Keine Ampeln, keine Kreuzungen, kein Stau, sondern freie
Fahrt mit dem Fahrrad. Im Ruhrgebiet soll eine Autobahn für
Fahrradfahrer entstehen, der "Radschnellweg Ruhr" zwischen Hamm und
Duisburg.
Heute (5.9.) wurde eine Studie vorgestellt, in der ausgerechnet wurde, dass der Radschnellweg über 180 Mio. Euro kosten würde.
Mehr Radfahrer, weniger Autos
Fahrrad fahren ohne ständig anzuhalten an Kreuzungen und ohne Autos
neben sich, das ist die Idee hinter dem Radschnellweg Ruhr. Dadurch
sollen mehr Leute dazu gebracht werden mit dem Fahrrad zu fahren. Im
Ruhrgebiet gibt es jeden Tag viele Staus auf den Autobahnen. Zu manchen
Tageszeiten wäre man auf der Fahrradautobahn wahrscheinlicher schneller
als mit dem Auto.
100 Kilometer Radschnellweg
Zwischen Hamm und Duisburg sollen 10 Städte und vier Universitäten
mit der Fahrradautobahn verbunden werden. Sie soll sechs Meter breit
sein, vier Meter für Radfahrer und zwei Meter für Fußgänger. Es wäre die
erste Fahrradautobahn in Deutschland. Die Idee kommt aus den
Niederlanden, wo es schon zehn solcher Radschnellwege gibt, allerdings
ist keiner so lang wie der im Ruhrgebiet geplante.
Die 100 Kilometer Radweg würden über 180 Mio. Euro kosten. Wer die
Kosten übernimmt, soll in weiteren Gesprächen geklärt werden. Im Jahr
2020 könnte die Fahrradautobahn dann fertig sein. Auch in anderen
Regionen in Nordrhein-Westfalen sollen in Zukunft Radschnellwege
entstehen.
Es gibt Experten, die sagen dass sich der große Aufwand nicht lohnt.
Nur ein Prozent der Pendler würde vom Auto aufs Fahrrad umsteigen.
Andere Experten glauben, dass im Ruhrgebiet jeden Tag 50.000 Autos
weniger unterwegs wären. Und das bedeutet: Weniger Umweltverschmutzung
und mehr gesunde Menschen.
I'm grateful to the Guardian for this upclose look at the Bogota's "Mayor of Happiness," Enrique Peñalosa, along with glimpses into other biking cities, such as Copenhagen. [In fact, one reason I was so happy living and studying in Leipzig in 2006, was that its streets welcomed me, seemed almost to applaud me, as I pedaled through them every day. I can't shake how much I miss that awesome combination of fitness, independence, and exhuberance. RSB
The secrets of the world's happiest cities
Happy City: Transforming our lives through urban design by
Charles Montgomery
On The Guardian
published this excerpt of Montgomery's book, answering the question: What makes a city a great place to live – your commute, property prices or good conversation?
Two bodyguards trotted behind Enrique Peñalosa,
their pistols jostling in holsters. There was nothing remarkable about
that, given his profession – and his locale. Peñalosa was a politician
on yet another campaign, and this was Bogotá, a city with a reputation
for kidnapping and assassination. What was unusual was this: Peñalosa
didn't climb into the armoured SUV. Instead, he hopped on a mountain
bike. His bodyguards and I pedalled madly behind, like a throng of
teenagers in the wake of a rock star.
A few years earlier, this ride would have been a radical and –
in the opinion of many Bogotáns – suicidal act. If you wanted to be
assaulted, asphyxiated by exhaust fumes or run over, the city's streets
were the place to be. But Peñalosa insisted that things had changed.
"We're living an experiment," he yelled back at me. "We might not be
able to fix the economy. But we can design the city to give people
dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier."
I
first saw the Mayor of Happiness work his rhetorical magic back in the
spring of 2006. The United Nations had just announced that some day in
the following months, one more child would be born in an urban hospital
or a migrant would stumble into a metropolitan shantytown, and from that
moment on, more than half the world's people would be living in cities.
By 2030, almost 5 billion of us will be urban.
