Port of Hamburg Offers More Than Eels and Beer

If anyone here says that a location you seek is “by the bridge,” you’d better ask for specifics. This city has 2,400 of them, more than Venice, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter.

That’s because Hamburg sits on the Elbe River and several of its tributaries, most notably the Alster, which swells to the beautiful mid-city “lake” that is one of Hamburg’s scenic attractions.

Despite its up-river location 68 miles from the North Sea, Hamburg still has Germany’s largest harbor.

But the city’s chief virtues to visitors are its miles of canals lined with glorious linden and chestnut trees, a springtime halo of forsythia and lilac, magnificent architecture spanning the centuries, plus a lively cultural scene.

Take a sightseeing boat to the middle of Alster lake and look back toward the Old Town. Six soaring steeples of old churches and the old city hall grace a skyline that looks like a 19th-Century steel engraving of a German city on a Christmas card.

Getting here: Fly Lufthansa nonstop to Frankfurt and on to Hamburg. Pan Am and Air New Zealand also fly nonstop to Frankfurt; American, Delta, TWA and Northwest get you here with changes. Lufthansa is the only airline flying Frankfurt-Hamburg.

How long/how much? Give the town at least two full days, another if you can spare it. Even with the dollar’s recent surge, prices for lodging and dining are rather expensive.

A few fast facts: The deutsche mark recently sold for two to the dollar. Best times for a visit are late spring or late fall, the shoulder seasons, when the city is a wonderland of color. Ride buses or the clean, efficient and rapid underground system to almost any destination.

Getting settled in: Hotel Abtei (Abteistrasse 14; $72 to $107 double) is a stately 19th-Century town house converted a decade ago into a most comfortable and homelike hotel. Abtei is crammed with lovely antique furniture, fine rugs, old clocks, chandeliers and silver.

You can have breakfast or afternoon tea amid waves of flowers and greenery in a snug little garden. Fifteen minutes from the city center, Hotel Abtei is an absolute delight.

Hotel St. Raphael (Adenauerallee 41; $75-$90 double) is conveniently near the main railway station. Although it is modern from entrance to rooftop, the cozy lobby has an open fireplace, gorgeous grandfather clock and touches of traditional style.

St. Raphael has a fine restaurant with excellent local dishes, plus a pool, Jacuzzi and workout room with a view of the city.

Hotel Reichshof (Kirchenallee 34; $106-$136 double) sits just across from the train station and has a huge old-fashioned Edwardian lobby. Bedrooms are also large and have every possible amenity.

Reichshof’s first chef was a cook on a luxury ocean liner, and the marble-columned dining room has original wood paneling and carvings from the ship, the Cap Polonia. It’s a warm and handsome room, with a menu of superb seafood and traditional Hamburg dishes. The tiny and romantic Art Deco bar is also enchanting.

Regional food and drink: Seafood is especially good here, particularly eel, which is considerably less salty than its Mediterranean cousin. Eel soup is a hearty affair, with prunes and other dried fruit mixed with vegetables and spices to give it a sweet-and-sour taste.

Labskaus , a traditional sailor’s hash, won’t appear on menus in fancy restaurants because it’s a hodgepodge of leftover vegetables, meat and/or fish topped with a fried egg. It will surely keep you going until supper. Finkenwerder is another local staple: Gargantuan fillets of plaice fried or sauteed.

Hamburg once brewed more beer than any city in Germany, a fact Bavarians still find hard to take, but the best has now been winnowed down to Holsten and St. Pauli.

Good dining: Bobby Reich’s, on the banks of the Alster, is a meeting place for all Hamburg. This combination restaurant-cafe is set on a jetty where sun worshipers bask outside during a lunch or late breakfast of herculean proportions. Konigsberger klopse , a rather large minced meatball with sauce, is a house specialty, as is eisbeinsulze , pork leg roasted and served with kraut.

The decor of the Old Commercial Room (Englische Planke 10) is so nautical that you might get a bit queasy just looking at all the binnacles, maps, marine prints and assorted shipboard gear. Founded in 1648, it’s the place to go for labskaus , eel soup and other typical hamburgische Kuche .

Fischerhaus (St. Pauli Fischmarkt 14) is a no-nonsense place to warm your heart, with gigantic platters of fish (fried, broiled, sauteed or poached) going by your table, wafting an aromatic cloud of temptation.

It has the freshest fish in Hamburg and is a favorite of both local swells and tattoo-adorned seamen from the docks just across the road. Fischerhaus will serve you enough fish to get you through Lent for about $15.

Going first-class: By any standard and a number of polls, Vier Jahreszeiten (Neuer Jungfernstieg 9; $178-$223 double) is among the two or three best hotels in the world and some proclaim it unmatched in Europe. It certainly is Germany’s finest.

To this chorus of accolades we would add that it is difficult not to enthuse over a lofty level of personal service seldom encountered, elegant furnishings of museum quality and a gorgeous dining room that merits its Michelin star and more.

Vier Jahreszeiten counts Gobelin tapestries among its many treasures. Antiques are all original, and two dozen red roses or seasonal flowers in each bedroom come from its own nursery.

The 45,000-bottle wine cellar furnishes a formidable selection of fine vintages. The wine also is sold to many of the best restaurants and hotels throughout Europe, another reason that few hotels measure up to this century-old paragon.

On your own: Start your appreciation of this lovely city by taking one of the sightseeing boats for an hour’s cruise of the Alster and the narrow, willow-lined canals that lace the town.

Now take the old-fashioned Hummelbahn train that makes the rounds of most city attractions, with stops for picture-taking and browsing. You’ll go through the lusty St. Pauli District with its infamous Reeperbahn of bars, pubs and sex shows; visit the magnificent, 18th-Century baroque St. Michael’s Church, a city treasure; stop at the port for a snack of pickled herring or eel, then stop again at a courtyard of the Old Town for a glass of wine and stroll by the ancient homes and shops of Hamburg.

And save time for a shopping spree among the malls and arcades around Jungfernstieg, said to be the best collection of elegant stores and pricey goods in Germany.

For more information: Call the German National Tourist Office at (213) 688-7332, or write (444 S. Flower St., Suite 2230, Los Angeles 90071) for a brochure on Hamburg and city map, plus a welcome-to-Germany booklet with a map of the country. Ask for the Hamburg package.