Gone German

All hail the fair lady who rushed the early dawn bus from amsterdam, boarded the train and withstood the butt cramps from a five-hour long train ride to Hamburg, Germany.
She has arrived !:) On the 20th to be exact.
P.S there is a bigger backpack too but it was too unglam to be included in the first shot. Do not, here I issue a caveat, for a moment think that you can ever backpack in winter with a tiny trolley Ashworth luggage.

The weather was also very hard to acclimatise, it was awfully cold. Amsterdam is one of the warmest places in Europe, but may I add, thanks to global warming, it snowed this year. Almost an unprecedented phenomenon I reckon.

The famous "Stationen Hamburger Architektur" (translate: architecture of the Station in Hamburg, something to this effect, you get the drift). It is a striking architecture and has been a 100 years in view. I love the extending curves, some railway stations in Europe are deliberately aesthetically appealing like the ones in Paris too.

Germany's transport system is deserving of respect and personally, I think Singapore can learn from Deutschland a good deal. The transport system reflects the way Germans in general operate, organised and efficient. There are basically two train lines in Germany,, the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn. The former is for internal travelling while the latter is for sub-regional travelling. So basically, we took the U-Bahn when we travel internally within Hamburg. And the U-Bahn is indicated by the neon blue U sign when there is a train station nearby. There is no way you can miss it.

The public transport system is so convenient, I think it's the most common option for the majority, considering the fact that it is incredulously hard to pass the driving license in Germany.


:: The S-Bahn in crimson red ::


:: Map reading is a must. Forget about backpacking if you can't read a map, much less decipher the German words (or in any other language but your own for the matter). I must add here that I am pretty good at them now! Necessity makes a man!

:: Street artists of Hamburg ::


Pardon me for the fuzzy photo abov. I meant to show you the street signs of Klosterwall. Honestly, there was hardly any lighting on this part of the road and photo-taking was the last thing on my mind because we nearly got ourselves lost in the maze-like city area of Hamburg. To add to our confusion of German (a language I could only understood little) road signs, it seemed only the elderly knew or heard of Klosterwall, every other young person we asked on the road merely smiled sheepishly and muttered " sorry, I don't know". Perhaps, in Hamburg at least, only the old appreciated Antiques.
The brutality of winter seemed to ensnare us especially more so when we almost lost our way.

But after what seemed like eternity, there which lay ahead of us is a banner of the brightest yellow that says Antik Center, our beacon of hope. Et viola! Ole Ole Ole!

We had to walk through numerous staircases and some underground passage way. Hamburg really is a city that is so full of surprises, just waiting to enfold themselves upon me. I felt more of a connection to Hamburg than to Amsterdam. A credo I held on personally when I travel is to wait and encounter the land deep, as if it were a person. I waited for the latter city to speak, I waited and I heard nothing.
In Hamburg, I saw more than I have imagined.

::Truckloads of vintage earrings and brooches from the 60's and 70's.
Makes a jewelry entrepreneur like me melt.

The Antik-Center at Klosterwall resembled, if your're an antique fan of course, Portobello Road in the Notting Hill District of London, the world's renowned second-hand and antique market. The only difference is that it is underground and indoor here, with less variety to boot.
My tangible takeaway that night was this exquisite, jeweled musical box with a little sparrow perched atop a gold-plated acorn. The moment my eyes caught sight of this gorgeous beauty, I was bewitched. And as the melody that was produced was that old familiar tune I used to play on the piano, Fur Elise, I knew I was going to buy it. The owner sold it to me for a reasonable price of €33. I mean, after all, it's antique right?

P.S* Notice writer's obvious need for validation in this purchase.


I also purchased one of those old-school pocket vision television. This one here narrates a pictorial story of the famous "Sleeping Beauty". Once in a while, these toys bring back some long-forgotten childhood memories otherwise lost.

:: The man behind the antique goods I purchased ::


"Kunst" in German means "art", "haus" just means "house". Something I learnt in my Art and History classes, once again it came in handy in Hamburg. It felt like Art & History lessons came alive! Neither history nor art fully makes sense in lecture slides, no matter how pretty they look on the powerpoint slides. It was only then that I came to fully appreciate St Augustine's quote: "the world is like a book, and those who do not travel read only a page".

:: posing only at the entrance for the Kunsthaus closes at night :(

The jovial man whose passion for antiques brought him scouring the world, in particular England and France for antique grandfather's clocks and Victorian paintings encassed in Brass frames.


**Location: Antik-Center, Klosterwall 19-21