31 May: Shopping Day!

Our main target today was to buy a third but smaller suitcase. We want to offload things we had bought (such as a 3-volume biography of Talleyrand in French (!) and a couple of jigsaws) and also clothes etc we packed but hadn’t used.

We walked to the subway past some lovely houses, but it seemed that outside every second or third house there were small brass plaques set into the footpath. These “stumbling stones” commemorate Jewish folk who were arrested by the Nazis, deported to concentration camps, and then (mostly) murdered. Des counted 14 plaques on one side of the road between the hotel and the subway. Each plaque has its own ghastly story.

Another thing we noticed everywhere we went in Germany was the EU election advertising in posters around every lamp post. The most common were for a party called VOLT. No one seemed to know who they were, but they ranged from funny (“More ice cream for everyone!”) to bad taste - see the poster in the photo (“Don’t be an …..!)

In town we first went to the Europa Passage, five storeys of (it seemed) mostly clothing shops. No suitcases.☹️

We asked the info guy, and he directed us to Karstadt, a department store next door. The first thing we saw as we walked in was a range of suitcases on clearance. Des fell in love with a medium pink number, we bought it, and she has named it “Hansi”, after the Hanseatic League merchants who ran this part of the world for so long.

After a coffee, Des found Karstadt’s huge womenswear department. Suffice to say, we spent quite a while there, and Des had to be persuaded (not!) to buy a couple of t-shirts and a cashmere jersey.

There was a sudden downpour as we left Karstadt, and we took shelter in St Peter’s Church. This turned out to be Hamburg’s oldest parish church, founded in 1195. St Peter’s survived WWII with only minor damage.

Back to Europa for lunch - the whole top floor is a food hall, known as “SkyFOOD”. One of the interesting things here was the number of people with dogs the size of cats. Most don’t seem to be a problem, but I watched one girl talking with her friends while her two mini hounds peed against a pillar in the mall!

After a tasty Indian meal, back to the subway and home.

One more night we were to join a six-day river cruise to Berlin!Read more