We left Weiden on Friday, September 10, at 3:50am...yup, in the morning. Markus drove like the wind, and even with a half hour break, we were in Hamburg a little after 9:30am. Sabine, Markus' sister, was already at work, but her roommate was home...unfortunately, she was out on a jog when we got there, so we had to walk around their adorable neighborhood and were forced to go to a pretty cool cafe called Cafe Literature...darn. It was nice. They had little play boxes with books and colored pencils for the kids that came, which Amelia just adored. :) The coffee wasn't too bad either.
We headed back after about an hour or so to Sabine's apartment. This time, her roommate Silvia was in. We were able to unload our stuff and take a nap before Sabine came home. She took a half day vacation, so she was home around 1:30. We walked around some more and ended up at a pretty cool burger joint for dinner. Amelia loved the fries, and actually ate almost an entire burger patty, minus a few bites. Nice.
We went home and made it an early night...mainly because a little one decided that, no, she did not want to sleep in her travel bed. She only wanted to scream. She would only sleep with someone next to her. So, I downed a glass and a half of wine and went to bed with her. Markus was a champ and took the couch. Such a lovely husband. :)That night was horrid. Amelia woke up about thirty two thousand times...kicked me roughly the same number of times...basically, I got about 4 hours of sleep. Great. Well, we got up, got some breakfast and headed off to the Starbucks to meet the other bloggers.
Now to chat about the meet-up! A big thanks to our hosts! Ian from Letters Home, No Apathy Allowed, Emily from Transkitten and PapaScott. It was fabulous! In addition to seeing some old faces from last year's meet up in Munich (TQE, This Non-American Life, Germany Doesn’t Suck, Regensblog, and Snooker in Berlin), I got to meet some new faces ((Resident on Earth, 50% of my DNA, HeisseScheisse, Cheeseburgers and Sauerkraut, and No Ordinary Homestead). It was a great time! Unfortunately, our camera decided to die and the extra batteries that we had with us...well, they weren't charged. So, if you'd like to see more pics of the meetup, you can head over to these blogs too...they are all awesome photographers, and I'm thinking about swiping some of their photos for my personal photo album (giving credit where credit is due of course!!).
So, now to the fun. We had a great walk around Hamburg by a real expat tour guide! She was awesome and if you are ever in Hamburg, you should have a tour from her! She rocks! Her name for some reason escapes me, so you other Webumers out there, please feel free to refresh my memory...
Then we ended the tour at a restaurant called the Kartoffelkeller (the potato cellar). It was well...how to put this nicely...the waitresses had to wear potato sack dresses. The waitress wasn't too nice...well, she just rubbed me the wrong way when I came in with the stroller (there were two in the group and I came in last at this place) and said, not so under her breath, "Ah, scheisse!". Yes, there wasn't too much room, but you could at least ask me nicely to leave it in the hallway! And then I asked if there was a high chair..."Leider nicht" (unfortunately not). Huh? What kind of restaurant is this? My answer..."ok, gut." But I was kind of bitchy about it. Whatever. The food was good, but the menu was pretty misleading. And good Lord they liked putting pepper on everything...at least what I ordered...Ok, that afternoon, we had to ourselves to take a disco nap or do whatever we wanted to do. Well, a nap was definitely in our future. Fortunately for Amelia, she passed out when I was carrying her...Unfortunately for me, she woke up as soon as we got back to Sabine's (about 30 minutes later). Luckily, I have a wonderful husband who took her for a while so that I could get a quick nap in! Then, once we got up, we decided to head to the store to grab some stuff for Amelia for dinner and walk around a bit. It was quite lovely I must say. The Alster Lake in Hamburg is great. There are lovely walkways all around it and it really is gorgeous.
When we got back to Sabine's, I realized we were going to be about an hour late meeting everyone for dinner...we were about an hour and a half late. Oops. No worries...they had just ordered, so we quickly ordered. We got our food before the people who actually arrived on time, and I felt a bit bad, but I was a bit too hungry to worry too much. They got theirs pretty soon after though.Then it was time for one of my favorite activities of the trip, the Queer Expidetion. TQE takes us out each year to a gay bar in the city and we just have a great time. Last year in Munich, I was 8.5 months pregnant, so I am pretty sure that was a sight in a gay bar...this year not so much...the guys at the door were just wondering what all these straight and a couple gay people were doing. Whatever. We were accepted pretty quickly and we had a few people come over to chat and the waiter (a dead ringer for Moby) was awesome.
That night, Amelia was perfect...she still slept with me in the bed and Markus was on the couch, but she only woke up once real quick and actually slept in until 7:15! Woohoo! What a birthday present!
I really wanted to go to the Fischmarkt that morning. Amelia was in an awesome mood, so I thought we would be in the clear...on the way to the Fischmarkt, everything changed. She went into her little terror mode and basically screamed the entire time there. It was hard since all I wanted was a nice time there looking at the stalls. Oh well. She screamed, and screamed, so we had to go. People were looking at Markus like he was trying to kidnap her. Yup, definitely time to go. In the car, the theme was the same...blood curdling screams...not fun...and definitely wearing on my nerves. I somehow got her to sleep, so we dropped Sabine off to put stuff in the fridge and we ran to fill up the gas for the next morning. Everything was going so good, then something woke her up, and, you guessed it, more screaming. This was not how I envisioned my b-day...not by a long shot! By the time we made it to brunch, I had basically cracked. Thank you Sarah for helping me calm down...
The rest of the day we took it easy. A bit of playing at the Alster, a lovely cafe on the canal...and we cannot forget the wonderful 2 hour nap! That was a much better end to my birthday than the beginning!
All in all, it was a wonderful trip. Hamburg survived being infiltrated by some whiny expat bloggers. We got some looks, because we were loud! Markus even commented on how loud we were...my response, "Well, you get a group of mostly Americans together...."
It was great. I can't wait for next year! Maybe it will be in Regensburg...oh, or Berlin! I'll just have to wait and see...
