This Tuesday was an "abafart" day, or a field trip. We met at school at 8:00 and took the train to the hamburg city hall. There, we waited in the lobby for a few minutes and then were led to a conference room that looked just like any other conference room in the world: boring and modern. A city official talked to us (in German) for about a half an hour before our tour. He went over his duties and some of the issues facing Hamburg today. There was a table full of free drinks afterwards, a nice touch.
After taking a picture on the stairs, we walked up to the real level. This was a REALLY impressive building. I think someone said that if it was built today, it would cost more than 300 million €- quite a large number. I have a bunch of photos but no time- it was quite cool. Each room had a different "theme", all based on Hamburg. There were paintings, decorations, ect. There were also two large senate chambers, as Hamburg is both a city and a state.
The building was hardly touched in the war, which is very interesting. Hamburg was 60% destroyed by bombing. They said that in the museum there's a bomb they found undetonated in the building. This city hall was built in the 1800s, after the old one had to be "exploded" to stop the fire of 1842. Hamburg really put a lot of effort into it. I'm sure it's nicer than both the St. Louis city hall and the Missouri capitol.
Afterwards, we had 45 minutes of free time, so we went to a mall and bought snacks and ice cream. We took the train back and had 45 minutes with Frau and Herr.
Afterwards, I went shopping for my taco stuff (they don't have black beans here! I finally found some in the specialty isle) and then watched some soccer before going to sleep.
Robert
4 comments:
3 in a row. Seiler must be asleep. Ha! Answered my question about what food you planned to make, as well. I'm sure you'll let us know how it turned out. I tried uploading a picture into my blog and it worked fine (though it took a long time). I do have my pictures in picasa, which is the Google photo sharing system, so they have a direct link to Blogger -- maybe that would work. What giant building are you standing in front of in the other photo? Keep it up, Blogbert! :) Aunt Amy
OK I am picturing the "specialty isle", as opposed to the specialty aisle, and it is a small island surrounded by a warm sea. Gentle waves are lapping at cans of black beans strewn along the shore.
Mom
heh...
Actually, I laughed really hard at that. Max keeps on reading my blog and asking what some words are but I've just spelled them wrong.
To confuse Max even more, from my long-ago days on the front lines of the grocery industry (= I wielded a mop) the word isle is sometimes used instead of or (even _more_ confusingly) along with the word aisle to describe grocery display areas.
Dad-O
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