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.