Hamburg summit

30.09.  Мy expectations from our today's meeting with mr. Gerdelmann from Hamburg City Planning Committee have been more than met. I don't know what but something is really different in western democratic states. A city agency manager, a man who in Russia would have definitely told us very little or even didn't want to meet at all, this man in Germany has spoken about nearly all he knew himself and yet has tried to learn even more from us. Mr. Gerdelmann had neither intention of showing off nor he was trying to be overcute to us. But his normal work attitude was the best citizen-to-bureacrat experience in my life.

 

01.10
Today was the D-day for us. At least for me it was. The whole trip had it's heart in the Hafen City project and it had to be fabulous otherwise our destination would be not much of a use really. And as we've seen it we understood that we picked the right place. Hafen City may not be a massive breathtaking construction project like ones in Dubai or Shanghai but it clearly does what it's supposed to do: it integrates a big new city district with better housing and comfortable modern public spaces into the existing landscape of Hamburg. We later found out however that the whole process isn't going as smoothly as depicted by our guide Robert. There are rumors that some buildings barely find their lessees but I'm sure these hurdles only come from the fact that the developer doesn't want to sell for cheap now so there is still time to sell the remaining land for better value.