The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, often referred to as the Gateway to the World thanks to its harbour, is located on the waterfront of the Elbe River and is one of the most scenic cities in Germany.
It’s also one of the wealthiest cities in Europe. There are more millionaires living here than in any other European city and Hamburgers loves to invest the money into their own city. Hamburg is an impeccable well-taken-care-of green modern city with a lot to offer to its visitors and inhabitants: there’s stunning contemporary architecture and cool design hotels, art and culture at its best, musicals with a worldwide reputation, wonderful museums, entertaining theater and a sophisticated opera scene, fine dining, a shopaholic’s paradise, a media and advertising capital, and a vibrant unbeatable nightlife with a crazy and wild party scene.
LOVE FOR THEIR CITY
Few inhabitants love their city as much as the Hamburgers love theirs. The otherwise humble Hamburgers don’t hesitate to show their pride in their city, its atmosphere and its maritime charm. And it’s certainly not hard to understand why.
I fell in love with Hamburg the first time I went there, but just because Hamburg isnät an in-your-face kind of town or even hyped for that matter, it took a lot of trips, digging and some detective work until I had really discovered and uncovered all the hidden gems of this Hanseatic Hansestadt. And now it has turned into a love of my life when it comes to cities.
Many people still associate Hamburg with two things:
1) A gigantic harbour with thousands of cargo cranes, and wrongfully assume it is a dirty gritty city because of it.
2) Reeperbahn with its prostitues and sex shows.
I assumed those things too, so I usually skipped Hamburg every time I passed it on Autobahn on my way to Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin or any other destination I headed to.
It wasn’t until I had to avoid an upcoming traffic jam on A1 outside Hamburg that I decided to take a detour and venture into the city. You know “just to kill time”. Now, I only wish I had gone there sooner.
FULL OF CONTRAST
Hamburg is truly a modern chic city – and full of cool contrasts. Perhaps more so than your average metropolis. Around every corner you will discover something new, something different, a contrast to what you just experienced around the block. And yet everything somehow mysteriously fit harmoniously together like a seamless puzzle. In this sense I find Hamburg to be truly unique.
In Hamburg you will find something for every taste;
–The wild nighttime district of St. Pauli. With 500+ bars, clubs and pubs in a pretty dense area, St Pauli offers one of the most crowded bar scenes in the world. No matter if you’re into music from the 60s or 70s, psychedelic, jazz, hardcore metal, indie, punk, RnB, 80s euro disco, in St Pauli you are likely to find something that suits your taste and style. And wallet.
– The sinful mile. The two streets Reeperbahn and Grosse Freiheit with its (in)famous sex clubs, is one of the few places where you still can see sex performed live on stage. Bordellos are located on Herbertstrasse, which is closed off for women and minors under 18 by gigantic gates.
-The upscale Blankenese with its noble villas and picturesque Stair Quarters. It’s beautiful and relaxing for a Sunday stroll, with a two hour walk along the river back to the innercity. Along the way you can stop by cafes and restaurants on the river bank, or even take a swim in the river on sandy beach. If you’re too lazy for the long walk, then you may sightsee Blankenese with an hop-on-and off bustrip that starts at the main bus stop at the Blankenese square and then proceeds to drives down to the beach on impossible narrow winding streets in sharp bends.
– The beautiful white mansions around the Alster with Europes’s most expensive residential streets where house pricetags begin at €5 million but often multiply that number many times over. Walking or running around the lake makes for a very beautiful view in all directions; the lake crowded with small sailing boats or the magnificent villas with lake view. So beautiful in fact that Napoleon Bonaparte named one of the streets to “Schöne Aussicht”, meaning “Beautiful View”.
–HafenCity- the city of tomorrow, is the newest area of Hamburg. It’s the biggest inner city development in Europe, and features the best of the best in contemporary architecture, with one in particular, The Elbphilharmobnie, being the stand out. The latter is a building project of insane proportions with an out-of-control exploding budget.
HafenCity truly is a dream come alive for architect buffs. Once it is finished in 2030 it will expand the size of Hamburg’s innercity with 40%. HafenCity will contain universities, parks, shops, homes for 12 000 people and offices for 40 000. The Sandtorkai/Dalmannkai was the first quarter to be completed in the district in 2009.
–Fantastic shopping at the Golden Triangle: From Neuer Wall (one of Europe’s premiere shopping streets for luxury fashion with flagship stores from brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton), the upscale ABC Viertel, and the famous Jungfernstieg to the more traditional and mainstream fashion streets like Mönckebergstrasse and Spitalerstrasse with all big mainstream fashion brands available.
-Alternative Shopping. If you are more into small brands, cool fashion,punk, or street and skate style, the bohemian and gritty graffitii-covered Schanzeviertel and Karoviertel and big parts of St Pauli, where young upcoming fashion and jewellery designers have Hamburg-only shops and studios where you can buy one-off pieces, are the perfect areas. A plus is that the drinks in the bars here are half the price here compared to Neustadt.
– The absolutely gigantic impressive port area. Hamburg has the 2nd largets harbour in Europe (Rotterdam is no 1) and the 7th biggest in the world. Don’t miss the crazy and hundreds of years old tradition Fishmarket every Sunday mornings starting at 5.
My favourite part of the harbour is the Speicherstadt, which not only is the world’s largest warehouse complex (and also the largest warehouse for coffee, tea, cocoa, and spices in the world) but is also the most beautiful ones you will see with its Wilhelminian red brick Gothic buildings, unusual gables, little towers and winding lanes on the waterfront and between the canals.
But as filled with sharp contrast as Hamburg is, the common denominator of Hamburg might be the water. Everything in Hamburg revolves around water, from the two beautiful Alster lakes and Alster river, to the many canals, the Elbe River and the harbour. Hamburg has more bridges than Venice and Amsterdam put together!
The Hamburgers just love the harbour, and some of the finest restaurants are located on the waterfront with view of gigantic cranes. That “beautiful view” might take a bit getting used to for tourists. But don’t call the view ugly to a Hamburger, cause they’ll be offended. I once got side eyed by locals when i said “the port isn’t beautiful, but it certainly is impressive”. But since the whole identity, the economy, history and atmosphere of Hamburg has a lot to do with the harbour, it is not hard to understand why the hamburgers love the view of the harbour so much.
In this guide I will show you from the perspective of a swede, all the different sides of this complex and multifaceted city, from tips about current events and exhibitions to hotels and restaurants, the best (and worst) bars and shopping, to kuriosa and other random stories. And I will do it as I discover it myself. So please tag along for the ride.
1000 Hamburg 