Thwarted

(I'm posting this on May 24, but this happened on May 5, our second day in Germany.)

The girls and I had one day to spend together in Hamburg, waiting for my mom to arrive. I started the search for things to do and found one of those "If you only have one day..." itineraries. It recommended a place called Miniature Wonderland and the Hamburg Dungeon.

Hotel play in Hamburg

I decided to dig a bit further into the Dungeon, because I suspected it might be a bit much for the kids. Although their website sells kid tickets and advertises group sales for school visits, I was still wary. I finally found some reviews that confirmed my suspicions, basically saying this place is way too scary for children and perhaps too scary for easily-frightened adults. Since we were a group entirely of children and one easily-frightened adult, the dungeon was definitely out.

On to the Wonderland! The Internet said I should reserve tickets online, to avoid waiting around for hours during busy times. Unfortunately, all of the morning slots were booked. Since we had to be back at the hotel to meet my mom mid-afternoon, this made the Wonderland also a no-go.

At this point, the girls took over the research. They found a trampoline place which I vetoed ("We can do that at home!") and an indoor play place which I also nixed when we looked up the directions: Take two trains, a bus, walk around 8 blocks, find the secret entrance behind the abandoned warehouse, etc. etc.

Poring over the city map, making plans.

Eventually, I found an itinerary that was a tour of the old part of the city center. It included a visit to the Rathaus (city hall) which had a self-guided tour, and a couple of local churches, one of which boasts a small museum and a panoramic view of the city. I knew I could get to the Rathaus by train and the three locations were in close walking distance from one another, so this seemed like the perfect plan.

After only slightly messing up the train ride (the train around the city center appears to go in a giant circle, luckily a friendly local told us we were going the wrong way on the circle), we popped out into the pouring rain right outside the Rathaus... which was surrounded by barricades and police officers. I asked them if we could go in and received a resounding nein.

The girls and I took off running to the center of the square to escape the rain and regroup. We decided to press on to the next stop on our little itinerary: the museum in the church. From our crummy map, we couldn't really tell exactly which way to go, but when we looked off in the direction we thought it should be, we saw a tall spire!

"Yes! There it is!" we shouted triumphantly. Then Savannah said, "And there's another one!" And Chelsea said, "And another one!" The city was practically littered with church spires. Those tricky Lutherans! Unsure of which church spire was the one we wanted, we dashed off in the approximate direction of one of them.

On the way, we became entirely soaking wet (although we own both snow and rain gear, including rain jackets and umbrellas, we neglected to bring any of that to Germany). We made numerous turns down dead-end paths, lost sight of the spire again and again, and finally came close enough to see that the church we hoped to visit was covered in scaffolding and closed until 2018.

C'mon!!!

Another mad dash through the rain towards a spire, any spire, landed us at a random yet beautiful old church. Relieved to be out of the rain, we stepped inside and made a silent tour of the interior. The church held an art exhibit of large fabric panels, painted with brush strokes. A group of children sat in a circle listening to an adult, apparently a school group on a field trip to see the church and the exhibit. Chelsea noticed a place to light candles and asked to light one. As she began, the entire group of children made their way over and surrounded her. She was slightly unnerved to be performing this task in front of an audience, but completed the lighting nonetheless.

Stained glass. Always incredible.

Leaving the church, we looked for the nearest place to stop for lunch. A small cafe nearby offered delicious fresh pasta (Travel Rule 1: You can't go wrong with pasta carbonara; there's bacon in there!). I felt a radiating contempt from the two staff members who served us. Was it that we were idiot foreigners, invading their local cafe? Was it that I had the audacity to bring children into their fine establishment? Whatever the reason, it left me feeling upset and unwelcome on an already frustrating day.

Looking back on this day now, it has become the stuff of family legend. The girls and I imagine ourselves to be Keystone Cops: incompetent yet hilarious stars of our own personal comedy. We remember dashing through the rain laughing, being thwarted at every attempt to do something, anything, that day. The girls remember the delicious lunch, no inkling of the harsh glares from the staff. They remember that despite all the difficulties of that day, we saw a something of the city and made it back in time to meet Oma when she arrived. As with so many things in life, it wasn't very funny at the time, but now we reminisce about it and just laugh.