Wednesday Nov 13, 2019 – Hamburg Elbphilharmonie &
Deichtorhallen - 2nd post today
I’m writing this on the train back to Amsterdam, so I’ll
ramble on more than usual, if that is possible. The Elbphilharmonie viewing
platform is a ½ hr walk from the hotel.
After our buffet breakfast we set off.
The walk is through a neat area of the Hamburg port. The walk is lined with the old shipping
offices and warehouses many have been converted to other uses. There are also new office and apartment
buildings lining the canals. I of course
took pictures as we walked. We arrived
at the tower at 10:30. The building is
354 ft tall, and the viewing area is 121 ft high, and it circles the building I
of course took photos all the way around.
There are three concert venues in the building, hence the name. After about 45 minutes we walked back by
little different route to the Deichtorhallen so I could take more photos. The Deichtorhallen is very close to our
hotel, as you can tell by the photo I took from room. This place is not a museum, it just puts on
different exhibitions through the year.
There were a lot of young artists/students making sketches in the
different areas, and a guided tour was also going on. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think
that applies more with modern/contemporary art than with more realistic or classical
painting. But that is just me. I really went overboard with the photos here,
but I get to do that. After we finished viewing the exhibition we headed for
the train station to have lunch and wait for the train. I left Sue at the station and headed to the
Kunsthalle to ask the information desk if the two paintings we missed yesterday
were actually on display. On the way I
checked my email and our contact at the museum had gotten back to me. She apologizes and confirmed that those two
paintings were not on display. The
museum changes the collection more frequently now than before. I warned her that we would be back.
So I returned and joined Sue at the station where we had
pasta for lunch and a beer of course.
The station has a large food court with just about everything. After eating we walked around the stores in
the station. There are two large grocery
stores almost next to each other. There
are a lot of commuters based on the number of local trains, and I’m assuming
that people (usually the wife) going or coming stop to pick up what may be
needed for tonight’s meal.
Our return trip didn’t start well. Our train was due at 15:46 on platform
14. At 15:46 an announcement said our
train would now come in on platform 12.
So everyone troops up and down the stairs to the new platform. The train was at least 12 min late. This was important because we had to change
trains in Rheine, and there were only 7 minutes between when the first train
arrived and the 2nd train left, so that was a problem. The car and seat reservations we had no
longer applied on this train, so there was a lot of confusion. We eventually found seats. Sue’s seat mate told here that there had been
an announcement (in German) that passengers were to take open seats,
reservations no longer applied.
So we were already late.
The conductor when I asked her, and a helpful passenger also going to
Amsterdam, told us to get off at the next station that I’ll call station
B. We were supposed to catch our train
at station A. Stay with me now. The
second train we wanted to catch had already gone through station B on the way
to station A. Then it would return to
station B on the way to Amsterdam. The
second train took enough time going from station B to station A and picking up
passengers there that our first train would get to station B before the second
train returned. Crazy I know, but it
worked. Because the helpful passenger
spoke up immediately when I asked the conductor what train we needed to catch
to get to Amsterdam, that this isn’t the first time this has happened.
As I’m writing this our train (the second train} made an unscheduled,
and not a smooth stop. It wasn’t an
emergency stop, but not the usual smooth trains normally make, and it wasn’t at
a station, yikes. Well after about a
minute it started again, we seem to be in a city, so maybe Devin Nunes’ cow was
on the track (that’s from Sue). An
announcement was made that there was a signal problem, i.e. there was another
train going in the opposite direction on our track. Our train has to wait about 10 min to allow
the track we need to be cleared. So we
are waiting. I’m done writing for the
evening, but I will mention that I took 326 photos today. I won’t post all of them, but I will post a
lot.
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