We had a leisurely start to our day at the Dock Inn, but still managed to check out and hit the road for the journey to Hamburg by 10.30 am. It was initially cloudy but by the time we had left the main city and were out in the countryside again the sun had made its way back out. After an hour or so we found a penny to grab some lunch from before driving another half an hour to our lunch spot in Ratzeburg. We pulled into a car park by the lake and sat in the sunshine having our lunch. There were lots of other bikers that had parked there too enjoying an ice cream break in the sunshine. Once back on the road again we continued to see lots of bikers on our route to Hamburg. We had booked a small apartment on Airbnb for our stay in a suburb outside of Hamburg as everything inside was ridiculously expensive for basic rooms with no facilities to cook for yourself. We lucked out with where we booked too, pulling into a very quiet residential area with a huge house.
The apartment itself was in the basement of one of these houses, but looked onto a lovely garden space and had everything we could need. Our hosts even let us leave our bike in their garage. With it being later on in the day, we decided to just stay in this area for the rest of the day. We wandered through the leafy suburb admiring all the large houses to find a shop for groceries. Apparently, Hamburg is the wealthiest city in Germany, which matched with some of the mansions we saw. We had a quiet evening reading in the sunshine, doing more editing/blogs and cooking dinner thankful not to have to fight with teenagers for a cooking space.
It was a very early start the next morning, we had to get up at 6 am so that we could drive 1 and a half hours through Hamburg city centre to a garage in Tornesch. The bike was booked in for 8am for an oil change and for new tyres. The plan was to wait here for the work to be done, drive back to the flat, shower and then head out to explore Hamburg for the day. Things didn’t go to plan though, as after about half an hour one of the guys came to explain that our brake discs were very thin and really needed changing. He was able to get most of them there the same day so they could fit them and then we could get the bike later. Grateful that hopefully the work could be done that day we agreed and luckily the garage and our Airbnb were located near train stations, which meant we could explore Hamburg whilst we waited. We were able to leave our helmets, gloves and jackets at the garage so we didn’t need to trapse around in them whilst exploring Hamburg. Fabien was lovely and then dropped us at the nearest train station and we just had to get a slightly wider zoned day pass (A-C 9 euros). 2 trains and 1 hour later we were back at Reinbek station and then had to walk back to our airbnb for 20mins.
We had a quick change and packed up the rest of the motorcycle gear we would need to ride the bike back in later that day before heading back to the train station and making our way into Hamburg. We needed to get the train back to Tornesch at 4pm so we only had a few hours to see a bit of Hamburg. We got the train to Reeperbahn to have a bit of a wander through this dodgy but now hip area, before walking through the park and down to the landing docks. This is where all the public ferries and the tour boats go from. Initially, we had planned to do a makeshift boat cruise by getting one of the commuter lines back and forth, as they are included in the transport day pass. However, unsure how long this would take we opted to just watch all the boats from the river's edge and have some currywurst ($ euros) at one of the dock stalls instead. It was one of the best currywurst we had had!
From here we wandered along to see the wave designed elbphilharmonie building, along the canals and passed the old warehouse areas, where we needed to have a short break on a bench in the shade- both getting very hot in the sun with all our stuff for the bike. We also managed to check out the impressive St Nikolai church with its very tall gothic tower. We grabbed refreshments from a nearby Edeka and wandered through the main center shopping area, to the grand looking town hall and briefly wandered through the expensive shopping area before sitting on the banks of Jungfernsteig promenade by the water having another break. Both of us were exhausted by this point so opted to get the underground back to the station to wait for the train to Tornesch.
An hour later we arrived at Tornesch station, grabbed some beers from the Rewe and walked the 20 minutes back to the garage expecting to pick up the bike. When we got there we were told there had been a bit of a complication with the new front disk brake which was getting stuck and jamming the wheel. Instead they were about to change it back to the old disc brakes. However once I had come back from putting all my motorcycle gear on ready to ride back I found Dave in the workshop with Fabien. We had more bad news… it was still getting stuck with the old brake discs and it wasn’t possible to drive on.
This was very stressful as it was the end of the day on a Friday, the garage wasn't able to do anything about it now until Monday- where they said it would need a thorough clean of the calipers etc to see if that helped. We were due to leave the following morning but had to change all our plans and find accommodation until at least Tuesday. Luckily we managed to find an airbnb closer to the gargage that was on the train line so quickly booked this and cancelled all our upcoming hotel reservations across Germany/ Netherlands and plans with Dave’s friend Lauren who we were supposed to be staying with. Exhausted and defeated, we got the train back again another hour to Reinbek, went and had a shower to feel more human and look at rough options for if the bike took longer.
Let’s see if we get things sorted and back on the road in the next one!
Thanks
Alex
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