Hamburg: Vibrant sea port and home to Germany's millionaires

May 16, 2006, 12:32 GMT

Hamburg - Home to more millionaires than any other German city, the northern city of Hamburg is a cosmopolitan city port of around 1.7 million inhabitants.

The city`s largest club, SV Hamburg is the only Bundesliga club never to have been relegated into the second division and finished this in third behind Bayern Munich and Werder Bremen.

The newly- built 55,000-seater AOL Arena, which replaced Hamburg`s old Volkspark stadium, will play host to four group matches and a quarter-final.

The city is characterised by its port on the banks of the Elbe, the second largest river in Europe and one of the seven largest in the world.

It is known as 'Germany`s door' to the world. Day and night the noise of the cranes can be heard loading and unloading merchandise arriving from the rest of Europe and overseas.

Hamburg has a bourgeois tradition in the best sense of the word. It is a 'Free and Hanseatic' city, today one of three city-states in Germany, along with Berlin and Bremen. It has never served a king nor a prince and its inhabitants have governed it themselves since 1189.

But the people of Hamburg know and appreciate that work is not the only important thing in life. In the port area of Sankt Pauli, whose red-light district is legendary among sailors and landlubbers alike, there is a closed-off lane where the prostitutes offer their services sitting in showcase windows.

The Sankt Pauli district, with its many discotheques and restaurants, is also popular with young nightclubbers.

For night owls, a visit to the Fish Market to take breakfast very early on Sunday morning is a must. Here market stallholders offer their merchandise at the tops of their voices.

Hamburg is also a media centre. Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, the German news agency, has its headquarters here, along with the prestigious weeklies Der Spiegel and Die Zeit and several other publishing and media firms.

Group games:

June 10: Argentina v Ivory Coast 
June 15: Ecuador v Costa Rica 
June 19: Saudi Arabia v Ukraine
June 22: Czech Republic v Italy
Quarter-final: June 30: W53 v W54