Hansetour Day 3 | 26 April 2023
The early morning Flixbus ride to Hamburg was filled with blinding sunlight, but once we arrived, the rain was back (it’s much colder there up north than back home near Frankfurt!). Nonetheless, Hansestadt Hamburg immediately impressed us with its bigness: it’s on a much larger scale than Bremen. It also experienced a Great Fire like London, only in the mid-19th century, meaning that almost all of its buildings postdate that time. Shiny plate glass offices, railway bridges, and huge brick warehouses dominate the cityscape, along with a few tall church spires and the cranes, containers, and cruise ships of the huge harbour.
Speaking of industry, the indisputable highlight of our first day in the city was the lunch we procured after dropping our things at our Airbnb (a room within a young Hamburger couple’s very hip apartment in the very hip area). This lunch was found in the most unlikely of places in an industrial area across the water: what looked like shed in a parking lot surrounded by big roads full of HGVs. You won’t be surprised to hear that we didn't end up there by chance, but even given the good Google reviews, one would have been justified in giving it a miss, what with the old couch parked haphazardly in front of the unassuming structure and the curtains drawn in every window.
But once we got inside the Veddeler Fischgaststätte—what joy. The place was packed with firemen on their lunch break and old folks on midday excursions to an establishment reassuringly stuck in time. The very German waitresses were brusk to the point of rudeness. There was no cutlery available other than forks—apparently, it is traditional to eat Backfisch, the battered fried fish the place specialises in, with two forks. And our rather large portion of Backfisch (it was, in fact, the ‘klein’ size, and we shared it), which was served with the classic homemade potato salad and remoulade, was so, so good.
We spent most of the rest of the day congratulating ourselves on this find while we walked our way through the architectural highlights of Hamburg. To summarise: the Kontorviertel’s 1930s expressionist office megaliths of high-fired bricks (see photo no. 1) were suitably impressive; the Elbphilharmonie concert hall was disappointingly self-obsessed with its architectural gimmicks; and the various churches were incredibly protestant, white-washed, and sparse.
Dinner was gnocchi and ‘nduja we brought from home fried up in a pan in our Airbnb hosts’ kitchen; unsurprisingly, ours were the only animal products in their fridge. Resisting the urge to spend the whole evening resting our legs, we then headed out into our neighbourhood to find Malto, one of Hamburg’s many microbreweries. The funky sour I went for was truly lovely and highly reminiscent of natural wine, with the small serving size deftly disguised by the unusual but fitting presentation in a nice big wine glass. Other bougie breweries, take note.
There were various small plates on the menu described only in Italian—there were glowing filament lightbulbs on the ceiling—we were sat in a minimally converted shop front—
Ah, the big city at last.
Great reading ! Really enjoyed it thanks !