Friday, May 16, 2014 - Odense/Hamburg (Liz)

We started today by learning that it is a national holiday in Denmark, Prayer Day, so most grocery stores were closed. Our big event of the day was traveling to Hamburg, but before heading off we made a stop at the Hans Christian Andersen Museum. It was definitely a learning experience - it seems Hans C. was really into paper cutting and the museum displayed many of his intricate designs. He also made a very beautiful and detailed collage on a room screen which was most impressive. We also really enjoyed a library room which housed copies of his works in over 150 languages. Claire's favorite part was the pond outside with ducks and ducklings, of course.

Mark is listening to Hans tell the story of "Snakes on a Plane"

We also made a brief stop at HC's boyhood home. It was very small and I seriously think we toured it for less than five minutes. It came as a part of the museum tour, so it's not like we paid extra to get in.

Our train to Flensburg left around noon and from there we continued on to Hamburg. I didn't think this was possible with trains outside the U.S., but our train was running late and as a result we missed the train we should have taken to Hamburg. So we ended up taking 2 different trains to get to Hamburg from Flensburg which set us back over an hour and a half. Claire survived but barely. Luckily, on our second train the car we were in was empty for a time so we let Claire crawl around on the dirty floor and that seemed to help.

My first impression of Hamburg was good. I feel it is a very diverse city, and I feel I blended in a lot more than I did in Odense. Maybe because there were larger crowds of people. Or maybe I like big cities.

Our hotel is about a 15 minute walk from the Hamburg HBF station. We checked in to our hotel and then immediately headed back out to find some dinner at the station. We ended up eating lamb doner kebabs. They definitely tasted better than they do at the Berliner. Mark also got his first Fanta of the trip, which he was quite thrilled about.

After eating we walked a lot and found a grocery store. We loaded up on enough breakfast and lunch foods for our stay in Hamburg. We don't have a fridge here which limited our options a bit, but we will make do. We pushed Claire a little too much at the end so she had a bit of a rough time, but she is happy to be asleep now! Tomorrow we will be traveling to Lubeck for our adventures!

Observations:

• The German public restroom that I used had an actual cloth towel to dry your hand which seems to rotate around a dispenser.
• We realized when we got to Hamburg that there were 0 vending machines that we saw in Odense, not even in the train station.