Weekend in Hamburg

Over the weekend we went to Hamburg to visit Dizzy (Tom) and Sonja. It was a great trip for a couple of reasons.
1. It's always fun to see them. They are part of the reason we're here. We are planning a trip to Egypt together over Christmas break!
2. It's good to spend time with people who have known you for years and years, rather than weeks and weeks.
3. The fact that our water heater kept breaking and that our shipment from July has still not arrived put some of us (won't name names here but it wasn't me) in a bad mood and we needed a little diversion.

Hamburg is about 2 hours away on the slow train, and it's a big place. It's the 2nd largest city in Germany after Berlin.We'd been there for Tom and Sonja's wedding last summer, so we didn't feel the need to do a lot of tourist things. Instead we had Pakistani food, rode bikes down to the harbor, walked under the Elbe River through a tunnel, and went to a genuine German housewarming party. It was really not much different than an American party, except they serve soup to the party-goers.

If Germany has Indian summer, that's what we have now. Can a place that has never had American Indians have Indian summer? I'm not sure (thought they are really into the wooden cigar Indian statues and one of the Hannover hockey teams is called the Indians...) Anyway, it's warm in a fall kind of way and it made for a great outdoor weekend. The warm weather also helps because, as I have mentioned before, we are still wearing the clothes we packed in July.  I will spare you the tedious details of what's happening with our shipment, but it is now in England and might not be here for another month.  It's sort of a grieving process - first there's anger, then denial, some other steps I can't remember, and finally we are working on acceptance. So Brian and I decided to just quit being stubborn and go shopping. Brian is already the only person in all of Germany to be wearing shorts. I had only 2 pairs of socks (but lots of sandals) until last week. It's time.