Ich bin ein...Hamburger?

My first few days in Hamburg have been very nice indeed. I arrived on Thursday afternoon, only to find that I had left my laptop charger safely in the Columbus airport. So the first order of business was to track down a store that sold Apple products. This was a bit of a pain, and I had to take a cab across the city. All in all though, I am the proud new owner of a MacBook charger which will need an adapter if it is to work in America. So it goes, as they say.
The hotel was about as I'd expected, although the neighborhood is a bit...rowdy. The best way that I can describe it is a combination of 6th St. in Austin, the ``Lovely Ladies'' routine from Les Miserables, a Husler mail order catalog, and a Turkish street bazaar. If you're not sure, you should check out Reeperbahn on Wikipedia (this is the street where the hotel is located).

Apparently, the Beatles played several gigs here before they were discovered. The fact that they were actually from Liverpool seems to be lost on the locals, though. There is a nice plaza ``Beatles Platz'' adjacent to my hotel. I took this picture looking through Ringo's head, down the ``sinful mile'':
Yesterday I spent walking around on the waterfront, which is underutilized as it is in Galveston. This is a memorial to lost seamen, near as I can tell:
The port of Hamburg is pretty busy, and during business hours there was a lot of water traffic. The city is the third largest port in Europe, and has been for quite some time. Either way, the maritime tradition is evident, at least on the waterfront.
Yesterday and today I spent a good deal of time writing my talk for the conference next week, mostly enjoying German food and beer in sidewalk cafes...
Hopefully I'll have a bit more time to take better pictures once I'm finished writing this talk. Otherwise, all is well.