HAMBURG
We left the apartment early and barely caught the 7:20 a.m. train to Hamburg, getting there at 10:30. We had contacted Christian, Elke’s son, to see when we could visit with him and he had indicated he would be free at 3:30 p.m. Until then we tried to visit, by subway, a section of town Susie had read about but went in the wrong direction and made a huge loop that took us back to the Hauptbahnhof, our starting point, where we decided instead to walk to a street that cousin Maria and Jan had lived on in Hamburg. We found it and were passing the time eating a late breakfast when I finally looked at What’s App and discovered Christian had become free much earlier. We met him, we were a little frazzled, but his idea of what to do in Hamburg, a ride around the harbor, turned out to be perfect for us. The boat ride around the harbor was included in our all day ticket. We got off half way through and had coffee and Kuchen at a beach cafe in the middle Hamburg on the Elbe river where an artificial beach was dotted with families enjoying the sunshine.
By this time I was exhausted, having walked five miles, and even though Christian invited us to spend the night, I knew I would be dead weight during the evening, so we elected to take the train for the hour ride to Celle where we just missed the bus to Winsen and spent the hour until the next bus sitting in a Sushi restaurant near the train station where there was a constant screeching of Japanese over Facetime by the woman behind the counter. The sushi bowl was delicious.
Finally we got the bus back to Winsen and had another 10 hour sleep and were ready the next morning to go again.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 