This past weekend was a little more ambitious than last weekend. We started by going to a street festival in St. Georg, the neighborhood on the other side of the main train station from the Mönckebergstraße. Hamburg seems to occupy its time after the DOM ends for the season by having one or two street fairs a weekend until its time for the next DOM. (I'm not complaining.) We walked the length of the fair and looked at all the booths, had our obligatory grilled mystery meat and beer, and then made our way to our next destination, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (or in English, the "Museum of Arts and Crafts").
The museum was about what I expected: an interesting collection of 20th century graphic arts and design -- the part I was most interested in -- sitting on top of several floors worth of porcelain and Baroque furniture. Unfortunately, we spent too much time down in the silverware and teacups, because Shelby started getting tired out by the time we got to the 20th century floor. I took a cursory look around the exhibitions there, and then we headed for home. We'll (or at least I'll) have to go back sometime -- not only to look more carefully at the modern floor, but also to see the other half of their collection of antique musical instruments, and to see their typography and book arts collection (which we somehow entirely missed!)
On Sunday afternoon, we went to see a another museum, the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (Museum of Hamburg History). Hamburg's history museum is organized on the "Grandma's Attic" model -- if it's got something to do with Hamburg, it's in there! It's four floors, jam-packed with everything -- case after case of models and dioramas, paintings, statues and sculptures, curios of all sorts, Victorian womens' underwear, and pirate skulls nailed to a board with giant spikes (yes, really). This museum didn't make us work too hard; much of their signage was in German and English! At the back of the museum was a new exhibit on Hamburg in the 20th century which I thought was particularly well done. (Hamburg's been through a lot in the last 100 years ...)
On the top floor of the museum is a large train layout that's fallen on hard times since Miniatur Wunderland came to town: they used to bill themselves as the largest train layout in Europe, but now they only claim to be "the largest No. 1-gauge layout in Hamburg". The layout was completed in the 1950s, and it doesn't look like it's had a lot of updating since then. Still, I'm glad to watch model trains anywhere, and they had a rack with pamphlets from other train-related organizations that I'll have to visit later (maybe when Shelby is in San Francisco for her friend's wedding next month ...)
And now, it's another week of work. Yesterday felt kind of strange -- last week, many of my co-workers were in San Jose for the company-wide "Tech Summit"; combine that with my recent vacation time, and I've had three weeks where I haven't spoken all that much German. Returning to the normal lunch-table conversation made me feel very rusty. I think that I'll spend some time this week watching TV and reading, so that I can polish up my basic comprehension skills a bit.
Posted by Kevin at May 4, 2004 07:35 AM