Hodgepodge Hamburg

Alright, well this post is going to be a bit of a rambling mish-mosh post.  Since I only have time to post once a week and I want to document as much as possible, that is just how it is going to be.  So, here is what happened last week.

We took pictures of ourselves so that Tom's family could photoshop us into their family photo.  We really have a hard time getting photos of the two of us together, so this is a rare treat!  In this one my camera is perched on the seat of some bikes we had rented.  We are at a huge, beautiful botanical garden right by my work.  We go there some times and take walks and read.

Not last Saturday, but the one before, Tom played in a soccer tournament with his work.  It was a bunch of law firms against other law firms.  Tom doesn't really play soccer, so we decided to leave early, go to the park by the river that I talked about in this post, have a picnic and practice a bit.  We also rented bikes for that activity.

The soccer tournament was quite a few hours long and I was one of the only fan for our team - the only one that was English-speaking.  So, I occupied myself by trying to take action shots.  The coloring is a bit off, as always with my camera, but here's the stud in action.

In case you can't tell, this is when Tom headed it away.  Good defense!  And check out the height!  That's the basketball player in him.

Foul??

One of their only goals and the only one I caught.

Sadly, their team lost every single game...

One of the days after work this week we decided to go explore the botanical garden close to our house (this is a different one from the one by my work).  We didn't stay that long, but I caught these photos.

I keep seeing leaves that look like they are changing, as if it's Fall.  Apparently, Hamburg's weather is also confusing to the plants.

The view from out metro stop.

On this past Saturday we decided to go check out a "design fair" right one of the metro stops that we go through on the way to downtown.  We had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be a flea market / night market / general celebration of jubilation.  The food looked great, the music was great and we even bought a souvenir!  The best part is that Tom, who usually hates crowds and, thus, things like this, was somehow more than willing to wander for quite a long time.

African food!!!  We miss Philly...

Look down this one street that didn't have any stalls or anything and saw that people were dancing to music  at the end of the street.  Went and checked it out.  So nice to see people having "good, clean fun."

Just as we were about to leave we saw this band setting up.  We kind of had to go, but I could tell these guys were going to be great.  We waited and waited, almost left, decided to stay, waited, and so on.  FINALLY, they started to play.  We.loved.them.  They reminded me of bands I saw live in the South singing bluegrass, except they were German and, while we couldn't understand what they said for the most part, it was clear they were singing about Hamburg.  One of their songs was "House of the Rising Sun," changed so that it was in German and talked about Hamburg.  They also had TONS of character.  We stayed for about 3 songs, which was about 3 songs longer than we had time for, but I wish we'd stayed for the whole thing.

The guy on the right was my fave.

This couple started dancing.  Such joy all around.

The reason we had to leave was because Tom had singed up to do this charity run with a team of other people at the law firm.  We didn't entirely understand where to go because of a combination of the website being really unhelpful, the people at work being unhelpful ("just meet at the orange clock-tower" isn't great directions to foreigners when you're in a huge area of downtown with tons of tall building blocking all views...) and Tom not paying enough attention to directions.  As a result, we ended up wandering, following the runners we saw back toward what must have been the starting point for a half hour or longer.  Finally, when the time came when they were supposed to start running and we still hadn't found it, we gave up.  We enjoyed seeing the harbor though and all the great views!  Hamburg is very proud of its harbor, which is suppose to be one of the the biggest in Europe.  

Both Tom and I kept staring at this building trying to figure it out.  One the one hand the silver-blue facade looked like the tarp workmen often put up when a building is under construction.  One the other hand it looked solid.  Just, it was strange.

I really liked these apartment buildings on the water.

Love seeing random old-style buildings.

Hamburg has more canals than Venice, but luckily it is not sinking.

FINALLY, on Sunday we decided to head back over to the botanical garden by our house, which we had only barely explored before.  Tom, sat on a bench and read/slept while I wandered the entire thing, taking photos of whatever I pleased.  It was huge and gorgeous.  Germans really know how to do landscaping.  It's very cleanly landscaped without being too symmetrical.  Does that make sense?  Anyway, I was impressed.  Here are some shots.

This tree was just bizarre.  Not sure if you can tell.

You can't tell because of my camera's bad color-quality, but these leaves were half pink.

These next several photos are from the Chinese garden, which may have been my favorite part.

This tree had a strong resemblance to cousin it.

I love English garden style.

weird tree

lake in the middle

This was in a greenhouse, which was locked, so I took the photo through a window.

And now it's Monday and back to work!  We've already been here for a month!