The RI Convention was - yet again - amazing! Our hotel was about half a mile from the Messe and Congress (convention center) so we got in about a million steps in the week we were in Hamburg, but much of our half mile walk was through the beautiful Planten un Blomen botanical garden!
What's not so good - an ADA lawyer would have a field day here because there are a lot of places with many stairs up and down and no ramps or elevators. No idea how a person who has problems walking could manage 45 stairs from one landing to another or how someone in a wheelchair would get to the airport using the metro (it would be impossible). It's also quite dirty and there's some visible homelessness but not too bad for a city of 1.8 million.
There were many familiar names in Hamburg: Subway, Burger King and McDonald's (although it is better known here as "McCafe" and the menu is quite different). Speaking of names, we saw many villages and businesses with some form of Hafen, Hagen, Haven, Graf and Werner in their names.
I’ve never been to Germany before, but it represents about 20% of my DNA, and it is the part of my ethnicity I most relate to for some reason - probably because I look like my Grandma Henion and a lot like my dad. It is a pretty country but you can't be here without being reminded it is where one of the most horrific events in human history took place. Reminders of the halocaust (1939-45) are scattered around the landscape where millions of people were burned, gassed or otherwise had their livelihood, belongings and lives taken from them by a cruel and evil government headed by Satan's little brother Adolf Hitler.
My German comes from my paternal grandmother Else Werner Henion whose mother Wilhelmina Breitlauch Werner was supposedly born in the little village of Düring, which is, according to the map, not-that-many-miles due east of Hamburg. Michael, who is working hard on our family genealogy, made me promise while we were in Germany, we would make an attempt to find her records at one of two "kirchen" in Düring (which after a century and a half have relocated to another community).
So we boarded the U2 train at the Stephenplatz station a few hundred yards from our hotel, changed to the S1 train at Oldstedt, and after picking up our stick-shift rental car at the Hamburg Airport, set out for Düring in a driving rainstorm, in hopes of finding her 162-year-old birth / christening records.
So we boarded the U2 train at the Stephenplatz station a few hundred yards from our hotel, changed to the S1 train at Oldstedt, and after picking up our stick-shift rental car at the Hamburg Airport, set out for Düring in a driving rainstorm, in hopes of finding her 162-year-old birth / christening records.
Our impressions of this more rural part of Germany: the farmland was rich, black and fertile and the towns along the beautifully maintained autobahn were much cleaner than Hamburg. Speaking of the autobahn, its no joke, you can drive any speed you want to drive - it was crazy and terrifying!!!
There were no obvious rest stops but we quickly determined what we should be looking for was a tiny sign every few miles along the highway which identified the existence of a WC (water closet).
We also manuvered road construction - just like home - drove through the Elbe tunnel which is several miles long UNDER the Elbe River; and shared the highway with bumper-to-bumper semi-trucks!
Although no one could help us find it, Düring was a beautiful little village with neatly manicured yards and well-cared-for houses. And, I felt a tingle being in the "hometown" of my great-grandmother, although there is still no evidence to support this claim.
Our plan for this little side trip was to be back in Hamburg to attend the afternoon breakout sessions at the 110thAnnual Rotary International Convention. What a laugh! Those 40 miles - the distance we were told - turned out to be 120 … and we got lost at least a dozen times. The GPS in our rental car only spoke German so we ordered international internet for $10 so we could use our Waze ap, and while it worked exceptionally well most of the time, even "she" got lost several times, which required a quick re-boot about 10 times. We left our hotel at 8 a.m. to find Düring, but we didn’t get back to Hamburg until about 6 p.m.
It was a great, fun week ... my regret is we didn't get to spend enough time exploring Hamburg, Deutchland (aka the "mother land") or find any information about my great-grandmother's family. Now we're on to Italy ... auf wiedersehen.
