Facades in Hamburg, part 1

Some people collect stamps and I collect facades :) 

In Hamburg there are so many beautiful ones!

Blankenese Hauptstraße

Barnerstraße, Altona

Barnerstraße - Bahrenfelder Straße, Altona

Eppendorfer Baum

Eppendorfer Baum

Deichstraße

Speicherstadt

Speicherstadt

Hafencity

The City Hall of Hamburg and the gentleman in the blue suite

Today I went to town with M. to sketch the City Hall of Hamburg. Its a huge Neorenaissance building with many many details. We started in the beautiful patio. I just picked up some details, enjoyed sketching black and white and some colored pencils. 

Afterwards we went out, found a good bench from where we could look at the whole building. M. suggested to sketch everything - the whole piazza. While drawing, we became a kind of tourist attraction. Many people stopped to watch us, some asked questions like „did you do that yourself?“, „Ah, you got a task coloring this paper“, „oh, I wish I had my sketchbook with me“.

And suddenly stood a very preppy, well dressed older gentleman in front of us, and started asking us about information for details of the building. We didn’t know anything. He gave us some information, vanished, came back again, sat next to us, and told us about the legend of St. Michael and holy Katharina - apparently the statues of them are part of the many details of the building.

I wanted to capture this scene in my sketchbook and started to sketch him and M. He didn't like it. He finished his story very quickly, stood up, looked at my sketch of himself, criticized the nose, said that he looks 50 years older than he is and went away.