Hastings to Hamburg

To tell you the truth Germany was not on my must see list of destinations. Why? Well, no specific reason really other than the fact there was nothing in Germany to possibly entice me there and I have a small fear of the language. When I was in Year 7 I studied German at school and I was terrible at it, my teacher hated me (probably because I was terrible at it) and I hated her back. It struck me as being a really stupid, pointless language and if we're honest about it, it doesn't even sound nice anyway ("Heil, Hitler"-okay that's mean). It also has these impossible, unpronouncable words:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

I mean what is that? I don't even know where to begin. Okay, I admit that the meaning of the monstrosity above is "beef labeling regulation & delegation of supervision law" which is hardly a word I'd use in everyday life but still it's all the same to me anyway. Mark in contrast was busting to go to Germany and loves the language and constantly laments the fact that he is not better at it. When we found out that Mark's friend Martin was living and teaching in Hamburg, there was nothing I could do to prevent us from going over there (not that I was going to try) so I sucked it up and we flew to Germany. I'm not a great flyer and I was paranoid that Mark was going to vomit on me but luckily the flight went really smoothly.

We landed in Lubeck, which is an hour North of Hamburg and decided to spend one night there. The first thing that struck me was the smell- Lubeck smelt like the farmyard section of the Easter Show. Other than the weird manure smell Lubeck is gorgeous. The town of Lubeck is World Heritage Listed and we loved exploring all the quaint little streets, churches and historic buildings and Mark of course loved every opportunity to practice his German.

Holstentor Town Gate in Lubeck dating back to 1478

It was sad to say goodbye to Lubeck but Hamburg called so it was soon to catch the train south, buying the ticket from the machine was a nightmare and I had flashbacks of my German teacher barking at me- "NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH". Anyway, the train journey was shorter than anticipated and we panicked a bit because we had told Martin we would arrive a whole hour later. As soon as we got off the train Mark starts to phone him but then I see Martin running towards us!!! He had also brought along his girlfriend Conny with him who we had heard heaps about over the years. Lucky for us, they could actually read the train timetable and had anticipated our arrival time.

We went back to his flat and unloaded all our gear before checking out the sights (and shops) of Hamburg. Conny and Martin nattered away to each other like an old married couple in German while Mark pretended to understand and I stared stupidly. To me it seemed pointless to be a wolf dressing up in sheep's clothing, putting on a naff accent and attempting to mumble incoherently especially when the lovely German people are more than happy to speak English to you (unlike those French and Italians who would rather die than speak English- bit like me and speaking German really). Anyway, Mark loved it and was so proud he could order ice creams all by himself. Upon Martin complimenting him on his skills he replied "yeah, but they heard Karen order first so they knew we were going to be a bit retarded". Gee what a charmer.

Check out the lean on this one. Burgator Town Gate, Lubeck

On the day we left Germany we took a detour North to the Baltic Sea which was great fun (even if the sea is an abnormal colour and the sand has the consistency and color of the bags of premixed cement from Bunnings). The boys played Soccer and us girls sat on the sand rugged up and gossiped for a good couple of hours- ahhhh, good times. I must admit that I did feel a bit sad saying our goodbyes and I felt a little pang of homesickness again. I think the fact I was dreading our long return journey didn't help things either. We eventually made it back to Hastings at 1am and it sure felt good to be back home and somewhere Mark couldn't speak German anymore.