Helgoland; Thursday, 23 July, 2026

I had a half days leave, so after finishing work at lunchtime I packed my bag and headed over to Heathrow in the comfort of a mid-afternoon rather than rush-hour journey.

The journey over and through the airport was uneventful, as was the flight over to Hamburg, with the only slight wrinkle being the immigration desks not appearing to be fully using the European Entry Exit System with my passport just being scanned and stamped, I did wonder if that might cause problems on my journey back, but that was an issue for future me.

From the airport I caught the S-Bahn a couple of stops to Barmbek where I changed onto the U-Bahn round to the stop close to my hotel. Given that my hotel was right by the Hauptbahnhof I should just have been able to stay on the S-Bahn, but engineering works had cut the line for several weeks and it was easier to change away from where the bulk of people were having to change, and – at least according to Google maps – it should have been a few minutes quicker.

I walked the short distance from the U-Bahn station to the hotel, checked in, grabbed a quick drink in the bar and then turned in for the evening as I needed a relatively early start in the morning.