The next day we left Hamburg. Once again we didn't know where we were going or staying but we decided we'd figure it out on the train east.

Other random things about Hamburg:

• Everywhere is very smoky
• Every gay bar has a maze inside
• It's impossible to find public recycling bins
• It's the most diverse city I've seen besides Toronto

We took the ICE between Hamburg and Berlin. 300km/h and the train nerd in me pretty much died. It was amazing. I can't remember exactly but I think we were in an ICE 3.

We considered stopping in Berlin on the way there, but it looked too big when we were coming in. I'm sure it's awesome but maybe another time. When we got out of the train in the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, we had 60 seconds to decide, and got in the InterCity train to Leipzig. I'm glad we did.

The country side is covered in windmills and solar panels.


We got into the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof in the afternoon. It's huge. It turns out it's the biggest train station in Europe.



Leipzig was an East German city only 26 years ago but it's full tilt capitalism in the train station now. There is a three story mall, and in the front is a KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonalds and a Burger King. You can never escape fast food, depressing.





We didn't have a place to stay so we walked around the altstadt for a while, right across from the train station. Most of the streets are bikes and pedestrians only, and the buildings are awesome. It's a weird mix
of 300+ year old buildings and a few modern DDR buildings.














We walked around forever trying to figure out where to stay. We ended up staying 2.5km away from the center in the Nordic hotel which was really cheap. Not before overeating pierogies at a restaurant called Wodkeria.

After the afternoon at the Miniatur Wunderland we started heading back towards Altona. While we were doing that we walked down the Reeperbahn which is the red light district.

Have you ever hear a promoter outside a five story pink building offer you freshly washed escorts? Because we did. We even could all share for the same price!

The street was commercial in the craziest way. Everything was a sex shop, or a bar or a club. The old-time Hamburger the night before told us this is where tourists and British bachelor parties come to throw up.

I think Terry and had some 11% elephant beers that night but thankfully we didn't throw up. (or enter a brothel)

One of the gay streets between the Hauptbahnhof and St. Pauli, where the Reeperbahn is.




We ended up in a couple gay bars again. I can't remember how but we met a Polish guy named Marcus from Leipzig, his German friend and another girl who joined us at a couple bars. It was a pretty crazy night for a Wednesday.

I had seen Miniatur Wunderland in a documentary online before. It's close to the most German thing you can image. A old shipping warehouse on the docks with three stories of model trains and landscapes in amazing detail.

There were different scenes in each area (we saw Mittel Deutschland, Italy, US, Switzerland, Hamburg, Flughafen Hamburg, and Scandinavia).

You could probably spend all day looking at one scene and not find everything. Look in the woods and you'd see two model people doing it. Watch the cars drive around the road for a while and you'll see an accident with smoke, that police cars and and ambulance rush over to. The airport was a full model of the Hamburg airport with the actual flight schedules, and planes that took off, landed and taxiied to the terminal. I've never seen anything like it.


The said sexers
x


I nerded out over the model ICE 3 trains

And here is a floof bahn for (e:robert).


Bro-butt








The american scene was mostly trucks on highways in the desert (they modeled Los Vegas)


Hamburg itself

We spent about 5 hours in the whole museum and didn't even see everything.

Olmsted you ain't got shit.

" >(MAP TO: )

This volkspark was had more manicured parts then Flensburg, it even had a botanical garden.

It still had miles and miles of paths through forests. You could walk for miles in a forest in the middle of a city, right on an S-Bahn line. I wonder if anyone ever camps in it. And if you look on the map only 10 minutes away in one direction were farms.

Some pictures from walking around the Hamburg Landungsbrucke and altstadt. The Landungsbrucke is like canalside times a million with more actual shipping traffic.





We also saw the Hamburg city hall, which was ridiculously big. It looks it was built in the same style as the city hall we saw a month before in Philly. I wonder if they were trying to copy the Hamburg one.


A fountain in the middle of the city hall had this statue of a lady stomping on a dragon.











The city is so capitalistic even the churches have stores and restaurants attached.

After walking around we went to some of the gay bars around the Hauptbahnhof. They were mostly terrible and smoky, but at one we ended up chatting with a old-time Hamburger who gave us some recommendations.