Hafenfest in Hamburg

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…

We were lucky to have a friend in Hamburg who offered up his tour-guiding services. It was nice to be guided around instead of guiding people around the same sights of Berlin all the time – haha.

Did you know that Hamburg is known for constant rain. It sounds similar to London, where you need an umbrella at all times, even if the weather forecast predicts 30 degrees sunshine. Hamburg lived up to its name. It rained. Actually it poured. All day long. For the entire weekend. Ugh. It was proper grimmmmm, but in hindsight it was probably a lucky thing – last weekend was Hafenfest and Hamburg was expecting a million visitors to the city.

This year they were celebrating the 825th Hamburg Port Anniversary. It’s the biggest port festival in the world and the highlight were boats literally doing ballet. Yes, you read that correctly, boats in the port were dancing with each other. Classical music blasted out, while the boats lined up and swayed in sync from left to right. They even did a little bow at the end of their performance.
I was in hysterics the whole way through… a very bizarre sight to see, but actually a lot of fun. And because the rain was belting down at this point, the people who had come to check out the festival had mostly gone inside to find warmth, which meant we had front row standing positions.

The next day we saw the famous boats resting a short walk down the river. They must have been exhausted from all the performing…