HAMBURG to HUMBOLDT

2010-01-03T22:34:00.000-08:00

HAMBURG Telemann's town. Ralph's flat, right on the river looking across to the giant dry docks. Early morning in the riverside market, a full fried breakfast is irrisistable, as is a Prinz Heinrich cap. A canal trip through the canyons of warehouses is a glimpse of what has been lost; a visit to the opera house to see a ballet of Our Lady of the Camelias is a glimpse of what should have perished. A night in a Reeperbahn pub singing nostalgic songs.

HANSA What is surprising is to find the architecture, the stepped gabled roofs and robust church spires, in town after town from Holland and Germany to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia - in the trading towns all the ways up the Baltic.

HARWICH to THE HOOK Like many journeys, Patrick Lee Fermour's walk along the length of the Danube started here. “Harwich for the Continent” the notices say; and beneath, the grafitti artist adds: “Felixstowe for the incontinent.”

HAV The city state in the Mediterranean made up so convincingly by Jan Morris that many readers thought it real. Marco Polo, Lawrence of Arabia, Freud, Cavafy and le Carre had all visited it, she wrote. “You desperately want the place to exist,” said the Observer reviewer. “with all its idiosyncrasies - the snowberries that ripen only 'when the early spring suns melt the last of the escarpment's winter snows'; the lethal Roof-Race which is to the people of Hav 'as the bull-running is to Pamplona'; the troglodyte Kretevs, caretakers of the bears of Hav, whose caves are redolent of “a thick, warm, furry, lick.”

HAVANA In a restaurant in the old town, a band wanders into the room in front of us and starts to play. The Buena Vista Social Club's Ibrahim Ferrer is among them. Next day we notice black dots near the horizon off the Malecon. Unable to build boats, fishermen push out to sea in inflated car tyres.

HEIDELBURG Snow, Christmas, the little opera house with a work by the English Bach, and the café where the duellers once had their club, now so respectable. In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain is at his funniest in his duelling tales.

HELSINKI In my memory, its cold half-deserted streets are colourless, barely even black and white.

HONDURAS Somewhere off the coast, full fathoms five, my father lies, of his bones are coral made…

HONFLEUR A pretty port, and, opposite, Le Havre, newly concreted and architecturally interesting, where an art gallery shows Dufy's breezy boats and Impressionists' works. You can't visit these places without thinking about Bonnard and Monet and starting to realise how it all began.

HUNSAR VALLEY Tony wants a plot of land there, to plant peaches and live the high life.

HAWAII, HEBRIDES, HOKKAIDO, HONG KONG, HYDRA, HVAR The best islands begin with H.

HUMBOLDT A current, lake, river, bay and several towns and mountains are named after the German naturalist, whom I always thing of as young man like Darwin, full of curiosity and good sense.

A–Z Travel Snapshots [H]

HAMBURG to HUMBOLDT