A day in Hamburg

From Bremerhaven, we headed to Hamburg for the day to visit another emigrant museum. Over 5 million people departed from this port. Lesley's grandfather, Irving Steinman, was one (c. 1921).

Yet another beautiful European train station.









BallinStadt is a museum located in the old facilities that Herr Ballin built for people waiting to depart for the Americas. These emigrant museums have access to old passenger lists and information about the boats. We were hoping to find old passenger lists here to learn more about where Lesley's Zaida lived in Moldova (then Bessarabia, a region that has been occupied by Romania and Russia until its independence in 1991). After finding out that the lists had not yet been digitized/available at the museum, we headed to the State Archives in town.






























The Hamburg State Archives has a nice research facility (orange walls, helps keeps you alert) where anyone can have a look through old microfilms of ID cards and passenger lists. The librarians give you an alphabet to help translate old German characters to the current alphabet, and off you go! We spent the afternoon looking for any possible spelling of Matzevaman (Lesley's grandfather's original surname) and Isador over a decade long period. We didn't find his name on the lists that we looked at--this type of research would really take weeks. It's also possible that he was on an unlisted ship, on a cargo ship as a passenger which were not required to keep lists, that the records were lost, etc. It was still fascinating to read the old script and names of boats, captains, passengers, hometowns, et al. These passenger lists are slowly but surely being digitized through the Link to Your Roots program and will be available online in future years so we hope to find more one day.





















Joe's first, and last, curry wurst.












We spent the evening wandering and exploring the beautiful city of Hamburg.

A city built of brick. Hamburg has been a major port dating back centuries. Broad stone walled canals wind through the city. In the center of town, old meets new with fancy stores intermixed with old beautiful buildings.






















The city hall









The remains of St. Nikolai Church












The warehouse district, Speicherstadt, huge, imposing brick buildings from the 16th century lining canals on both sides. You can just imagine the bustling commerce of yesteryear.





















Had dinner in the Schanzenviertel neighborhood (think Brooklyn) and jumped on an overnight bus to Copenhagen.

Joe loves boats, Bremerhaven

Here's a big old timer...









...with a cool brass bilge pump












A nice wooden ketch









A steel version of a traditional German?Dutch? small yacht, probably 35 feet long.







































Beefy mast in steel tabernacle












Simple boom gooseneck









Rudder with easy, lift-off tiller removed












I wish I had a tape measure. This steel boat had beautiful oak leeboards.

Six, seven feet by eighteen inches (approximately).


















Hinge pin and stop.









Hinge









You can see from these two photos that the leeboard is flat on the outside and cambered on the inside. Both leading and trailing edges are sharp and reinforced with metal.









Looking at the leeboard from behind, you can clearly see the camber on the inside surface.












Beautiful.

Die Auswanderer Museum

We began our day with a traditional northern European breakfast at our sweet boarding house--a variety of warm rolls, cheeses, and cold cuts, jams, soft butter, a hard boiled egg, and a big pot of freshly brewed coffee. We ate heartedly.












We were delighted to find that Bremerhaven has an entire museum devoted to the history of people immigrating to ports in America, Canada, Argentina and beyond. Die Auswanderer (Emigrant) Museum is a modern, theme museum that opened just a few years ago. This place was powerful--upon entering, you are given a passport of an actual passenger that left from Bremerhaven. The museum takes you through your journey step-by-step, from "your" hometown, to the docks, on the boats, through arrival, and living in your new home. While walking through the museum, tears would well up unexpectedly. It was rich.

The museum, located along the pier where passengers left from. This place received "best european museum 2007" award.









Photograph of the old port, late 19th century. The Ausewanderer museum would be located in the top right corner of the photograph.









Model ships showing the different eras---the little boat in the left foreground is early-mid 19th century, there is an early steamship from the late 19th century in the back, and an ocean liner from the 20th century takes up most of the photograph. 44 million Europeans immigrated to countries overseas between 1821 and 1914, accounting for one of the biggest migratory movements ever recorded in history. Sadly, all Bremerhaven passenger lists were lost but a few from the 1920's and 30's, either from lack of storage space in the archives or during WWII bombing.













Video:
On board a 19th century steamship, with auswanderer folk music ("Amerika") playing in the background.



Behind Lesley is where the old dock was, in between her and the museum in the distance. It is now being used for small pleasure boats.









A nice promenade a short walk from the museum.









Bremerhaven's harbor light

Berlin to Bremen to Bremerhaven

Headed west to Bremen on a midday train. Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the main train station, is an awesome, huge, efficient, modern, glass facility, with multiple levels of platforms and a shopping mall inside. Berlin is "arm, aber sexy" (poor, but sexy; their motto, not ours) because of their investment in facilities like these.

Easy travel.









