On Thursday, November 12, 2015, as a qualified tour guide in Hamburg, I had the pleasure of accompanying 68 American and Canadian farmers on a tour of the Port of Hamburg in English. My crew and I collected the guests at 1:30 p.m. in Finkenwerder at the ferry terminal with the “Hafen Hamburg” and started our tour with lots of sunshine and a great buffet. As our guests had already been to the Airbus factory premises before the Hamburg port tour, the captain and I decided to head towards Container Terminal Altenwerder, where Hapag-Lloyd’s “Shanghai Express” and “NYK Vega”, the largest container ships of the day, were moored. Here, very close to the container giants in the Port of Hamburg, behind the Köhlbrand Bridge, I was able to explain to my guests – also in English – what container sizes there are, how these containers are loaded, which jobs in the Port of Hamburg pay the best, how many people the Port of Hamburg employs and how big it is compared to other world ports. Here, at the most modern of Hamburg’s four container ports, we were also able to observe how this automatically controlled container terminal works. Here I was also able to “prove” how good it is to hire a guide to explain the city and everything else to the guests. In addition to the large container ships, my North American guests were also able to observe the bulk port and small feeder ships in the harbor. Blohm & Voss had what is currently the second longest yacht in the world in dock, the Eclipse, which was another highlight on our English harbor tour. Of course, the land side of Hamburg was not neglected either: Altona cruise terminal, Landungsbrücken, Alter Elbtunnel, Speicherstadt and HafenCity, including the Elbphilharmonie, could be visited before we docked again at the Landungsbrücken at around 2.45 pm. All in all, this English-language harbor tour was a great success and the guests were delighted. I am very much looking forward to the next tour. Perhaps with you?
