Having toured around the fringes of Hamburg on our 1st day we wanted to spend our last day in in Hamburg exploring the river Elbe and Old Town Hamburg.
First thing we wanted to do was try a Hamburg delicacy the Franzbrötchen. I was informed by a native Hamburger that the Franzbrötchen could only be found around Hamburg and if I travelled 30KM outside no one would know what I was talking about. The best way to describe this is it's like a flat deep fried soft bread like sweet cinnamon bun. Really quite good, I find a cinnabon to be a bit much and is often to thick and dry once you have eaten the top coat off, the Franzbrötchen does not suffer from this problem.
The second tip we received was a day ticket from the Hamburg transit system would allow us to hop on Ferry 62 about an hour cruise on a pleasant Ferry boat along the Elbe river. After a pleasant hour along the river we decided to explore the Old Town. We travelled 3 stops north to the Central Train station and then found an Fish restaurant. We sat outside, it was slightly overcast and there was a bit of rain but it was still pleasant. Unlike Toronto just about every cafe or restaurant has outdoor seating. We ordered some fish cakes with potato salad and of course beer. After lunch we wandered around the Alster a small man made lake in the Old Town. I was reminded of Hamburgs socialist connections when I wandered by a small statue of Che Guevara. The city is quite beautiful, but after a few hours we were kind of tired so we decided to head back to Altona to relax a bit before an early dinner.
For dinner we wanted to go someplace local in the St.Pauli/Altona area and oddly enough decided to try out a Mexican restaurant. It was more than just a restaurant it had giant cocktails and a strange world menu that included Chinese, German and American dishes as well. We ordered Nacho Chips as an appetizer and noticed that the chips were really thin rice chips rather than your traditional corn tortilla chips and rather than melting grated cheese they just gave us the squeeze cheese one might get at 7-11 or at a baseball game, bizarre yet not bad. We ate dinner and the Swiss-German IIHF quarterfinal was on. Everywhere I went I noticed that the Germans had the German hockey games on. Of course my interest in the tournament was that I had tickets to the Gold Medal match in Sunday on the 23rd in Cologne and I mainly wanted to get updates on the Canada vs. Russia quarterfinal game occuring at the same time. In between periods they showed highlights of the Russians scoring multiple goals and I knew my chances of seeing Canada in the Gold Medal game were almost nil.
We went back to the hostel, (again really more of an Ikea furnished bed and breakfast) and watched the remainder of the Germany vs. Switzerland match and I have to say it was a bit moving. The crowd was as enthusiastic as any Canadian crowd. With less than a second left there was an icing call, the Germans and Tissot the after game award sponsors weren't aware and started celebrating and Tissot rolled out the carpet at centre ice. The last fraction of a second had to be played and 4 guys had to run out to furl up the carpet. I think the Swiss realized they were losing their best chance to play for a medal ever and the frustration led to one of the strangest brawls I think I've ever seen in International hockey (next of course to the 1986 Soviet-Canadian world junior brawl in Russia). The puck was dropped and the Germans again started celebrating. The Swiss and Germans started tussling and a Swiss player was cut and bleeding profusely, Swiss players got into it with the German bench it was utter chaos. After the teams were separated and the post game awards were held the German national anthem was played and the German head coach Uwe Krupp was in tears on the bench. The fans stood on their feet and cheered and the fans copied the Canadian Olympic Gold medal team each taking turns skating the German flag up and down the ice. To win and make it to the Semi-Finals on home ice was perhaps the countries greatest hockey accomplishment. It's be comparable to the Canadian Rugby team advancing to the Semi-Finals of the Rugby World Cup, I would have compared this to some Soccer World Cup accomplishment but the Germans are actually in the World Championships every year just always near the bottom.
Knowing we had an early train to Bonn the next day we decided to call it an early night.
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