Pay It Forward (Hamburg 2 of 2)

For lunch on day 2 in Hamburg, I was planning on meeting up with my single-serving airport friend, Henrike, who I had spent close to 12 hours with during my 24-hour stay in the Miami airport. Henrike is from Hamburg and we had discussed meeting up and her showing me a little of the city. We were planning on meeting at the Rathaus (City Hall) at noon, so I took the U-bahn (side note: it was extremely easy to get around the city…gotta love public transportation) and arrived about 10 minutes early. The square was crowded with tourists and they were also setting up for a rock concert later in the evening, so it was pretty packed. About 20 minutes into waiting, I spotted a woman who looked to be standing around as well. Truth be told…I didn’t quite remember what Henrike looked like, though I was almost positive she wasn’t this other female. At 12:30pm, I decided to strike up a conversation with the unknown woman and was correct in my assumption…it was not Henrike. However, Judith was actually in a similar predicament and was supposed to be meeting up with a friend for lunch at noon. Judith spoke almost perfect English and explained how she spent a year studying in Kansas in an exchange program. At around 1pm, Judith’s friend, Lisa, showed up. I was just about to say “Choos, schönen tag noch” (bye, have a nice day) when they invited me to a quick lunch (since they were both on their lunch breaks from work). I accepted since the alternative was getting lunch on my own followed by walking the city by myself. I’m sorry I missed Henrike (who had to cancel because an appointment ran way over. Also, my phone apparently wasn’t working properly and I didn’t get her email till I was back at the ship…terrible luck on all accounts), but had a wonderful time chatting with Judith and Lisa instead!

After actually saying bye, I started making my way towards St. Michael’s Church, a church the final four passengers of the night tour saw the previous evening (after everyone else exited early). The church is a landmark for the city, as well as the largest church in Hamburg. It is dedicated to the Archangel Michael (see picture showing the statue in front of Michael defeating the Devil). It too has a tower you can climb, via 350 stairs, so I paid a few euros and did it. It was totally worth it as the viewing platform had a clear 360° view of the city.

 St. Michael’s Church

Views From The Top:

 

I spent the rest of the day wandering through huge parks (Grosse Wallanlagen & Kleine Wallanlagen), talking with various individuals (Germans, Australians, Dutch, English, and Americans), before going out for dinner and drinks at another recommended restaurant, Sala Thai, which was delicious! On the way, we were able to see the Elbphilharmonie (Elbe Philharmonic Hall), which is a concert hall. It is located in HafenCity (New City), which has completely different architecture and looks like a completely different city than the rest of Hamburg. The concert hall is designed on top of an old warehouse and will be the tallest inhabited building (apartments are located on the upper floors of the concert hall) in Hamburg, when completed. Therein lies the true question though. Construction started in 2007 and the structure was scheduled to be finished in 2010 at the estimated cost of €241 million. After multiple new budget estimates and changed timelines, it won’t be completed till 2017 and the new estimated cost for the city is over €700 million…yikes!

The Elbphilharmonie (Construction still in Progress)

I hadn’t stayed up too late because the next day was filled with another SAS Field Program which I was leading. This time it was the Dollerup Service Visit to the Diederichsen family farm, which was converted into a foster care home in 1992.

The day started with what was going to be a 1.5 hour drive to the city of Flensburg, (which was about 20 minutes from the foster care home), where we’d meet with a recent graduate of the University of Georgia, Erik, who has been working at the foster home for the last 8 months. Unfortunately, we hit terrible (like LA terrible) traffic and it ended up taking us 3.5 hours to get to Flensburg. This obviously cut down the time frames for the rest of the items on our itinerary significantly. We stopped for a late lunch in Flensburg (that was planned), but didn’t get to the farm till 3pm (instead of 1pm). Thus, our group only had 2.5 hours at the farm, but we definitely made the most of it!

After a brief introduction with the family, our group was able to get a tour of the entire property. It was a converted farm with two main houses and a “stable” which had been turned into a play area (20 years ago). The foster care home currently has 7 children: Alina (female-12), Dilan (female-13), Jonas (male-13), Marvin (male-14), Chrissy (female-16), Kevin (male-16), and Tom (male-20), though the family has had a total of 24 since 1992. In addition, the children spoke no English (only the father spoke a little bit)…however, Alina and Dilan did both sing an entire Adele song to our group when we were finishing up (though I’m assuming they didn’t know what they were actually saying in English). The service projects SAS had planned were to help the family paint a wall of the play area and to help construct a new soccer goal for the field in the backyard. The students were eager to get to work and to start interacting with the children. When the projects were finished, everyone played a pick-up game of soccer; however, it only lasted about 20 minutes before we had to get on the bus and head back to Hamburg. Here are some pictures:

Painting a Wall of the Play Area

The Finished Product

Before we concluded, a older gentleman from the Flensburg local newspaper came by to chat with us about what Semester at Sea is, why we were at the foster care home, and what the students did while there. Everyone then got in a big group photo for the newspaper, in front of the completed soccer goal. Leaving was extremely tough as our students wanted to keep spending time with the children and the children seemed to not want them to leave. After coming on the bus and giving goodbye hugs (as well as goodbye high-5s), the bus pulled out to leave. The children created a blockade across the road (by holding hands) to not let us go…it was pretty adorable (see picture). All the students really enjoyed the program, though they wished we could have spent more time with the children. After this positive experience, I’m definitely going to be signing up for more field programs dealing with service or allowing time to interact with local children.

 

Group Picture at the Dollerup Foster Care Farm

 

  

The Children Blocking the Driveway

As this was our last night in Hamburg, a few of the staff (Alison, Nathan, Carla, Bryan, and I) decided to go out for a night on the town. We went to the Reeperbahn (red-light district) where we proceeded to do a pub-crawl and dance late into the night. The last place we went (and stayed the majority of the night) was excellent. There were numerous rooms with a “pub” feel, “club” feel, as well as a large room with live music (acoustic guitar). Interestingly, most of the music played in this type of setting is American top 40 (with some 80s and 90s thrown in as well).

Being that we were out late, I slept in till 10am on my final day in Hamburg. This caused me to miss the fish market, which seemed to be a big deal in the city, but those that went explained it was really like any other fish market you could go to. This made me less upset at myself for not waking up (not to mention I couldn’t eat the fish anyways). Before getting back to the ship, I finished my Germany food experience with one last schnitzel (love the schnitzel!) and helped out with the embarkation of the students.

 Schnitzel Sandwich!

On the ship, we have a small television in each room with 6 channels. One channel always shows the ship’s position, one is a live feed from our biggest classroom (The Union) on the ship, another has a news channel (usually BBC or Al Jazeera) and finally one has various popular movies on a continuous loop. In-Bruges was on for the three days prior to arriving in Antwerp, so I watched it and got myself ready for Belgium!

“A sense of accomplishment. It is the most important ingredient in any rational being’s formula of happiness. It is the element that builds confidence and allows us to go on to other, greater tasks. It is the item that promotes a sense of self-worth, that allows any person to believe there is value in life itself, that gives a sense of purpose to bolster us as we face life’s unanswerable questions.”