Autumn Break: Hamburg and Riga
School here starts partway through August, so we get an extra short break in October. It ranges from a week to only two days depending on the school and when it started. My school had only two days, so I didn't have school on the Thursday or Friday (Oct. 18/19th). I left on Wednesday the 17th with my host family, and we headed to Germany! We woke up really early to get to our flight at around 5am. Luckily Turku is a pretty small airport, even smaller then Victoria, so it didn't take long to go through security. We ate breakfast in Hamburg, then went to get a tour of the new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie. Our tour was in English, and our guide told us all about the architecture and how it was built, or why things were designed the way they were. The main concert hall has 2100 seats, and we got to go in and sit in the top last rows. We had just missed a rehearsal but one guy played the marimba a bit, and it was absolutely amazing! He had 2 sticks in each hand, and even so far away we could hear so well! There also was an arched escalator that brought us up to what was called the plaza. It was really long, about 2.5 min. The Plaza had a full 360 view, you could walk around all the way. The stairs that led to the main stage were there as well. There were 16 levels, the last 6 or so had entrances for the main stage. Because all the foyers had such high ceilings they ended up skipping the 14th floor. It is a beautiful building, and I really enjoyed getting a tour. We visited a church called St. Nicolai, that had been bombed in WWII. All that was still standing was the tower and a bit of the frame. It was beautiful but also kind of eerie having it only really be a bit of a shell. On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the Rathaus (the government house) and looked around there a bit. On Thursday we also spent a long time walking around the city. We visited the St. Paul's district and Reeperbahn which used to be a not good area where the sailors would spend their free time when they got off the ships. Now it was better though and we were there in daylight. We walked through a section of a big park called Platen und Blomen. It had a lot of flowers and was pretty! We visited a church that had a tower we could climb up. We hadn't realized how tall it was. We got up the first part of stone spiral stairs, only to find we had much more above us. There were probably three more sections where we though we were almost there and then still had another section ahead of us. It was 123m tall, 544 steps. That is a lot. My legs were so sore when we finally got to the top. It was a small room with 8 windows and barely enough room for the 4 of us. The view was stunning though. We could see so far! That evening we met my aunt, uncle, and cousin for dinner. My aunt is my dad's youngest sister. I see them every three or four years, so it was nice to see them again. On Friday we walked around again quite a bit. We walked by one area that used to be the warehouse district, so there are a bunch of tall old brick buildings that have canals next to them and then sometimes bridges going across the canals. It was really cool, and it was neat to see the change in the walls where there had been repairs or additions done. We also visited multiple churches. That evening we went to the miniature wonderland. It is a bunch of landscapes or cityscapes with an incredible level of detail. Each is based on a place, so there are some from the Scandinavian countries, some from various places in the US (Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Rockies), Italy, Hamburg, and then a made up city. Every quarter hour for 3 minutes night fell. It slowly got darker and everywhere lights flickered on. In the daylight they then turned off again. There were so many little people, and so many moving parts including a railway system that ran through the entire thing, and an airport with planes taking off and landing again. We easily spent 2 hours there, and it would probably take a full day to look through everything there. I would say we thoroughly saw the first part and then rest we did look at but not quite as thoroughly. The next morning we flew to Riga! This was my first time ever being in a country that my dad has not been in. We had the whole day to walk around, and I think we managed to cover most of the city. It was really cool because it wasn't bombed, so there were a lot of really old buildings. The decorations on them and the colours were really nice. Surprisingly there were still many flowers around. In one park we visited we saw a tree that was a gift from Canada to signify 25 years since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. My feet were pretty sore by the end of the day (uneven cobblestones are a lot harder to walk on!), but I had a really good time. I would say the whole trip was really really fun, and I had an awesome time. I took tonnes of pictures, and I will post some here and try to limit myself a bit as I took waaayyy too many , but I will put more in the photos sections if you guys are interested in seeing them! Comments are closed.
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AuthorHi! My name is Katerina, and I am on exchange in Finland for a year! Archives
April 2019
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