The North Frisian Maike Brunk, born in 1971, deliberately chose the port of Hamburg as the center of her life. In 2007 she left the IT industry behind and founded the “Hamburg Elbinsel Tour”. Since then, she has moderated around 150 boat trips a year, and her guests at the 2017 G-20 summit included the partners of heads of state and government, such as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. Brunk started during the pandemic break the podcast “Maike im Hafen”. In the meantime, she can also offer real tours again.
SZ: You have already guided more than 60,000 guests – including many locals. Where did even these aha moments?
Maike Brunk: I like to show the people of Hamburg and Hamburg connoisseurs places outside of the classic harbor tours – even places where most people turn up their noses at first. There are parts of the city in which one tends to suspect industry, where things were built up quickly and easily after the war, which are not exactly considered attractive. From the water, the view of such supposedly rough areas is different. On our “Canal Idylle Bille” tour, for example – it leads east of the Elbe bridges to Rothenburgsort, Hamm-Süd and Hammerbrook into the countryside, to pretty allotments and jetties. Only the top of the television tower reminds you that you are in Hamburg-Mitte. Houseboats are moored in places that cannot be seen from the street.
So the supposedly inconspicuous corners of the port are wrongly overlooked?
Absolutely. Sure, it’s wonderful to see the highlights, after all Hamburg has a lot to offer, from the Elbe panorama to the Speicherstadt and Elbphilharmonie to historic ships like the Beijing. But especially for visitors who come often and bring time, there is much more. Also nice contrasts to the hustle and bustle of the big city. Around the Elbe island of Wilhelmsburg, for example, there we are on the Elbe tidal floodplain in Hamburg’s last primeval forest. I recently took the birthday party of a native of Hamburg who turned 80 there. Everyone was then thrilled to see a pair of white-tailed eagles above the barge.
At the same time, the harbor is not just an idyll. People work hard there, huge freighters and cruise ships are on the move, and crises have a direct impact. How does that affect your tours?
It’s that mix. In many other cities, the ports are a little further afield, in Hamburg everything is very intertwined and you can see a lot from up close. For example, because a container terminal is directly opposite the fish market. Then you might see tugs turning a giant pot in front of the bank. Current events such as the pandemic or the war are of course also topics, but many guests enjoy the tours more as a break from them, preferring to concentrate on the history and development of the port.
View of the Elbphilharmonie and a ferry terminal – culture, tourism and trade are close together in the Port of Hamburg.
(Photo: Georg Wendt/dpa)
Her most special assignment to date: to guide the partners of the G20 guests through the port in 2017.
Yes, it was interesting to see the ladies and then three gentlemen meet. To experience a small, closed group, for which circling helicopters, barriers and all that is normal. For me, on the other hand, that meant a lot of tension – I don’t want to have something like that every day!
Cruises seem to be full of jokes – what joke are you tired of hearing??
That’s actually a point where I wanted to be different from the start: I want to bring more facts and fewer sayings. You really can’t hear anymore that the bananas are being bent in some shed in the harbor and the floes are being flattened in the locks. But it is still told sometimes.
And vice versa: What sounds unbelievable, but is it true?
At the fish market, I like to ask: What do you think, which German port gets the most fresh fish ashore? People guess all sorts of things: Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, Rostock. The highlight: It is Frankfurt am Main Airport. Then laughter follows, but also a shock when the ideal world collapses, where you think, please put the fishing boat here. But in Hamburg, most of the fish actually comes frozen by truck from Scandinavia.
Do you feel like you are in a man’s world in the port?
Absolutely, that’s still the case. When I started in 2007, I got the feeling very clearly that I wasn’t being taken seriously. I was already familiar with IT as a male-dominated world, but the tone in the port is even rougher. But the more I drove along, I was able to show that I knew my way around quite well. And once you’ve proven yourself, respect comes – and you always know where you stand. But to this day there is at least one “most important man on board” on every tour, as I call it. Then he goes to me on the microphone and says he has to tell me something about the port. Actually on every tour for fifteen years. I’m always amazed.
You deal with the history and present of the port on a daily basis – how do you imagine its future?
I think we will continue to have very large ships, although the balancing act between growth and ecology is difficult. I’m not one hundred percent convinced of the Elbe deepening, but of course I can see the enthusiasm of the people for the really big pots on the tours. But the port silt is a problem, as is the issue of air pollution. This raises the question of whether everything has to keep getting bigger. For example, I would like to see better cooperation between Hamburg and the deep-water port of Wilhelmshaven. The environmental aspects of the port must receive more attention in order to have a livable city in Hamburg in the future.
More information about Maike Brunk’s harbor tours on the website of the “Hamburg Elbe Island Tour”.