Peñalosa insisted
that, like most cities, Bogotá had been left deeply wounded by the 20th
century's dual urban legacy: first, the city had been gradually
reoriented around cars. Second, public spaces and resources had largely
been privatised. This re-organisation was both unfair – only one in five
families even owned a car – and cruel: urban residents had been denied
the opportunity to enjoy the city's simplest daily pleasures: walking on
convivial streets, sitting around in public. And playing: children had
largely disappeared from Bogotá's streets, not because of the fear of
gunfire or abduction, but because the streets had been rendered
dangerous by sheer speed. Peñalosa's first and most defining act as
mayor was to declare war: not on crime or drugs or poverty, but on cars.
He
threw out the ambitious highway expansion plan and instead poured his
budget into hundreds of miles of cycle paths; a vast new chain of parks
and pedestrian plazas; and the city's first rapid transit system (the TransMilenio), using buses instead of trains. He banned drivers from commuting by car more than three times a week. This programme
redesigned the experience of city living for millions of people, and it
was an utter rejection of the philosophies that have guided city
planners around the world for more than half a century.
In the
third year of his term, Peñalosa challenged Bogotáns to participate in
an experiment. As of dawn on 24 February 2000, cars were banned from
streets for the day. It was the first day in four years that nobody was
killed in traffic. Hospital admissions fell by almost a third. The toxic
haze over the city thinned. People told pollsters that they were more
optimistic about city life than they had been in years.
Colombian students ride their bicycles during 'No car day' in
Bogota.
The day-long ban on all private car traffic on the city's
streets forces residents to use public transportation or bicycles to get
to and from work.
Photograph: Jose Miguel Gomez/Reuters
One memory from early in the journey has stuck with me, perhaps
because it carries both the sweetness and the subjective slipperiness of
the happiness we sometimes find in cities. Peñalosa, who was running
for re-election, needed to be seen out on his bicycle that day. He
hollered "Cómo le va?" ("How's it going?") at anyone who
appeared to recognise him. But this did not explain his haste or his
quickening pace as we traversed the north end of the city towards the
Andean foothills. It was all I could do to keep up with him, block after
block, until we arrived at a compound ringed by a high iron fence.
Boys
in crisp white shirts and matching uniforms poured through a gate. One
of them, a bright-eyed 10-year-old, pushed a miniature version of
Peñalosa's bicycle through the crowd. Suddenly I understood his haste.
He had been rushing to pick up his son from school, like other parents
were doing that very moment up and down the time zone. Here, in the
heart of one of the meanest, poorest cities in the hemisphere, father
and son would roll away from the school gate for a carefree ride across
the metropolis. This was an unthinkable act in most modern cities. As
the sun fell and the Andes caught fire, we arced our way along the
wide-open avenues, then west along a highway built for bicycles. The kid
raced ahead. At that point, I wasn't sure about Peñalosa's ideology.
Who was to say that one way of moving was better than another? How could
anyone know enough about the needs of the human soul to prescribe the
ideal city for happiness?
But for a moment I forgot my questions. I
let go of my handlebars and raised my arms in the air of the cooling
breeze, and I remembered my own childhood of country roads, after-school
wanderings, lazy rides and pure freedom. I felt fine. The city was
mine. The journey began.
Is urban design really powerful enough to
make or break happiness? The question deserves consideration, because
the happy city message is taking root around the world. "The most
dynamic economies of the 20th century produced the most miserable cities
of all," Peñalosa told me over the roar of traffic. "I'm talking about
the US: Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, cities totally dominated by cars."
Red Transmilenio buses pull into the Museum of Gold station in front
of the 16th century Iglesia de San Francisco,
Bogota's oldest restored
church. Photograph: John Coletti/Getty Images
If one was to judge by sheer wealth, the last half-century should
have been an ecstatically happy time for people in the US and other rich
nations such as Canada, Japan and Great Britain. And yet the boom
decades of the late 20th century were not accompanied by a boom in
well-being. The British got richer by more than 40% between 1993 and
2012, but the rate of psychiatric disorders and neuroses grew.
Just
before the crash of 2008, a team of Italian economists, led by Stefano
Bartolini, tried to account for that seemingly inexplicable gap between
rising income and flatlining happiness in the US. The Italians tried
removing various components of economic and social data from their
models, and found that the only factor powerful enough to hold down
people's self-reported happiness in the face of all that wealth was the
country's declining social capital: the social networks and interactions
that keep us connected with others. It was even more corrosive than the
income gap between rich and poor.
As much as we complain about
other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social
desert. The more connected we are to family and community, the less
likely we are to experience heart attacks, strokes, cancer and
depression. Connected people sleep better at night. They live longer.
