Ich ben ein Hamburger

(With apologies to the people of Hamburg, J.F. Kennedy and the German language.)

Morning came in Hamburg and Richard and I tottled down to our hotel's breakfast buffet. (Take notes all you hoteliers.) It was a quite lovely spread. Wonderful rolls. Mine was rye with nuts and seeds. Richard's looked like a seven-grains type of idea. There were sliced cheeses and meats, totatoes and cucumbers, butters and cream cheese, fruit spreads (strawberry, apple, cherry and some unascertainable variety), yogurt, granola, hard-boiled eggs, orange juice and coffee. And the forbidden pleasure. Pate. I know it is politically incorrect but none of you were close enough to stop me. Well, except Richard, and he had a morally reprehensible dinner last night, so he had no grounds to criticize me. I slipped a touch of the pate on my roll. But this was not your average pate. It was chocolate and hazelnut pate. I was taken aback. What does one do with chocolate and hazelnut pate, considering the other breakfast items? I was perplexed.

"What would Raquel do?" I asked myself. She would rush the buffet, cross-body tackling the poor little old lady in her way, grab the basket of pates and sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' as she ran out of the building. That would work for Raquel, but she is more athletic than I am. I just sucked the pate out of its packaging and was happy.

Richard and I then explored central Hamburg. The most memorable part of our day was our visit to St. Nikolai Church. St. Nikolai was originally built in the 13th century and reconstructed after a fire in the mid-19th century. In 1943, it was bombed by the Allies during a major offensive that lasted nearly a month. Remarkably, the bell tower (the highest church tower in Hamburg) survived, while the vast majority of the rest of the church was obliterated. After the war, the church was preserved in its ruined state as a tribute to those who died in the bombings as well as those that were persecuted during the war.

They installed an elevator in the remains of the bell tower. Richard and I rode to the top. Sort of a macabre Tour Eiffel. In the crypt of the church was a memorial. Most of it was in German, but the pictures were horrific in any tongue. There were photos of Poland and Coventry, England, but the majority of them were of the rubble that was Hamburg at the end of the war. 35,000 people died in the bombings known as Gommorha in that summer of '43 (I believe that was an Allied term, but I may be mistaken), but only 12,000 were identified. The majority of the fatalities were slave laborers from eastern Europe. It was a very sobering experience.

Tomorrow is Kobnhaven.