Hamburg, last episode

I told you in a previous post how Hamburg has some interesting street art but the official art is also present in the streets. From beautiful buildings to statues one can see about anything in the nice streets of this old but so vibrant city.

Copper statues, roofs, cupolas and other street fixings reminds us of how important the heavy industry of metal foundry and transformation is to the city and its history.

Industry is actually something that Germany seams not to have forgot and it might explain why it's such a economic power. While some other countries decided that industry was something to be done in the far east, Germany kept a healthy industrial layer. Other countries that focused on the finance markets are now getting a beating. Maybe I'm just old fashion and obtuse and don't get the wonders of the financial markets… or maybe a good balance between production, markets and laws is needed for it to work out for most people.

Downtown Hamburg is a network of commerce installation, channels and bridges. Hamburg is probably the media capital of Germany (or at least it's a very important hub). As such you can expect to find all the fancy, expensive and fashionable brands. If instead you prefer something less attention calling you can also find it among the huge amount of displays.

All in all a really nice city where I hope to visit again one of this days.

On another topic: wind forecast for the weekend was bogus. There were maybe 12 knots of wind with gusts of 15 knots. I'm am now in desperate windsurf deprivation and can hardly wait for May when I get to go to Moulay to learn how to do some proper wave sailing.

Hamburg, part II: street art

Continuing the visit to Hamburg that I started on the previous post.

One of the things that I really enjoyed in Hamburg was the huge quantity and quality of street art. From sculptures to wall painting. Vivid colors, alive images and emotional effects. What more can you ask from art?

The style, inspiration, technic of what one can find in the streets varies a lot, although some things do have some resemblance of style. I wonder if the two next pieces are from the same artist.

It's hard for me to name this as graffiti, a word that is mostly used to describe the badly done inscriptions on walls with no real insight, no deep meaning, no relevance, no art. So I prefer to name this as frescoes or paintings.

Of course I am probably completely wrong and those two paintings and they are made by two very different artists.

In one of the wall a Die Die My Darling in a possible (?) reference to the punk horror band The Misfits. It's also a great music so do enjoy it.

After seeing that the music was in my mind for quite a while…

In the end all this art form is even more temporary than the usual painting and sculptures. Most of it is done in old and abandon buildings and a city with the such dynamism as Hamburg will feel the pressure to replace those building with even more office blocks. With luck maybe the facade of those new building could integrate the art presented in the existing ones but somehow I don't believe that will happen.

Sometimes you can also find interesting advertising. Here we can see a real estate agency asking the people in the street if their house is too small, inviting them to jump into their web site in search for something new. Then the site is well layed out and easy to use (well... I'm using google translation to actually understand the site as my German is too basic for more than getting food and drinks at a bar).

I'll just end with two more frescoes that I enjoyed for different reasons.

The first one I think portraits Mahalasa, one of the eight avatars of Vishnu, that I find really nice because of the feelings when watching the painting. It bring a certain sense of harmony and relaxation that were most welcome by me. I had after all been walking for some three or four hours and resting, even just by imagining it, was well deserved.

Polytheist or even monotheist where the deity has several facets somehow feel more open to accept other people as they are. Or so it seams to me while I try to understand how can the three biggest religions that currently exist on this small planet fight so much when, to my understanding, they all have the same god as central piece of their dogma and diverge only on the messengers from that deity.

The other painting is a question: "Should I?".

It's up to us, as observers, to try and figure out what is the action that should or should not be taken and by doing so we project our own uncertainties into the drawing.

Now… Should you?

Visiting Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg

As a good friend of mine was going to present his final Engineering Diploma project at the Institut für Umwelttechnik und Energiewirtschaft, part of the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, I just had to take the opportunity to pay him a visit, share a good (and I guess important) moment with him and see the second largest German city.

The drive to Hamburg (yes, I drove, I love to) was easy and relaxed. Good roads, interesting scenery (well, mostly flat fields), good music blasting in the radio and as soon as I arrived to Germany, a beautiful Sun shining in the sky. I can highlight how relevant seeing and feeling the Sun was to the general feeling of the trip. It has been months since I last saw a clear sky, totally devoid of clouds - sometimes in Amsterdam we do see a slit of blue sky, or the sun might shine for a couple of minutes, but that's it. I could actually drive without any heating and in a simple sweater. That felt sweet.

I stayed with my friends in the flat he shares with fellow students (if any of you ever reads this thanks for taking me in) and in the morning I couldn't wait to go out and walk about. We were staying in the south part of Hamburg named Harburg (Hamburg is a agglomeration of several smaller cities, a State City) and as my friend's presentation was in the afternoon I decided to stay around. Despite not being a super touristic place Harburg still has a nice feeling to it.

That evening and night were dedicated to celebrate the accomplished of my friend. Let's leave it at that…

The next day it was finally time to go and see the city of Hamburg. We (me, my friend and one of his flatmates) took the metro to the station Langungsbüken and started what would be something like a six or seven hours walking tour.

Right next to the mentioned station is a feat of beginning of XIX engineering: St. Pauli Elbe Tunnel, a tunnel bellow the Elbe river open to the public in 1911. Instead of the usual entrance and exit ramps this tunnel uses big elevators for vehicles to be lowered and raised from the tunnel. Pedestrians an bicycles can always use the stairs.

On today standards of engineering this almost 500m long and 24m beneath the surface doesn't sound like much but think about it: it was build more than one hundred years ago, when the technology and knowledge were a far distant ancestors of what they are now. The technic to build tunnels those days was by pressurising the under construction tunnel in order to prevent water from leaking in. Workers would be submitted to a high air pressure and then at the end of their shift would simple return to normal one atmosphere. This lead to some of the workers feeling sick by what we now know as the decompression sickness.

After walking the length of the tunnel, reaching the surface and walking around the tunnel entrance building one is greeted with a great view of the lower city. I took sometime to take a set of photos that latter at home a stitched as a panoramic view.

As you can see the weather had turn gray. Low clouds were blocking the Sun and in the end of the day it actually started to rain. Well… I wasn't complaining. The effects of the previous exposure to Sun light were still being felt. Or maybe it was the previous night partying. Or a mix or both.

Anyway, this is a already long post and my TODO list is calling. On a next post I'll continue with the story of visiting Hamburg and the reason why getting to Hamburg is a lot better than leaving it.