If you’re ever stuck in Hamburg waiting for
a train, and you don’t want to venture too far away from the station, you could
do a lot worse* than a café cum laden called Mutterland (motherland). Of
course, the name refers to the regional fare they sell, not the locals that
might come here. But still, I was a little worried (hey, it was my day off from
the little ones). No need for that. Instead of a buggy parking lot and soft
colourful furnishings, there was a cute corner for drinking your drink and
eating your cake, plus a shop floor crammed full of medicinal looking jars (spices, chutney, jam), bottles (vodka, schnapps, lemonade) and little gift bags. A counter housed
impressive looking deli foods.
The lovely and quiet, hush-hush polite German atmosphere provided a welcome respite to the mayhem (and the cold!) of the central station. The coffee was good. Thanks to the obligatory chalk boards, it felt like a home away from home. Squint and you might think you’re in Berlin. Or London. Or Amsterdam. When you’re waiting for the train to come, sometimes that’s just what you need.
 |
| Cute as a button bottles |
Mutterland, Ernst-Merck-Straße 9, Ecke Kirchenallee, 20099 Hamburg,
mutterland.de
* You will indeed do a lot worse when you
go to Nagel on Kirchenallee for a beer. It’s called a kneipe, an old fashioned
pub and it looks suitably quaint from the outside. But decent beer is hard to
come by in this place, as is decent service, leaving you with a bitter
aftertaste from both.
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