They consistently report being happier.
There is a clear connection between social deficit and the shape of cities. A Swedish study
found that people who endure more than a 45-minute commute were 40%
more likely to divorce. People who live in monofunctional, car‑dependent
neighbourhoods outside urban centres are much less trusting of other
people than people who live in walkable neighbourhoods where housing is
mixed with shops, services and places to work.
A couple of
University of Zurich economists, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, compared
German commuters' estimation of the time it took them to get to work
with their answers to the standard wellbeing question, "How satisfied
are you with your life, all things considered?" Their finding was
seemingly straightforward: the longer the drive, the less happy people
were. Before you dismiss this as numbingly obvious, keep in mind that
they were testing not for drive satisfaction, but for life satisfaction.
People were choosing commutes that made their entire lives worse. Stutzer and Frey
found that a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40% more money
to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. On the
other hand, for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short
walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.
Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling On Happiness,
explained the commuting paradox this way: "Most good and bad things
become less good and bad over time as we adapt to them. However, it is
much easier to adapt to things that stay constant than to things that
change. So we adapt quickly to the joy of a larger house, because the
house is exactly the same size every time. But we find it difficult to
adapt to commuting by car, because every day is a slightly new form of
misery."
The sad part is that the more we flock to high‑status
cities for the good life – money, opportunity, novelty – the more
crowded, expensive, polluted and congested those places become. The
result? Surveys show that Londoners are among the least happy people in the UK, despite the city being the richest region in the UK despite the city being the richest region in the UK.
For a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to
work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.
Illustration: Francesco Bongiorni for the Guardian
When we talk about cities, we usually end up talking about how
various places look, and perhaps how it feels to be there. But to stop
there misses half the story, because the way we experience most parts of
cities is at velocity: we glide past on the way to somewhere else. City
life is as much about moving through landscapes as it is about being in
them. Robert Judge, a 48-year-old husband and father, once wrote to
a Canadian radio show explaining how much he enjoyed going grocery
shopping on his bicycle. Judge's confession would have been unremarkable
if he did not happen to live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the
average temperature in January hovers around -17C. The city stays frozen
and snowy for almost half the year. Judge's pleasure in an experience
that seems slower, more difficult and considerably more uncomfortable
than the alternative might seem bizarre. He explained it by way of a
story: sometimes, he said, he would pick up his three-year-old son from
nursery and put him on the back seat of his tandem bike and they would
pedal home along the South Saskatchewan river. The snow would muffle the
noise of the city. Dusk would paint the sky in colours so exquisite
that Judge could not begin to find names for them. The snow would
reflect those hues. It would glow like the sky, and Judge would breathe
in the cold air and hear his son breathing behind him, and he would feel
as though together they had become part of winter itself.
Drivers
experience plenty of emotional dividends. They report feeling much more
in charge of their lives than public transport users. An upmarket
vehicle is loaded with symbolic value that offers a powerful, if
temporary, boost in status. Yet despite these romantic feelings, half of
commuters living in big cities and suburbs claim to dislike the heroic
journey they must make every day. The urban system neutralises their
power.
Driving in traffic is harrowing for both brain and body.
The blood of people who drive in cities is a stew of stress hormones.
The worse the traffic, the more your system is flooded with adrenaline
and cortisol, the fight-or-flight juices that, in the short-term, get
your heart pumping faster, dilate your air passages and help sharpen
your alertness, but in the long-term can make you ill. Researchers for
Hewlett-Packard convinced volunteers in England to wear electrode caps during their commutes
and found that whether they were driving or taking the train, peak-hour
travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police
facing mobs of angry protesters.
But one group of commuters report
enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam,
like Robert Judge. They walk. They run. They ride bicycles.
Why
would travelling more slowly and using more effort offer more
satisfaction than driving? Part of the answer exists in basic human
physiology. We were born to move. Immobility is to the human body what
rust is to the classic car. Stop moving long enough, and your muscles
will atrophy. Bones will weaken. Blood will clot. You will find it
harder to concentrate and solve problems. Immobility is not merely a
state closer to death: it hastens it.
The same is true of cycling, although a bicycle has
the added benefit of giving even a lazy rider the ability to travel
three or four times faster than someone walking, while using less than a
quarter of the energy. They may not all attain Judge's level of
transcendence, but cyclists report feeling connected to the world around
them in a way that is simply not possible in the sealed environment of a
car, bus or train. Their journeys are both sensual and kinesthetic.
