Day 27: Ham bao bao land

We headed to the main square to do the free walking tour of course. What a lovely city. It has more bridges than Amsterdam and Venice put together. A lot of the city was destroyed in a great fire in the 1800s. The fire was deliberately lit but the arsonist was never identified. Hamburg was also bombed heavily during WWII and much of the city has to be rebuilt so the buildings that look ancient an preserved are actually remakes of the originals. The city is also in a lot of debt but they don't seem to be doing anything about it because they started building a very very large grand concert hall. The building began about ten years ago but It has taken so long because they blew most of the budget just on the planning. They then decided that "oh well we've spent this much we may as well keep going with it- it will be ready by 2009... Then 2012..." It's still not even close to being finished but they do have a nice little replica of what it is going to look like in a little glass room overlooking the river (like they hadn't spentf enough on the thing already). Unfortunately it was a really shit day weather-wise so after the tour we headed to the shopping centre to shop for a few hours. It was then time to get ready for Hannah's night -before- birthday party. We pre'd some wine and wodka from Toom and headed to a bar full of locals on Thursday night uni night. So naturally we met some German students and partied with them until wee hours of the morn. We got home to a lovely surprise on the door - Jess (who had come home a little earlier) had given the gift of a late check out! Thank you!