Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.

(Some teabag wisdom for the day.)

NOTE TO THE AUDIENCE: Today Jesse taught me how to upload photos so they got bigger when you clicked on them. Try it out!

The end of this week was full of adventures! Like I said in my last post, we got to explore the shiny shiny city hall on Tuesday. Here's a photo. Yay!

I took this picture standing on the steps leading down to this famously picturesque canal, which is picturesquely pictured below.

That evening we took a stroll through the Planten un Blumen park near the heart of the city where they have a nightly light and water show with someone playing music on the water organ. It changes every two weeks and this week was a classical set including Bolero and I can't remember what else. It was awesome in a tacky sort of way to watch the water and light change corresponding to the music. I felt like I was in the middle of Fantasia.

On our way back to the bus stop after the show, we were distracted by a street performer who was doing crazy things with fire. He juggled flaming torches, danced dangerously while doing fiery tricks, did crazy things while wearing flaming wings, and eventually used some sort of intense spark-throwing spinny things in his encore.


Wednesday we went on tours of the university libraries and learned how to use them, then on Thursday we went on a STADTRUNDFAHRT!, meaning a double-decker bus tour around the city. I learned lots of new interesting things about Hamburg, some of which I will share with the world because they're neat.

This row of houses on the left are some of the oldest buildings in the city. They somehow managed to survive the bombings of both world wars and are thus still standing. Another fun fact: the city's extensive canal system/the Elbe/and the lake give Hamburg over two thousand bridges. That's more than in Amsterdam, London, and Venice combined!

Along with bridges, the city is also jam-packed with Smart cars. (Listening, Dad?) Really, they're everywhere and in lots of fun colors. They also like to park creatively. Sometimes they park horizontally up on the curb between two vertically parked cars. What silly Autos.

There's lots of construction going on to build this and that. What I like about it is that almost every new building going up is covered with glass in some modern fashion. This is a city that likes its natural lighting.

The next photo was taken passing by the Alster (lake downtown). That poof of water on the right is from the huge fountain that is perpetually spouting water up many meters in the air in the middle of the lake. I also learned that Hamburg is one of the greenest cities ever with millions of trees all over the place. Someone did the math and determined that all the numbers evened out to about 38 trees per city block. That makes so many trees! It's also a city law that one is not allowed to build a building higher than the trees that are in that area, except in special circumstances that probably involve lots of moolah. That means no skyscrapers.

An example of the architectural clash between new and old. I like it.

I also learned that the city attempted to hide the entire lake from the Allied forces during the war by covering it up with wooden panels and logs, but it didn't work and they bombed the heck out of it anyway. Despite the terrible devastation that ensued, it didn't take long before Hamburg's harbor became what is still considered the 8th most important harbor in all of Europe.

After our tour, Sophia Smith treated us all to delicious ice cream in a local Eiscafe. This is a picture of Sarah's slightly melted hamburger and fries ice cream. Heh heh.


Aaaaand this is me playing in the train station with Liz Chase looking on disdainfully.

I did lots of other cool things, too, buuuuuut sleeping is also cool, so I am told.