En route to Bremen we passed massive wind turbines amidst small scale agriculture. These are the biggest wind turbines currently being made. The tower stands 120 meters. To get a sense of scale, look at the high tension wire tower in the foreground. (technical information provided by stephane eisen, dong energy)

Video:
What a scene. these turbines, unlike most turbines we are familiar with, are direct drive (i.e. no gearbox) which explains their dreamy, slow rotation.

We head to Bremen because it is from where some of our family emigrated to the States, including Joe's maternal great great great grandfather Robert Ganz (from Hesse, Germany) in the late 1850's and Joe's paternal great grandfather, Josef Safranek (from Pisek, Bohemia) in the early 1900's. It is believed that Josef's wife Agnes came over at the same time as well, perhaps on the same boat. There is a good chance that other family members left from Bremen as well given that over 7 million people emigrated from there between the 1830's and 1970's.

We arrived at the information office in the Bremen train station to learn that when it is recorded that a passenger sailed from Bremen, they in fact sailed from the port of Bremerhaven located 70 km north of the city.

Ticket, coffee, pastry, back on the train.

*We just want to give a shout out to the German train system here. When plans change, and your German language skills are limited, it is easy to switch gears using their automatic ticket kiosks and online schedules. We think the DB is BA. And check out these sweet luggage/bike conveyer belts besides the stairs, come on!*









We found a lovely boarding house in the center of Bremerhaven that was inexpensive and run by one amazing, older woman who has been accommodating workers and tourists alike for decades. The place seemed unchanged from the '50's and fit our requirements perfectly.












We spent too much time in an internet cafe and were stuck trying to find dinner at 10:30 in very sleepy Bremerhaven. It was between McDonald's and La Bodegas (think Chili's meets TGIFriday's meets McDonald's in sleepy port town). We opted for Bodegas because they serve beer and ordered nachos and a burger and fries. This was by far the worst food we've had thus far.

"Guacamole" sauce under cheese












That's a big burger












Les here---silver lining? Our waitress was lovely, having just returned from visiting her sister and brother-in-law in Baltimore. We swapped stories about the U.S. and learned more about Bremerhaven. The town is trying to revitalize itself after the U.S. military base closed down 10-15 years ago. They are building a modern hotel conference center and in 2007 opened the award-winning Die Auslander Museum...

A three hour walking tour

We started our second day with a walking tour of Berlin's historical sights. This free tour is offered twice a day by New Berlin and we highly recommend it for anyone visiting the city--you learn a ton, its in your language, and they only ask that you tip your guide. Our guide Paul, a friendly Australian guy who has been living in Berlin for the last 18 months, was awesome and brought the city and its history to life.

This is a photo of a photo of a photo of Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate). We took our own photos of the gate, but in this one, you see what the square looked like after the WWII bombing of Berlin.

The cobblestone line in the street marks where the Berlin Wall stood less than 20 years ago. It is hard to imagine there being a barrier in this vibrant part of the center city (this photo was taken just behind Brandenburger Tor).

Nearby, a section of the wall.

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial covers an entire city block in the middle of town. Each column is approximately 1 meter by 2 meters, with the tallest column at 4 meters. The ground plane undulates and as you walk between the columns, it is quiet, disorienting, maze-like...it is easy to lose sight of the other people around you that you know are there but you cannot see.

There are two large public art pieces outside the old Luftwafa headquarters. Our guide stands in front of the first piece: a large Americanesque Regionalist mural that the DDR commissioned to show the state of the nation as they preferred to see it-wheat harvesting, industry, doctors, children smiling, dancing. The second piece is a large glass photo mural placed in the courtyard to look like a reflecting pool. The photo shows a mass of people behind a barricade, linking arms in solidarity. It's an archival photo of one of the first popular revolts against the DDR, taken at the same time the more optimistic mural was commissioned.

The infamous book burning square, where early in the rise of the Nazi party, the adjacent university library was purged of all books that contradicted Nazi ideology.









A Kathe Kollwitz sculpture at the Memorial for all Victims of War and Tyranny. From the outside, it looks like a greek temple, inside is bare except for the sculpture and a large occulus in the ceiling (letting in the rain on this day).









This church was built @100 years ago, styled to look older. On the right is the famous Berlin radio tower. We ended our tour huddled underneath one of the church porticos (it was pouring), listening to Paul share the sequence of events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was an amazing story of organizing at churches in Leipzig, leading to larger gatherings there and around other East German cities, a press conference gaff, and people, people, people. It was powerful. Check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSnkJXBq_dk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnYXbJ_bcLc

The Reichstag. It's hard to see but there is a modern glass dome atop the center of the building which is open to the public late into the evening. The dome symbolizes the transparency of the new unified German government--it is where the people can watch over parliament, and parliament is reminded of who holds the power.










Writing this blog, we are filled with love for humanity, peace, and the power of people. We were amazed by Berlin.