In 1969, a consortium of European industrial interests charged a young American economist, Eric Britton,
with figuring out how people would move through cities in the future.
Cities should strive to embrace complexity, not only in transportation
systems but in human experience, says Britton, who is still working in
that field and lives in Paris. He advises cities and corporations to
abandon old mobility, a system rigidly organised entirely around one way
of moving, and embrace new mobility, a future in which we would all be
free to move in the greatest variety of ways.
"We all know old
mobility," Britton said. "It's you sitting in your car, stuck in
traffic. It's you driving around for hours, searching for a parking
spot. Old mobility is also the 55-year-old woman with a bad leg, waiting
in the rain for a bus that she can't be certain will come. New
mobility, on the other hand, is freedom distilled."
A row of Velib rental bicycles are parked at the rue de La Harpe in
Paris.
Dozens of cities have now dabbled in shared bike programmes,
including London, Montreal, Melbourne and New York
Photograph: Horacio
Villalobos/EPA
To demonstrate how radically urban systems can build freedom in
motion, Britton led me down from his office, out on to Rue Joseph Bara.
We paused by a row of sturdy-looking bicycles. Britton swept his wallet
above a metallic post and pulled one free from its berth. "Et voilà! Freedom!" he said, grinning. Since the Paris bike scheme, Vélib',
was introduced, it has utterly changed the face of mobility. Each
bicycle in the Vélib' fleet gets used between three and nine times every
day. That's as many as 200,000 trips a day. Dozens of cities have now
dabbled in shared bike programmes, including Lyon, Montreal, Melbourne,
New York. In 2010, London introduced a system, dubbed Boris Bikes for
the city's bike-mad mayor, Boris Johnson. In Paris, and around the
world, new systems of sharing are setting drivers free. As more people
took to bicycles in Vélib's first year, the number of bike accidents
rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems
to repeat wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike,
the safer the streets become for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt
more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road.
There is
safety in numbers.
So if we really care about freedom for
everyone, we need to design for everyone, not only the brave. Anyone who
is really serious about building freedom in their cities eventually
makes the pilgrimage to Copenhagen. I joined Copenhagen rush hour on a
September morning with Lasse Lindholm, an employee of the city's traffic
department. The sun was burning through the autumn haze as we made our
way across Queen Louise's Bridge. Vapour rose from the lake, swans
drifted and preened, and the bridge seethed with a rush-hour scene like
none I have ever witnessed. With each light change, cyclists rolled
toward us in their hundreds. They did not look the way cyclists are
supposed to look. They did not wear helmets or reflective gear. Some of
the men wore pinstriped suits. No one was breaking a sweat.
Lindholm
rolled off a list of statistics: more people that morning would travel
by bicycle than by any other mode of transport (37%). If you didn't
count the suburbs, the percentage of cyclists in Copenhagen would hit
55%. They aren't choosing to cycle because of any deep-seated altruism
or commitment to the environment; they are motivated by self-interest.
"They just want to get themselves from A to B," Lindholm said, "and it
happens to be easier and quicker to do it on a bike."
The Bogotá
experiment may not have made up for all the city's grinding inequities,
but it was a spectacular beginning and, to the surprise of many, it made
life better for almost everyone.
The TransMilenio moved so many
people so efficiently that car drivers crossed the city faster as well:
commuting times fell by a fifth. The streets were calmer. By the end of
Peñalosa's term, people were crashing their cars less often and killing
each other less frequently, too: the accident rate fell by nearly half,
and so did the murder rate, even as the country as a whole got more
violent. There was a massive improvement in air quality, too.Bogotáns
got healthier. The city experienced a spike in feelings of optimism.
People believed that life was good and getting better, a feeling they
had not shared in decades.
Bogotá's fortunes have since declined.
The TransMilenio system is plagued by desperate crowding as its private
operators fail to add more capacity – yet more proof that robust public
transport needs sustained public investment. Optimism has withered. But
Bogotá's transformative years still offer an enduring lesson for rich
cities. By spending resources and designing cities in a way that values
everyone's experience, we can make cities that help us all get stronger,
more resilient, more connected, more active and more free. We just have
to decide who our cities are for. And we have to believe that they can
change.
Despite
my fear of heights I climbed around 500 steps up to the top of St.
