johan's Journal

C and i went for a quick 9-day trip to Hamburg to visit with her family. We lost about a day and a-half to travel, so it was a pretty short trip, and my recollection is sort of a blur of meeting many kind and friendly people, eating and drinking way too much, and a crash course in German.

Pictures Here

Hamburg is a big city -- according to Wikipedia it's "home to 1.8 million," with 4.3 million in its metro area. It's the second largest city in Germany, sixth largest city in the EU, and the second largest port in Europe (after Rotterdam).

Supposedly it gets roughly the same amount of rainful as Austin, but it seemed quite green and lush to C & i, presumably due to the current drought here in Central Texas. It's also closer to the coast, so it seems to get a steadier drizzle of rain.

A bunch of random observations of Germany from my Texan/U.S./Left-wing/bicyclist perspective:

• Germans are generally better drivers than people in the U.S. For starters, the exam is reportedly much more difficult, and you can't drive alone until you are at least 18. There's a zero-tolerance for alcohol consumption until drivers are 21. I don't recall seeing anyone talking on a cell phone (in German, "Das Handy") while driving (i've read on the 'net that it's illegal). In urban settings, drivers seem to zip along at least as fast as U.S. traffic, but they seem much more aware of what's going on around them. They look for pedestrians and bicyclists.
• In many parts of Hamburg, any street with significant auto traffic also had bike lanes, but the bike lanes were off the road, on the other side (outside) of the parked cars, along side the sidewalks. It seemed legal for bicyclists to stay on the road, but most cyclists on the paths were just noodling along at a leisurely 8mph or so, and they and the pedestrians seemed OK sort of sharing the adjoining space. (The bike lanes are a different color surface than the sidewalk... in this photo it's the charcoal-colored area to the right of the sidewalk.)
• The Bush Administration really did a lot of damage. Even relatively conservative Germans still remember Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.'s arrogance, like the "Old Europe" comments, and also that European airspace and airports were used by CIA "rendition" flights which transported detainees to secret Eastern European CIA prisons, where they were sometimes tortured.
• My impression from being in Germany this short period of time is that their economy is recovering more quickly than the U.S. Perhaps the recession wasn't as deep.
• Germans know how to recycle, and reuse. For example, beer bottles have deposits, so you return them to the store rather than throwing away or recycling them. I remember doing this as a kid in the U.S.
• Dogs are allowed in restaurants and shopping malls. They are well behaved.
• Germany is big on meat consumption, but they know what vegetarians are, and we ate pretty well.
• The German people i was around would toast before every round of drinks. "Prost" was most common, but sometimes "Wohlsein." (Or even the occasional "Kampai!" or "Cheers")
• Some, but far less houseless people than i'm used to seeing in U.S. cities.
• As expected, awesome public transportation.
• On the Autobahn, there are suggested (and varying) speed limits design to reduce congestion by slowing down traffic before it catches up to congestion. So you pass under a programmable sign that may say anything from 120 kph to 60kph, dependeding on how fast the traffic ahead is moving. It sort of works. It definitely works better than IH-35 in Austin.
• I din't see as many crappy or old cars on the road as the U.S. I was told this is because the inspection requirements are tougher, and that gets cars in bad shape off of the roads. (There are some exceptions made for "classic" cars.)
• Roads and other infrastructure are in better shape than the U.S. This is unsurprising, because of the higher taxes, but it's still an interesting comparison with the U.S. The cost of living is a higher, but overall, society seems better run and organized.
• The frites are not as good as the Netherlands -- there wasn't as broad of a selection of sauces. (In Hamburg, they are called "Pomme Frites." In the Netherlands, i think they are called "Patat Frites."
• We picked one of the cheapest flights, so we flew from Austin to Dulles (D.C.), to Frankfurt, to Hamburg. On the way over, there were delays into and out of Dulles because of weather, and it made the trip about 22 hours. The return trip was without delay, and about 19 hours. I think next time i'd be willing to pay $800 instead of $670 and catch a direct flight from the U.S. to Hamburg. It looks like that would drop the travel time to 13 hours.
• Like most of Northern Europe that i've visited, the Germany is less hung up about sex and nudity than most of the U.S. As in other large German cities, Hamburg has a red light district, around the Reeperbahn (which is incidentally where the Beatles got their start). And they sometimes have pictures of topless ladies in some of the crappier newspapers (equivalents of USA Today). I don't know if it's the historic Puritanical influence, or the modern-day fundies, but after just a little while in Europe, the U.S. again seems strangely prudish and in-denial.