The Hamburger Dom

For those uninitiated…The Hamburger Dom is an institution, we first saw a little version of it at the Miniatur Wunderland, and it is only here for certain times during the year…perhaps Sabine knows when exactly.

For those of you familiar with Auckland, it is a mix of Rainbow’s End and The Easter Show at least I think so as I have been to neither of those two places yet either.  I am actually a bit of a fun fair gringe coming to think of it. So I surprised myself when I suggested to Birgit that perhaps it would be a good idea to take the children to this event.

They nearly blew it leading up to it with outrageous behaviour, but that would fill a blog all on its own, so it shall only be mentioned in passing here. We did go in the end, and as it so happened it was the first day since our arrival that even I was seriously cold…it had zero degrees that day!

We arrived at the Dom in the late afternoon via U-Bahn (the underground, which Ben takes particular delight travelling in.)  When we came up from underneath the ground there was a ticket control…but OMG I have not seen this many ticket controllers in one place ever!  No kidding, there were around twenty to thirty of them.  Birgit reckons it was because of the Dom and it being a Friday night.  They even had a dog there, a German Shepard.  When we left the Dom later on they were still all there and I took a photo of them.

Big, scary German ticket controllers with dogs.

The entrance to the Dom was immediately next to the exit of the train station and the very first  few stands brought back images of my child hood as the stands then looked not only the same but they carried exactly the same foods.  The most prevalent being the gingerbread hearts.  We didn’t buy any, but I am sure the ginger bread is still hard and old, just as it used to be all those years ago.

Gingerbread hearts are part of the Dom.

We did buy a bag of ‘gebrannte Mandeln’ which are sugar roasted almonds, they are warm and yummy.  We also had ‘Schmalzkuchen’ which was a first for me and suggested by Sabine.  They taste a little bit like a donut and come in little morsel size.

Sabine, this ‘Schmalzgebaeck’ was eaten for you!

Have I mentioned it was cold that day???  When Tessa and I went to the loo she said to me that her legs were blue!  As far as we were concerned we were dressed to the hilt, a few layers under the jacket, scarf, hat, gloves, coat or ski jacket but then Birgit asked me if we had anything under our jeans and of course we didn’t.  Never occurred to me, while Birgit and Jana had long johns on as well as ski socks up to the knee and lined shoes.  Ah, we live and learn.

Birgit and Jana were dressed very warmly but even their noses turned red!

So our first ride was the Geisterbahn (the ghost train) which was fun but slightly lame as it was designed for younger players.  At this point we also decided to have some sausage to warm up.  Ben didn’t eat much of his as it wasn’t quite to his liking.  He really needs to learn to eat stuff that isn’t 100% as he is used to.

Die Geisterbahn

Tessa and Nick on the ghost train ride. Before the ride to be precious.

The children then went on a ride called the cattepillar.  It was great fun, however the speed of the ride made everyone slide to the outside of the cart, were poor Tessa was sitting, so she got a bit squashed.

Post caterpillar ride.

We then walked around and had little bits of this and that to eat and drink, except forBen who turned whiter and quieter by the minute and when I asked him if he wanted something to eat he finally said ‘no’, he was too cold.  Poor child probably was close to hyperthermia despite the various layers and ski jackets so we stopped at a pizza stand and I forced some hot pizza bits and a hot chocolate down his throat and after that his cheeks returned with some colour and he re-gained some energy.  We had a chat about cars & fuel and bodies & food….

Ben getting his energy back.

The children had one last ride each,

A bumper car ride.

then another last ride each

Nick and Jana after the ‘Kettenkarousell’ , the chain merry go round. the faster it goes the higher the chains fly.

Tessa really liked this ride, too.

and then we bought a very long gummi snake from the very first store where we entered the fair and took the subway to return home.  In the subway we could slowly start feeling our legs again and Birgit typed a message on her iPhone in slow motion because her fingers were too stiff to work properly.

On the subway on the way home.

Exciting news, my other cousin’s (Armin) daughter (Esther) from Munich has decided to come and visit  us on Saturday.  She is 19 years old and stayed with us in Auckland for six weeks, so the children are excited to see her the next day. We were all asleep within minutes of lying down in bed, which is why this blog didn’t happen until tonight.

Good night all Tanja

PS This picture of Birgit is too nice not to include…

Birgit is watching the children having fun.