Looking back at my posts, I neglected to post anything in April and that was probably because I was travelling between London and Hamburg for a project. It was only a short project lasting about seven weeks and in between doing three talks for a Quarterly Technology Briefing in London, Manchester and Hamburg I think I lost a bit of time.

Hamburg is a port city town and has one of the largest harbours I have ever seen. Although we never really had a warm day during this period due to Europe’s eternally long winter, we did have some sunny days and the harbour is a popular place packed with (mostly) German tourists on these days. You can do a boat trip that takes you and shows you interesting places like the massive dry-docking stations used for cruise ships, or just sailing past the massive cruise ships and the even bigger containing shipping vessels.

One of the most iconic buildings in the harbour is the unfinished Elbe Philharmonic Hall. Like Berlin’s new Brandenburg airport, this building causes controversy because it is an overrun, perceivably expensive building. It’s running three years late and, at the current time, not planned for finishing until 2015.

Being located on the harbour, Hamburg is known for its seafood, so there are many great fish restaurants to try although steer clear of most of the Japanese sushi places as the fish they catch in this area isn’t really the type for making sushi. Thinking that for a love of fish and having a taste for a certain quality I tried quite a number of sushi places but they were both rather expensive and disappointing in quality.

Speaking of food, one of the interesting things to try is the Franzbrötchen bread pictured above. Halfway between a croissant and a bread, it is a decadent pastry layered with cinnamon and sugar. It’s sort of the local version of the cinnamon roll and popular with many variants such as topped with streusel, chocolate bits or pumpkin seeds.

I had a great time in Hamburg with some new friends (Birgitta, Christian and Chris above) exploring a lot of what Hamburg has to offer. The city is significantly smaller than Berlin, and noticeably more German. The U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains still work like clockwork and it’s pretty easy to get around. People in Hamburg are also significantly taller than in other parts of Germany – to me, the average height of people seemed to clock in at around 6 feet with many people often much taller than that. It was a good place to practice my German.

The reeperbahn is the tourist ghetto of Hamburg. Feeling very much like the very seedy side to Surfers’ Paradise back in Australia, it has a huge number of bars, strip clubs and dodgy looking pubs that are frequented by stag parties and the like – none of which is really my thing.

Fortunately it’s a short walk to the increasingly hipster-like area of Sternschanze (or schanze for short) that is full of nice little cafes, restaurants and bars such as the Drei Zimmer Wohnung (3 room apartment) that is a combination of a live music venue in the basement and a comfy lounge-room like bar upstairs.

There’s even the Medienbunker that turns a former bunker into a club, popular by locals.

Some other interesting places worth checking out if you’re in town include:

• The portugese quarter – An area just down from the river filled with latino restaurants, cafes and bars
• Hafencity – The new harbour city. Home to new architecture and slowly building up as a community. Busy during the week but a bit dead on weekends other than for tourists
• Winterhüde – I only visited here once to check out the Elbgold coffee roastery, but this neighbour seemed like quite a very well off area with a combination between residential bars, cafes and restaurants.
• Alster – The two lakes that sit inside the city centre that is worth walking around. Bring a coat as it gets quite windy here