Home » Germany » A visit to Hamburg

Telemanagement Forum has two annual meetings in various locations around the world. This time it was in Hamburg.

A visit to Hamburg

Dave Hood
2004-02-22 16:46:56

Displayed times (last time: )

Foreword

Telemanagement Forum has two annual meetings in various locations around the world. This time it was in Hamburg. Naturally I volunteered to attend. I had seen Hamburg only once before, during my bicycle tour from Copenhagen to Munich, and it was a pretty stressful day. So I was looking forward to seeing more of the city, in a more relaxed way.

The conference hotel was the Radisson SAS, doubtless a business hotel, doubtless a fine hotel, doubtless interchangeable with any other fine business hotel anywhere in the world. What I would really like is to find a B&B, but I don’t think they’re likely in central Hamburg, and I don’t know how to find them anyway. Maybe I’ll settle for a smaller hotel, one where there’s a chance they’ll get to know me after a couple of days. If nothing else, it will at least be different. So I got on the internet, pulled up the city maps, searched for hotels near the conference center, and booked a room at the Baseler Hof, about three blocks away from the conference center. They confirmed with a fax, thanking me for the confidence I had shown in them. Confidence! Oop! Is it that bad? Decided it was just their way of expressing themselves, and confirmed the room.

The conference is Tuesday through Thursday. That means I can’t go in to work Monday or Friday anyway... why not fly over on Saturday and fly back on Sunday, and get in a little sight-seeing? Got my plane tickets (on the internet, of course) just ahead of the 21-day limit, at a good price, likely because I’m staying over Saturday night.

I asked Friedrich for recommendations; he checked with a colleague who knew Hamburg, and emailed a list of things worth seeing.

Saturday, 10 April, 1999, left San Francisco
I had time before my flight; stopped at the Red Carpet club, where I read the German newspapers. Kosovo dominated the stories, but I preferred the one about the ducks of Bath:

Stolz ...