Day 49: Hamburg Happenings

It’s a double post today, so prepare yourselves!

Day 49 not only took us to another new city, but it also became the start of the 14-day countdown until we fly back to the States…

We enjoyed one more breakfast at the hotel in Berlin and then gave ourselves some resting time back in our room since we didn’t need to catch a train until 12:30ish and check-out wasn’t until midday. Once we headed out, the trek to the station was mostly uneventful. Berlin’s main train station is quite big, but we came to it via the U-Bahn, so we got to bypass a lot of the ground level craziness. We found our track and then out our stuff down since we had some time to kill. I made a pit stop, and I was grateful that we had a little bit until our train was coming because the line in the bathroom was quite long! It moved quickly, but I told Brandon when I got back to our stuff that I found it odd there was only 12 stalls in the women’s room of a station in the CAPITAL of the country. Perhaps there was another bathroom elsewhere, but I saw no other signage…

Our train came on time, and we had easily one of the shortest direct rides so far between travel destinations. Berlin to Hamburg on the ICE was less than 2 hours, and then we hopped on a bus to our hostel. The hostel is pretty basic, but it’s cute! We were both still a little tired, so we mostly chilled in our room for a couple hours before going out to grab dinner ahead of our big plans for the evening.

We took a walk to the closest U-Bahn station (which was 10 minutes away…pretty far by comparison to our proximities elsewhere) and headed towards the harbor. I found an Italian restaurant for us to eat at that was very good :) We did the whole meal ordering and payment process in German, which is not a first, but I think it’s one of the few times we haven’t had staff at a restaurant actively “call us out” for being native English speakers, so that was nice! After dinner, we wandered around for a few minutes taking pictures of the boats in the harbor before heading to the dock we needed. Our big plans??? We went to see The Lion King (Der König der Löwen)!!

The theater for both the Lion King and Frozen (Die Eiskönigin) are on a little peninsula thing in the middle of Hamburg Harbor. The theaters actually sit right next to each other. While you can drive, most people take the ferry across (arguably, it’s the much cooler way). It’s a very quick ferry ride, and then you just walk up the ramp and there’s the theater!

I have never actually seen the “original” Broadway production of The Lion King. The German production is verbatim to the one in New York; it’s just all in German. That piece was the only caveat in me feeling like the experience might be a little extra overwhelming, but I learned very quickly once the show began that I have clearly taken on a greater understanding of the German language because I felt like I could *mostly* actively translate the dialogue as the show progressed. It was either that, or I’ve seen the movie too many times :) The show really was incredible! The puppetry, the dancing, the…everything was just magical! I highly recommend the show if you get a chance to see it (in English or in German)!

By the time the show ended, it was almost 11. The ferry folks were incredibly efficient getting everyone back to the “mainland”. We got a U-Bahn and a bus back to the hostel and then crashed. As I write this, we’re doing some laundry, but I’ll write more about today’s plans in the later post! Until then, enjoy the pictures!