Willkommen in Hamburg!

We arrived in Hamburg Friday morning after an easy, uneventful flight via Copenhagen. The transatlantic flight had cameras in front and below the plane - it was fun to have a pilot's-eye view of take-off and landing.  In Copenhagen we only had an hour between flights, so we wanted to get to the next gate quickly. The first thing I saw was a 7-Eleven. Depressing. We looked for directions to our gate. The signs directed us right, then left, around a corner, right again.... After ten minutes we realized they were leading us on a tour of the duty-free shops! Essentially, the Copenhagen airport is a mall with some planes, with everything from Victoria's Secret to Georg Jensen. 

Mom and I arrived in Hamburg first. As we waited for the rest of the group, I noticed a group of young men greeting a new arrival. They all had backpacks, and the new guy had a six-pack of Carlsberg under his arm. Pretty interesting carry-on luggage. He passed out the beer and they all started drinking them, right there at the arrivals gate. I said, man, I know I'm in Germany! 

Soon after Linda, Marianne, Jurgen and Inge arrived, but unfortunately Jurgen and Inge's luggage did not. Then we found out the Ford minivan we reserved had not been returned yet. So the morning was a bit bumpy, but we eventually found ourselves on the road to Harsefeld.

We passed under the Elbe through the Elbtunnel. As we drove west, the landscape changed from mountains of shipping containers to fields of wheat and oats. Harsefeld is a charming village filled with thatch-roofed cottages, tidy gardens and little shops. Our hotel, the Hotel-Kino Meyer, is lovely. It has a cinema, bar and bowling alley in addition to the very comfortable guest rooms. We were all exhausted, and went right to sleep, so this is the end of day one!

Some photos:

A cute pig's snout in Hamburg

Port of Hamburg

Green fields of Niedersachsen

The Hotel-Kino Meyer, on the left

Beautiful roses in Harsefeld

A door at the hotel

The church in Harsefeld

Originally Catholic, the church is now Lutheran. It is undergoing renovation. The chandeliers were in storage for 150 years - they only recently rehung them. 

Marianne, Margot and Linda

The church was part of a cloister - you can see the foundations of the old buildings. It is one of the church on the Moenchsweg, a 1000-km bike trail stretching from Bremen to Denmark.

Boom!! Heino!