| I woke up early Saturday morning to start my shopping odyssey; I had a list of Germanic items that I wanted to bring back, and I wanted to get them early enough so that I'd have time left in the day to enjoy myself. I started the day at Wal-Mart (I know, I know — but they helpfully open early, instead of waiting until 9:30 or 10 AM like everyone else), where I stocked up on the staples: Haribo gummi candy and Milka bars. Then I had breakfast. After that, I wandered the streets and shopping arcades of downtown: I stopped by Habitat, because I was intrigued by their "Flap Clock" that I saw mentioned in an entry at Apartment Therapy. Unfortunately, the flap clock turned out to be huge, hugely expensive (100 Euro!), and it wasn't in German — Habitat sells French and Spanish versions where the months and days of the week are in their respective local languages, but all of the clocks for sale in Hamburg 'spoke' English. More stores: Alsterhaus, for their wine department. Lush, for Shelby. Baren-Treff, for more gummi bears. |
| Coming out of Baren-Treff, I noticed that a strange parade had started up on the street outside. I'd broken the first rule of being a pedestrian with a blog in Hamburg: always carry a camera! Fortunately, it was a very long parade, and my hotel was right up the street, so I ran and got the camera. The theme of the parade wasn't entirely clear, but at a guess, I'd say it was "Tradition, plus Marching Bands". |
 |  |  | | There were groups of people marching in traditional outfits. |
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| There were guys driving tractors. |  |
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 |  |  | | There were hunting-and-shooting clubs, with some people competing to see whose jacket could be draped with the most sashes, medallions, patches, and necklaces. |
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 |  | | And then there were the marching bands, who except for the German flags and such, could have been clandestinely dropped into an American parade or football game without looking at all out of place. |
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| After the parade, I rode the U-Bahn over to Miniatur Wunderland to see what had been added to their gigantic model railroad layout since my last visit. The biggest change was that they'd finished the 'Skandinavien' portion that was under construction in my last set of pictures. Because the MW staff had already demonstrated complete mastery over HO scale trains and cars by the time they'd reached Scandanavia, they were working on a new challenge: boats! Ordinarily, model railroaders shy away from using real water to portray miniature water for two reasons: it doesn't look right (ripples and waves are 'full size' instead of to scale), and it tends to evaporate/get stagnant/grow algae. Not so for the wizards of MW: not only are they circulating 30,000 liters of water through a filtration system to fill a river flowing through 'Scandanavia', they're floating self-propelled, self-guided boats on top of the water! For now, there was only one boat faring the small seas — to give us a 'taste' of the boat system to come, the signs said — but it was pretty impressive: a container ship that left its mooring on one side of the room, travelled about twenty feet down the river, and docked itself in front of us. After a few minutes, it left that dock, and started back to whence it came — with no guidewires to be seen anywhere! After I'd had my fill of Miniatur Wunderland, I got back on the U-Bahn for one last night at the Hamburger DOM. We'd already visited the fun fair a few nights ago, but nobody (but me!) wanted to ride any of the rides! So I had some Wurst and a Berliner, and rode such things as The Largest Transportable Ferris Wheel In The World, and the top-suspended roller coaster, which took you around an upside-down loop with your feet dangling. |
 | Some of Hamburg's famous swans, in a large flock near the Rathaus. |
|  | It's election time in Germany, which means that every street is absolutely lined with posters from the various parties. After the election, though, everything quickly disappears — unlike America, where you'll see candidates' signs rotting away in hard-to-reach places for weeks/months/years after the races have ended. |  |
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