Hamburg, Cathedral Tower, and Burger King

(2 photos)
Sunday is the best time to visit the larger cities—very little traffic and plenty of places to park. An elevator took us to the restaurant high on the Fernsehturm, the TV tower, located near the Planten un Blomen Park (no need to translate that).

From there we could see the six famous steeples of Hamburg’s skyline, which are, from left to right: (1) St. Jakobi, 417 feet; (2) St. Katherinen, 367 feet; (3) St. Petri, 436 feet; (4) St. Nikolai, 482 feet (third highest in Germany after Ulm and Köln); (5) Rathaus campanile, 367 feet; and (6) St. Michaelis, 354 feet. The ruins of the St. Nickolai Cathedral (pictured here), remain as a ruin from the war.

By the way, those signs that say “Der Hamburger Hafen” don’t give directions to the local fast-food restaurant, they refer to the twenty-three miles of docks that make up Hamburg’s very large harbor (Hafen). Somehow we drove into an area where we were not supposed to be. As we tried to leave, we were stopped by a German Zoll (customs) official who wanted to see the import papers from the ship we must have just arrived on. We were finally able to convince him we were lost, and had not just arrived in Hamburg from somewhere else.
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Thinking of hamburgers, in 1979 the downtown Burger King almost looked out of place in an impressive old building that could have been mistaken for the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C.