Hamburg

The Speicherstadt, a district of Hamburg (raw materials could be imported into the district tax free and processed
-- and only then would the tax be levied)

After long last (more than a month late.. ;) ), I'm getting around to posting about my family's visit during Easter. We went to Hamburg, Schleswig, Denmark + the Botanical Garden at the Christian-Albrecht-University in Kiel. (For two posts by my mom on the subject of Hamburg, go here + here.)

We visited the new opera house -- very funky on the inside + out. Here was one of the long escalators. Oo lala!

There was also a "Kleiner Saal" which could just mean "little auditorium" but we took it to mean, they'd been generous + dedicated it to us :)

We went to the Google offices, although it turns out they were just administrative + not hiring offices..they weren't thrilled about us taking pictures, but we figured the entrance was a safe bet :)

+ yes, my second "g" is backwards...maybe you have to pronounce it more gutterly?
Or do a glottal stop instead of a plosive? (like the pause in "uh-oh") Yay linguistics!

Then there were some (very) strange sightings around Hamburg:

• upper left: brick mosaic fish
• upper right: a van covered in astro turf :)
• lower left: the end of a railing that says "Fluchtweg" or "escape route" however...it's at the end of one railing. Below it is a grate. On the other side of the second railing there is quite a drop. And to the left there is just more concrete sidewalk...It was not very clear which direction we should escape (never mind from what!)
• lower right: ah, mannequins -- fascinating + strange. In this case, they had glued on lips, but the lips on the right one are slightly crooked, so it looks like she is smirking or smiling with a quirk of her lips ;)

And last but not least the city hall -- pointy, elegant + ornamented.