12 July: Hamburger Fischmarkt

I went downtown today for the IWC "Ladies Who Lunch" at the Hamburger Fischmarkt on Karlsplatz. The Fischmarkt is a traveling festival that moves from city to city around Germany throughout the year. I don’t know the history exactly but I assume it is some sort of offshoot of the famous fish market in Hamburg of the same name. (Hamburg is Germany’s second-largest city and the second-largest port in Europe, located way up north on the River Elbe between the North Sea and the Baltic.) We met in front of the modern art museum on the Schlossplatz. It was just three of us today – me, Ann M. and Katrina, but we had a nice time strolling around the very busy market, checking out the many stalls where you can buy raw or smoked fish to take home along with a wide variety of ready-to-eat dishes ranging from the classic fried fish ‘n chips (cooked up in enormous round pans) to fish sandwiches, shrimp salads and the like. We found an open table next to a bar shaped like a full-sized sailing ship (right), ordered beers and took turns wandering around in search of our food. I had a delicious crayfish salad and a pint of a name-brand Hamburg Pilsner. We sat across from a stall where a man was selling a vareity of fruit. You could buy a shopping bag or woven basket from him for 10 or 20 Euro and he would fill it up with as much fruit as he could stuff into it. One stall down another guy was doing the same thing, only with bags of dried pasta. It was pretty funny to watch and listen to the guys haranguing passers-by into stopping. It wasn't quite as much fun as the Weindorf, but we had a nice time chatting and people-watching.