If you refer to the noise from the HafenCity, that should be over now according to NDR news. Article: www1.ndr.de/nachrichten/…rammarbeiten100.html (in German).

There were works along the main railway track between Harburg and the central station, for which they had to turn off the electricity for safety reasons, and the track colud not be closed during the day.

Thanks for that. I expect that was it, although it's quite far away: presumably the noise travels farther at night. It didn't do it last night anyway - the sound of torrential rain was very soothing instead!

Definitely going to be a shopping passage day today, I think!

They are talking of thousands of sleepless Hamburgers (no pun intended) in that article, so I guess that was it. I'm glad to hear they were correct and this night was quiet.

Enjoy your shopping trip, Hamburg is great for that. There are also a couple of worthwhile museums.

yup, today Was going to be museum day but it's just too b. damp. I know it doesn't rain in museums but it does on the way there.

got a couple more Hamburg questions:

1. Do you know what the tents along the Binnenalster are being put up for? Totally lined with white refreshment tents but no idea why. Very wet men, sorry for them!

2. Is the Hamburg Bild a sensationalist newspaper? I ask because the headline on the man in front of me's paper was "Hitler on show in Berlin".

As a Brit, it's somehow bred into us Not To Mention Hitler Ever in Germany (Brits of my generation anyway) so to see his name and photo on the front page of a paper is a bit like someone made a very rude noise in public. Just wondered what it was about.

Ta.

1. Checked trustworthy NDR news website again - there is a thriatlon world cup in Hamburg this weekend.

(I'm at the far end of the country, so can't tell about the details).

2. Madame Tussaud's has put up a new wax figure of Hitler, that should be what the headline is about.

BILD is indeed the crappiest paper we have in this country. All you can believe them are the results of soccer matches. Otherwise handle with care, or the blood will drip out;-)

Allow me, being German, a comment - this "Don't mention the war" talk is nonsense. There is hardly any society in the World that admits the flaws of its past as openly and honestly as modern Germany. Discussing the topic and asking questions is widely accepted (best without quick judgments). Did you notice how many museums and exhibitions, books, movies and TV documentations exist that deal with the Nazi time, the war and the holocaust? We're keeping the memory alive for the sake of a better present and future.

No no, don't misunderstand me: when it comes to The War, we all have guilt in our pasts, we all have heroes.

Visited Old St Nikolai again today, built by the architect who built my first church in Yorkshire, there's irony.

I respect Germany's commitment to never letting it happen again. I respect what I think I see over 30 years of visiting Germany - albeit very sporadically - and that is a move from accepting the Burden of Guilt that the Allies still seemed to be forcing upon the German people in the 70s, to a healthier examination of what and how and why.

I don't mention the war in the UK much, so why should I in Germany? Except that it still seems remembered so much, particularly for someone like me, a keen visitor of churches and other significant architecture, most of which was damaged/destroyed by 1945.

I'm guessing it's my age (b. 1955), and the films I was consequently raised on.

I long ago got used to the fact that the man who drives the tram here is the Fuehrer - in the UK, we only know 'Fuehrer' in one context.

In this trip, I've come across Anschlusskarten - in the UK, we only know 'Anschluss' in one context.

At a service of Old Catholic Vespers, God's Reich was often referred to - in the UK, we only know 'Reich' in one context.

I'm taking home with me a book called 'Boese Orte' - I'll need time and a dictionary - but I think it is looking at vanished war-time sites from the point of view of saying maybe it would be better to have kept them and studied their roots, rather than just blanked them out, although the reasons for doing that were clear too.

So 'don't mention the war' isn't (by me, anyway) not remotely suggesting that Germany and Germans are trying to hide from responsibility in some way; rather it's embarrassment that (should the subject ever arise, which seems unlikely as a tourist) the German assumption would be that my position would be of Victor versus Bad Guy, and that's by no means the case, life is less simplistic, more complicated than that.

In the UK, we don't have Mahnmals like Old St. Nikolai and like the Kaiserwilhelmgedaechtniskirche used to be in Berlin before it was sanitized, and that's a pity. Because 'we won', there has been, generally speaking, no reflection over what happened, what people went through. Damage to property, infra-structure was repaired; damage to humans was ignored - and I believe we suffer because of that.

Gets off today's soapbox with just one question: what's the difference between a Denkmal and a Mahnmal?

The question about the difference of Denkmal and Mahnmal is an interesting one. I never thought of it so far.

I'd say that a Denkmal is a special form of Denkmal and that the Mahnmal wants to get people to think about what has happened in the past and that it is some kind of warning to the people that something should never happen again. A Denkmal is the more neutral form and mostly for things that are not connotated negatively.