Hamburg Weekend

Into Germany, one of the first question in our minds was about the Kiel Canal, - was it still operating ?   We soon came upon a magnificent late 19th Century steel (& rivets !) Railway Bridge, which our train approached via the required loop,

and crossed (the bridge has many similarities to the Eiffel Tower) above...

... a convoy of ships going northwards to the Baltic Sea.  It is pure history to see such a famous landmark, still functioning in this day & age - [except the big cruise ships are just too tall to use it].

Arriving in Hamburg on Saturday evening, the Binneralster (lake) in sunshine & suffering from the loud noise from the left - the Christopher Festival (the Gays) -  & the city did show us its two sides whilst we were there.

The yachts were sailing on the larger lake, the Aussenalster...

the skyscrapers & telecoms tower looked down... 

..on a couple of folks on holiday, talking to our neighbours, a couple from Frankfurt, a lawyer & a banker, whose 3 year-old daughter was hanging out with Grandparents for the weekend.

Sunday morning and the other side - the elegance of Hamburg came to the fore, with bikes,

the Rathaus (the City Council !),  - a beautiful building -

modern city blocks of advanced architectural design...

and memorabilia of an earlier era, (when we were teenagers)...

and then of an even earlier time, when a Junkers JU-52 (1932-1980), flew over...

and down in the town planners' dream of HafenCity, new residential blocks are shaping up..

amidst the many old bridges, rebuilt after the destruction of WWII,

like much of the city, nearest the docks,

but with imagination, verve, & a lot (a very great deal !) of money...

Next morning was another moving on, considering possible purchases..

And our next train...   to the Netherlands...  was awaiting us... on another platform !

Scandinavia Farewell

It was time to move on, first from Norway to Denmark, and also from Scandinavia, too.
We enjoyed these northern countries very much indeed, especially Sweden, where we spent time with old friends, Jack & Mildred, from our shared Malaysia days, and Norway, for its majestic scenery, and new friends, the Crockers.

Stavanger has its sculpture, both modern and ancient, one beside the harbour, and the other inside the Railway Station, as we were about to board the train to go down the coast, to catch the ferry to Denmark.

There are a lot of rocks in Norway, and they are so much a part of the landscape that after a while, you don't notice them... until you get to Denmark !

The country is softer and flatter, its harbours carved out from... sand !

Aarhus was our transit city in Denmark, as we were en route to Germany.

But Denmark still had some special moments, with the harvest getting under way, and architecture to surprise...

AND we filled up our second page in our EuRail Passes, 25 May to 4 August, which now looked like this :