Harbour Anniversary in Hamburg

Cold weather and warm people, probably a typical atmosphere for a harbour in autumn, but NO, it was this weekend as well.

Foggy and windy and rainy. But there were over 1 million people who during 3 days of crazyness kept each-other warm - unwillingly - because you were really trapped in a mass of moving bodies. Hamburg alone has 1,8 million inhabitants, now imagine that Saturday, when I went there, there were approximately 650.000!!! Just the people. Count the stands with food which also block the roads and the crazy bands and you can imagine the wacky atmophere.

It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience,... because it was nice but I will probably not be tempted to join such masses soon. At least not in Hamburg.

821 years were they celebrating, and I went there to actually see the tug-boat ballet (which I ended up seeing only on TV as I did not get from one dock to the other on time).


I arrived earlier and took a look around. Managed to see the BMW regatta.

In order to take a picture I had to ask for permission for people to move a bit out of my lense. It was incredible!!!

There were a lot of stands there, offering from sweets, drinks, to the traditional Fischbrötchen, fish sandwiches, or the Backfisch (a way of fried fish served either in a bun or with potato salad. I had mine with salad).

Here was a very funny stand, where the Backfish would be cooked upstairs and then arrive through a slide downstairs to be served to visitors and tourists.

It looked amazing but also terrifying: rescue simulations with helicopter from the sea:

This what you see here is a Catamaran, functioning with solar energy. The biggest boat using solar energy until now.

Nevertheless, the highlight of the show was this beauty: Queen Mary II. On sea since 2004, this wonder of human ability is breathtaking. It is 345,03m long and from 41,15 to 45m wide, has a height of 71,94m (plus some extra 9,75m under water) and comes with a crew of 1.253 people to cater to approximately 2500 passengers. The floating city which costed around 870 Million € has 17 decks, of which 13 are open for passengers.

I tried to take a picture in which one would realise how big this floating city is, but it was without any luck, I think. The pictures cannot give back the sensation of being next to such a huge vessel!

So here is a comparison for you, taken from wikipedia:

And to end this blog entry: here's a picture taken for me by some organisers: just me, surrounded by floating luxury.

(source: http://www.qm2day.de/)