Hamburg, my pearl.

Hamburg is not a city, but an attitude. And understands only that on a hot day at the Elbstrand sets - and discovered what Hamburg everything can be: Rio de Janeiro, Saint-Tropez, Ibiza, the Sahara and the Mediterranean.
  I need when I talk about Hamburg, also of 20 July 2006 talk. On this day the temperature reached 38.5 degrees Celsius. In the shade. In Hamburg. The city has not the reputation of being the headquarters of the good weather too, but on this day were no more jokes made about the average of 52 days a year in which fog banks over the city and cut it in the old houses down in Övelgönne Moll of the distant fog horns sounds, while the fine drizzle diagonal to the window panes whips.
On this day discovered that it still did not know what Hamburg everything can be: Rio de Janeiro. Saint-Tropez. Ibiza. The Sahara. The Mediterranean. I think quite seriously. Who even at such temperatures on the Elbe sat know what I mean. Because of Elbstrand is unique. He is the real heart of the city.
FOUND IN ... MERIAN Hamburg magazine content bestellenwww.merian.deIch have long lived in Munich and Berlin. I was in the hot summer days in the idyllic Eisbach set to Kiesele banks of the Isar cold, to the sluggish and brown driving over the Spree. It did not work. It is not the same.
Perhaps it is because the Elbe but much wider and closer to the North. Perhaps it is because the Elbe two completely different worlds together or separate, depending on how it looks - the earth south of Hamburg with its so-called problem districts and red tenements, and the noble Elbhänge its Kiesauffahrten and the blue and white Alster Hamburg. The former Hamburg upper Construction supervisor Egbert Kossak, the planned new buildings at the Elbe River like a "string of pearls" mentioned. Therefore, if the Elbchaussee at which this string of pearls hanging from the neck of Hamburg, it would be anatomically speaking, William Castle, Veddel and industrial port in the belly of Hamburg, and it is these neighborhoods are not too close, if you say: You are the Beer belly of the city.
The beauty lies in the contradictions
From there, from the southern Elbufer, drown the wildest noises over, ships will be deleted, container unloaded, blue cranes with red arms screech on their rails. Every few minutes you can hear the giant steel spider screaming and the Donnerhall vigorously up, empty containers: Pank-Gonnnnng! Wuuuuuuiiiieeeh! Over there will be worked over there, the black giant Hanjin ships from South Korea canceled raging over globalization, but we sit here like an island, and it is as if the real world far away.
If you check the fine sand of the wide ElbStrand hinüberschaut and sits on the harbor, one has the feeling that they had a successful flight behind him. The sand is soft, the backlight hard, the wind comes from the sea, the world on the Elbe is greater than at Spree and Isar. On the Elbe vessels come over, as big as the Berliner Schloss, in-house high walls made from tin. For a moment it will be noticeably darker on the beach, you hear the noise of the big diesel from the depths of the plate Leibs emporwummern, and if the ship is gone, the Bugwellen, as the foothills of a small tsunamis on the Elbstrand crash.
From the office at the beach
Hamburg's beauty lies not in the gleaming white mansions of Harvestehude, glittering in the light of the Alster - Hamburg's beauty lies in the vicinity of absolute opposites. 15 minutes by car - it does not need more from one to the other world: from fine to the monastery star hill district of Hamburg where there are big trouble, it supposed to like the Lower East Side, before it was gentrifiziert; by the noble bar of the Hotel Atlantic in the schrottigen workers pubs of William Castle - or from the office to the beach. One can during the lunch break after Övelgönne to "beach pearl" drive half an hour barefoot in the fine sand, and it is already back in the office, with a slight sunburn and hidden hair.
Perhaps this is what the Hamburg as relaxed make: to know that another life is possible at any time. You must not drive away, the whole world is already there. The Boberg, the Sahara dunes, the sand below into Blankenese nicer than at most beaches of Ibiza, and in the so-called Harburger mountains there, when I still lived there, even a ski lift. "But the beach Pearl" is perhaps the best example of how Hamburg works - just not as evil people always say, just as with Hermèstuch, Barbourjacke and dark green Jaguar to enter the ghetto empire, but as a classless utopia. On the beach of Övelgönne meet everyone: lawyers, ex-punks, students from Altona, millionaires from the Elbvororten. And if you ask me, in Hamburg, where you can eat the best and what the cost, I would always say: Before the "beach pearl", with harbor views, the herring bread costs 4.50 euros and the beer $ 2.80.