Travel to Hamburg

This is the only picture I took today - Hamburg Hauptbahnhof

We took Air France from Ottawa to Paris with a connection to Hamburg. There was great chaos in the security section at Ottawa airport. One of my bags was diverted onto the intense search section and it was evident that with the speed they were going it would take a long time. I found a supervisor who explained and facetiously offered to get me a chair to sit on while I waited - which I facetiously accepted. After this it seems the whole process was speeded up and my bag was quickly released from the security prison. This made us late getting to the gate but a quick word with one of the staff at the gate in which I explained how my leg could be very painful if I had to stand up for some time and we finished up being in the first group to get on the aircraft after the wheelchairs. At Paris we had a long wait for our connection to Hamburg and this time one of the security staff came over and invited Paul and I to be first on the aircraft. We got to Hamburg about half hour late. We took the local train in from the airport which was quite interesting. The end of the line is like a V with two branches coming together one from the airport the other one from further out. Our train ran from the airport to the junction station where we waited for 2 or 3 minutes for a train from the other branch to come onto the rear of us, couple up and then the train went right through to the Hauptbahnhof. In the opposite direction the train is split at the junction station. OC Transpo please note what can be done with a little good planning.

Later on Paul took me to a nearby model railway shop which had an interesting selection of items. While we were there a customer came in to pick up a Marklin Western Maryland shay locomotive which he had ordered. It has sound and lights and was on the Marklin three rail system. Beautiful - but shown as anywhere from 600-800 euros,

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