Hamburg Location

Location:

Hamburg lies almost equi-distant between the North Sea in the west and the Baltic Sea (Ostsee) in the east, at the beginning of the north pointing peninsula, that is first Schleswig-Holstein and then becomes Denmark. Hamburg is a city, but also a province (City state), with similar political rights to Schleswig-Holstein in the north and Nieder-Sachsen (Lower Saxony) to the south.

Hamburg's direct westerly link to the North Sea is via the river Elbe, its links to the east are via the Elbe and to the Baltic are via the "deep sea" Kiel canal. There are many smaller canals leading back into Northern Europe. All these have helped Hamburg for over a thousand years to be a major trading port. This has been given an extra boost by the opening up of the previously communist markets to the east of Hamburg.

To quote the Burgermeister, "Hamburg is the most easterly North Sea port and the most westerly Baltic Sea port!"

Travelling by ship is the obvious way to get to Hamburg and there are good seagoing car ferry links with Harwich and Newcastle in the UK, courtesy of DFDS, although these trips take about 20 hours and should be treated as a mini cruise (assuming it is not blowing a force 10 in the North Sea, at the time of your crossing!)

For those, coming from further afield or with less time to spare, Hamburg has its own international class airport, conveniently situated in the north of the city. There are many direct world flights and plenty of connecting flights via Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam or Paris.

By road, Hamburg again has the great advantage of having the first significant road crossing of the river Elbe since the coast. This is the currently 3 tunnel (2 lanes per tunnel) Elbe tunnel which is about 2.9km long and is about to be extended to a new fourth tunnel. The tunnel carries a large proportion of Europe's north/south road traffic on the A7 highway (Autobahn 7). (See Map of Hamburg above.) This connects Denmark and Flensburg/Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein to the north via the A7 and A23 (Husum - a North Sea Coastal Resort) with the south via the A7 via Hannover and the A1 via Bremen. There are also important highway routes running to the east towards Berlin.