Hamburg – Day 1

Hello guys! I went to Hamburg from 08/19 to 08/22 to visit my friends, Julia and Ornella, who are doing their internship in a translation company there and I promised myself to blog about it while it’s still fresh in my memory!

It’s my 2nd time in the city and it was much more memorable than the 1st time, 6 years ago. Germany is a country I really like and this is definitely not my last time there!

Since I was really busy writing a paper for school (yes, in the middle of August haha), I didn’t really have time to actually plan a schedule in advance so I just relied on my friends’ recommendations once I was there. It was a bit messy but I had lots of fun! Here is the first day of my trip (Image-heavy post)

Day 1 – August 19th

Right after getting off the coach around 10AM, I realized I made a huge mistake in the choice of clothes I brought with me. Hamburg is a city by the sea so there’s a lot of wind so it’s more cold compared to Paris in August! Fortunately, my friend Julia lent me a coat and a warm scarf for the remainder of my stay.

After brunching in a café nearby her flat, where I sort of put my broken German to use, we went to Tierpark Hagenbeck! It’s a zoo, but we only bought tickets for the aquarium. We didn’t know it until we saw it but there were still animals that weren’t fishes like lemurs, charmelons, crocodiles, snakes, mongooses or frogs. The first thing that actually struck me is that a lot of animals weren’t locked in a cage, that’s not a really common thing but it makes it more enjoyable! (captions in hover)

We took a break from wildlife and went to Jungfernstieg, from where we made our way to the city hall (Rathaus)! The building is really beautiful but the weather wasn’t when I took my pictures… At the center of the Rathaus, there was a big fountain. It was quite impressive! We did some shopping at Flying Tiger too, I really love this shop ❤️

Balzac Coffee is a coffee shop chain that is as present as Starbucks in the city so I tried it out for the first time, with a matcha shake and a gouda bagel. I didn’t really like the matcha shake tbh, it was slightly weird but it happens! On the other hand, the other beverages were all delicious 🙂

Then, we wanted to go to the Elbphilarmonie to have a nice view of the city but the line was too long and it was raining a lot so we decided to go on another day. Instead, we took a rest before dinner.

I had a currywurst at Café Borchers, it was my first time eating this and it was delicious! A bit strage at the beginning, because the gravy basically tastes like BBQ sauce mixed with curry powder but once you let the taste sink in, it’s all good. ☺️

On every trip to Germany, I’m careful not to jaywalk because I was told you can get fined for this (and have some little children yell at you) but I saw some German people doing it there (#thuglife) so it had me wondering if there were exceptions… I don’t think so, haha.

I was wondering if I should invest in a good camera too. My smartphone’s camera is alright, yet I want better picurea nd I don’t see myself having those reflex cameras with big lenses. Is there a compromise between the two ?