One of our jobs this morning was to find a machine that would take our cards. Lucred-up, we ventured forth on pleasure bent, but went to St Nikolai instead (left, seen from the canal behind the Deichstraße). St Nikolai was once the tallest building in the world, but like the rest of Hamburg was almost obliterated by the Allies in 1943. What is left of it – the tower, the sanctuary and the cellar, has been ‘restored’ (ie tidied-up) as a memorial for the victims of war and persecution from 1933-45. The cellar is a documentation-centre (not a ‘museum’) with photos of the devastation of Hamburg, with artefacts and stained glass (removed for safe-keeping during the war) and a section showing the reciprocal damage caused by the Germans in Warsaw and Coventry. In the open space which previously was the church are sculptures, including ‘The ordeal’, a bronze statue set on bricks recovered from the Sandbostel concentration camp in Lower Saxony. 
A lift takes you 76 metres up the tower to an amazing view of Hamburg. From there you can see the Elbphilharmonie, the new concert hall to be opened in 2012. 
It is part of Hafen-City the redevelopment of the old port area, the Speicherstadt.
This is a beautiful area, old bondstores alongside canals, but like the Rocks is full of overpriced tourist-traps, like Miniature Wunderland and Hamburg Dungeon. Instead we headed for the Kaffesrösterei, where as the names suggests they roast coffee and sell it to lucky people like us. Here is a photo of a woman who is enjoying her first decent cappuccino in two weeks:
In Paris we looked like locals; here we look like tourists, but we don’t mind, because we look like tourists from Paris.
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