Phil Mercer

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Phew

 

What a few days. I'm finally getting a bit of time out after a rather full-on couple of days. Since arriving in Hamburg my cousins Daniel and Jan have kept me busy.





We put on our best anoraks and did a tour of the vast Airbus factory. It takes up a large parcel of land alongside the Elbe and is responsible for stitching together most of the single aisle aircraft plus final finishing of the big A380 and the new A350 when it begins production soon.

It was all really interesting, the attention to detail and the scale of it. It still seems a bit daft that you would go through the logistical nightmare of building it in large chunks around Europe and then put it together Lego like later. That's international politics for you!

We weren't allowed to take photos so this was as good as it got:






Since then it's been days of eating out, sitting in cafes or drinking in bars. Daniel and me went to see Black Swan at an art house cinema. See my review on Flixter for that.

Thursday evening took us to the Hamburg Planetarium to see a sound and light show based on Pink Floyd's 'The dark side of the moon'. It was great fun made all the more interesting by an event that will now forever be known as Planetarium Gate!

In a rather unfortunate coming together of circumstances, we had all been out for the afternoon at bit of a tourist trap of a bar called Hoffbrau Haus. The beer came plentifully and in large quantities! Put that, together with a salami sandwich and a 360 all enveloping visual experience, and it seems to have hit the Patterson boys quite hard!

I just feel sorry for the couple in the row in front of us, and of course the staff!

Labels: Hamburg, Travel

# posted by Phil @ 4:24 pm

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