Petri's Church and it was worth it to get this gorgeous view of this
beautiful city!
How do I love thee Hamburg? Let me count the ways! .... 1. Put on your walking shoes and your cycling pants. Walking
and biking are such a huge part of the culture here that you have a sort
of daily built in exercise system. I love that Europe is set up so much
better for transit and walking and cycling in general. I mean,
sometimes I get a little annoyed by the endless number of cyclists that
almost run me down on a daily basis, but hey, they’re out there biking,
they’re doing it! I applaude you! But really….I know you’re
sophisticated and European and all, but shouldn’t you be wearing a
helmet? Just a suggestion.
Bike lovers of the world unite here in Hamburg – plus it’s ALL flat, unlike Vancouver!
2. Just add water! There is something about living next to
water that makes your quality of life that much better. Maybe it’s the
idea of freedom on the horizon? The possibility of jumping on a ship
away if you need to? I’m not sure, but all I know is that this one is a
life saver for me. Really. Whenever I am stressed out I just find one of
Hamburg’s many bodies of water and we spend some quality time together.
I’m lucky enough to live near Hamburg’s Stadpark
and there is a lovely little lake in the middle that makes for perfect
reflecting time, pun intended. They say that Hamburg has more canals and
bridges than Amsterdam and Venice put together. Crazy, eh? You can also
take one of the ferry lines as part of the transit system, so sometimes
I just hop on, look at the view and relax. Maybe it’s the island girl
or west coast girl in me coming out, but there is something about being
on a ferry that feels like home....
One of the many beautiful spots along a canal.
3. Get your spray cans out. Graffiti and street art here in
Hamburg provide me with little daily surprises. I had heard stories of
the great graffiti and street art in Germany before even coming here and
I’m happy to say that I haven’t been disappointed at all. I also know
that Berlin has amazing graffiti, but Hamburg does not in any way fail
to deliver in this department. I try to photograph it as much as
possible since so much of it gets painted over or cleaned up so quickly,
but so much of the great graffiti is along the train lines, making it
much harder to get shots of sadly (but much more appealing to graffiti
aritst who want to show off their work.) You can look forward to a whole
blog post about this later, with some of my favourite shots. I have
also had the chance to learn a bit more about this whole sub-culture and
it fascinates me. I can’t understand why graffiti is illegal really,
but if it were legal would it be as cool? Hard to say….
Nothin’ like a little “I heart Hamburg” graffiti.
4. Boredom is completely impossible. Expect the unexpected. I
don’t think I’ve ever heard a Hamburg resident say to me, “I’m bored. I
have no idea what do to.” Or “That was a boring night out.” On the other
hand I have heard, “There is SO much to do that I’m completely
overwhelmed. I have no idea how to decide.” From gypsy techno remix
nights, to opera, to street festivals, community runs and an always
bustling clubbing scene, Hamburg has something for everyone – seriously
(just ask my cousin about the hard core chess scene here!) And hey, if
you don’t feel like an event just walk around a corner and you’ll
discover some funky cafe that you had never noticed before, or some cool
neighbourhood, or some beautiful park. And the great thing is, that you
don’t even have to be in a European mood – try the new New York burger joint, the bowling alley, a Hollywood movie in English (though sadly the English movie theatre, Streits, is closing down in March!) You just never know where your night may lead, trust me.
On
a typical crazy night out in Hamburg at one point we ended up at an art
gallery in the middle of the night, walking on this glass floor in our
socked feet. You just never know what might happen in Hamburg…
5. He’s got the whole world -in his Hamburg. This has been one
of the biggest and best surprises and comforts for me since arriving
here. I had no idea what a vibrant international scene this city had and
how many wonderful friends I would make from all over the place. There
is a deeply entrenched Hamburg community of quiet and reserved Germans
who are difficult to get to know. I am sure once you get to know them,
they are wonderful, but getting to that point is no easy feat. So, being
able to make friends with people from all around the world or even just
outsiders who have moved to Hamburg from other parts of Germany is not
only fascinating and fun, but a necessity if you want to have
friends…which most of us do. I love that on a daily basis I interact
with people from places such as the UK, Australia, Spain, Germany,
Turkey, Afghanistan, Poland, the US, New Zealand, France and so many
more places. And I also love that I have a few Canadian friends here now
that I can always turn to when I want someone to completely understand
where I’m coming from and or someone who understands the word “toque” and what a “double-double” is.
