part of Germany and it is know for its Harbor. Before going there, I heard multiple good things about it and many people said it was one of the most beautiful cities in Germany, but I really was not that impressed. However, that may have been because once again I had a hassle arriving there, I swear I don’t have good luck traveling, and because there was a planned schedule of events so I felt limited to the things I could see and do.

The Fubis program organized this trip and we were going to be there from Saturday to Sunday. To travel there we were taking a bus and we were meeting at the main campus at 8:30 a.m. Now, I have no idea how to get to the main campus because our classes are not on campus and I only went there once. Therefore, I knew I needed to leave early to ensure that I found where I was suppose to go and arrived on time. However, I soon realized that walking and figuring out where I am is definitely not my thing. I ended up walking the completely wrong way and got lost. Time kept going by and I still found myself in an unknown place so I called my friend who was going and he attempted to give me directions. After walking for a good half hour I finally found my way to an U-Bahn and it was 8:30 at this time. Thus, my friend told me to take the U-Bahn to the Dahlem Dorf station and the bus would pick me up from there because there was another student that they were going to pick up there. So right when I made it there I saw the bus arriving and I was soo happy. My friend was waving at me from the window, but then he got a confused look on his face. As I was looking at the bus, it did not stop, but instead it kept going. I was soo confused and then I saw one of my friends, who was actually the other kid, running after it. Yet, they did not stop for him either. So we met up and I called my friend and he informed us they were running too late so they refused to stop even though they told us they were going to pick us up. I was going to call the actual lady, but my phone ran out of money on it therefore I couldn’t. We were both quite mad and didn’t know what to do, but seeing as we both had already paid for the trip we figured we might as well figure out a way to get there. So him and I went to the train station to go see about buying tickets there. When we arrived we were informed that it was going to cost us 73 euros, which is roughly 100 American dollars. We were not thrilled with this but we went ahead with it. We were told that we had 5 minutes to catch the train so we had to rush and when we made it down to the platform we looked up at the stairs and then another one of our friends walked down and we go did you miss the bus too? And she said yeah they said they were going to pick me up at Dahlem Dorf, but left with out me. Weird that this happened to 3 people right?

Anyways, us three boarded the train and actually had quite a fun train ride. It was way more comfortable than the bus, it was faster, and we had food and drinks provided for us. Once we arrived all we knew was the name of the hostel so we started asking people on how to get there and we started exploring. After about a half hour we found it and we were quite pleased to hear that we were the first to arrive. Because of this, we were allowed to check in, pick our rooms first, and go up to them and freshen up. Probably after being there fore 20 minutes or so the rest of the group arrived, however unlike us they were not allowed to check in and go to their rooms.

Once everyone dropped off their luggage we headed downtown for some free time and a tour of the city. While we were walking though, the three of us who missed the bus had to check in with the leaders and they were so rude to us. They basically told us that they saw us, but did not stop because they did not recognize us as participants of the program and then laughed that we had to pay so much money to get there. We were not happy about this, but there really was nothing we could do about it.

On our free time we only had time to eat so we did not get to do much. Then we went on a tour and that was kind of boring. At first we went to some cool places like the town hall, which was the center, but other than that we just walked through canals, which don’t get me wrong were pretty but there was nothing special about it, and then we ended on the harbor. After our tour we went back to our hostel, took a nap, and then prepared to go out for the evening.

One thing I can say is that they definitely had a good nightlife there. We spent most of our night on a street that we decided was a mixture of Bourbon Street and the Las Vegas strip. That night I did not end up coming back to our room until 5:30, which I definitely regretted in the morning when I had to be up at 8:15 in the morning but it was well worth it.

            Once we woke up and checked out we were off to a boat tour of the harbor. At first we were all excited about this because a boat tour sounds really cool. However, we soon realized this tour was going to be nothing like we expected. It was cold and rainy, therefore that instantly made it bad. Then, we thought that we would see some cool, interesting buildings, but it was literally 2 hours of machinery and ships. I mean it was nice and pretty being on the water, but other than that nothing special.

            After the tour ended we had a little bit of free time for food so we went on a search for hamburgers because we really wanted to be able to say that we ate hamburgers in Hamburg, however we never ended up finding them. Once we finished eating we then went to an emigration museum, which was also alright but it was nothing special. This was the last thing we did there. My over all opinion was that everything was alright, but nothing really popped in this city that made me say I want/need to come back here.

            However, tomorrow me and 10 other people are road tripping to Munich. Unlike the other trip though, we planned this whole thing and by planning I mean booked a hostel and car and other than that we are just going to explore and see what random things we come upon. So im very excited to see what kind of things we get ourselves into!