In
the summer I participated in the Hamburg Women’s run and I think I
heard every European language throughout the race. I love being
surrounded by this international feeling all the time. Bonus points if
you can spot me in the crowd! (Photo by Catherine Lambert)
6. Take the train! So, I fortunately come from a city with a
decent transit system, but one thing I absolutately love about Hamburg
is the fact that trains run all night on the weekends. Seriously
Vancouver, what is up with all the trains finishing at 1:30am or 2:00am
on a weekend? That one boggles my mind. You can easily live in Hamburg
car-free and if you want to drive anywhere you can sign up for Car2Go
and easily hop in a little Smart car for any car-related tasks or
needs. Also, if you buy a monthly or yearly transit pass you can take
the bus, trains and ferries and on the weekends you can even hop on the
regional trains, take along a passenger for free and travel to nearby
towns like Lüneburg and Ratzeburg. Warning – even though Hamburg has no
machines to scan your tickets, you should aways buy one. I’ve had two
friends recently get caught for not having the right transit passes –
don’t take a chance of having to pay a €40 fine because playing the dumb
“I speak no German” tourist sadly does not always work very well in
this land of “well I speak perfect English and I’m guessing you’re not
really a tourist.”
Hamburg’s Dammtor train station is my favourite – beautiful and always less crowded than the central station.
7. No safety vest needed! Sometimes I feel like I could walk
around at 3:00am by myself and never have a care in the world. Oh wait, I
do that already here. Okay, as in any big city, you need to be
cautious, particularly in certain parts of Hamburg late at night, but
honestly, there aren’t really any “bad” areas of Hamburg, at least not
in comparison to most big cities I know back home or in North America. I
never thought that living in a European city would be safer than a
Canadian one, but it sure is! People even leave their ground floor
apartment blinds wide open here, revealing fancy computers and audio
equipment for all to see. I mean, I’m even tempted to steal those bad
boys. Sure, there is some crime here like in any city, but overall it
seems the police have way too much time on their hands hence why you see
them all on the Reeperbahn “policing” on the weekends.
The police looking a little bored at the anti-Nazi protests this spring.
8.Nobody parties like my Hamburg. Yah, yah, I
know all those Berliners would say that nobody parties like Berlin, but
I have yet to experience the Berlin party scene so I can’t make a
judgement call there yet. One of the great things about partying in
Hamburg is that you could actually have a wild and crazy night out and
pay next to nothing....Hamburg is a seriously great city to
party it. ... The thing is, you never know where your
night could go, what kind of crazy party you might find and who you
could meet. It’s always an adventure, and always a crazy good time.
How it feels about mid-way through the night…
9. Get funky! Oh if I only had a million dollars (that’s right Barenaked Ladies)
I would go to every concert here that I could. I love that not only do
so many big bands come through Hamburg, but also tons of great indie
bands. In fact, music is one of the reasons I decided to come here.
Sadly it’s hard to have the time and money for all these shows, and it
takes time to get to know a new music scene and all the venues, but
there is an endless supply and I’m happy to say, many great Canadian
indie bands come through here too. I’ll be seeing Dan Mangan in Hamburg
for the second time next month! Crazy, eh? I can’t wait to keep on
discovering this funky music scene.
You
don’t always need money to see great music in Hamburg. This summer at
the Duckstein Festival bands performed outside the Alster every night
and entry was free!
10, You are so beautiful…to me. Hamburgers (yes, people from
Hamburg are indeed called Hamburgers) call this the most beautiful city
in Germany, or sometimes, the world. I have to say that I think
Vancouver has Hamburg beat in terms of pure physical beauty (how can you
beat mountains AND ocean really?) but there is a beauty in Hamburg that
goes deeper than just the physical. It’s a magical city. Sounds cheesy,
I know, but there is something about it. No matter how tough living in
Germany can be, Hamburg always finds a way to cheer me up and make me
feel better. Sometimes all I have to do is go downtown, sit by the water
and see the reflection of the city lights on the Alster at night and I
am good to go. There is a lovely mixture of the old and the new. Hamburg
has been almost completely re-built since it was bombed in WWII, but
you can’t really tell at all. It still has that old European feeling to
it. Whether it’s the water, the buildings, the layout….I don’t know, but
it really is one of my favourite cities in the world.
Sitting on the beach in Blankenese in the summertime. True Hamburg perfection.
Hamburg, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
