After booking cheap flights to Copenhagen, we knew we wanted to find another city nearby that we could also visit by taking the train – friends, when you are in Europe, make sure you take advantage of the train system!
After exploring a few options, we landed on Hamburg, taking the opportunity to make our first visit to Germany while we were so close. The train ride from Copenhagen was direct and ended up being just over five hours for the journey, for what we felt was a pretty cost-effective €34.40 per person for a one-way trip.
Note: the train from Copenhagen to Hamburg and back is loaded onto a ferry for about an hour during the journey – while this was factored into the travel time, this move was unexpected, to say the least, and we didn’t have WiFi while on the ferry.
At the end of Wilde Maus XXL. 
Enjoying our schmalzkuchen (donut holes).
Making plans to visit a new city meant that we needed to do some more research, and we found that while we were in Hamburg, they would be kicking off Hamburger DOM, “the biggest public festival in Northern Germany.” This festival is held three times a year to coincide with spring, summer and winter, and it is huge. Based on scheduling, we attended on the first day of the festival in 2019, and it felt like going to a state fair crossed with a theme park, multiplied by ten.
Entry is free for Hamburger DOM, but the rides, food and drink all cost money. We found it helpful to have cash on us, so I would definitely recommend hitting up the ATM before attending. Tyler and I focused our efforts on the food and drink options, so we hit up Charlys Bier Bar and the Caipi Bar, as well as ate our weight in bretzels (soft pretzels), bratwurst sausage, wiener mandeln (Viennese almonds), and schmalzkuchen (donut holes).
Now, we’re generally pretty skeptical of fair rides since Tyler is an engineer and can tell you all the potential issues with the ride, but we didn’t want to miss out on them entirely. Early on in our DOM visit, we rode the Wilde Maus XXL, which was part-funhouse, part-roller coaster, and we enjoyed it. They also had more “traditional” fair rides, like bumper cars and carousels, though despite our fuller bellies, we opted to ride the DOM Dancer… a costly mistake.
The DOM Dancer was one of the larger rides at Hamburger DOM and obviously drew a crowd. The easiest way to describe it is like the Mad Tea Party spinning teacup ride at Disney World, but on steroids. After purchasing our tickets, we climbed into our lime green car (which spun) in its pod of four cars (which also spun) on the circular floor (which also spun). We were joking and taking goofy selfies until the ride started – then the joking stopped.
As Floridians, we are no strangers to thrill rides, but this ride was NO JOKE. It spun so fast and in so many directions, I ended up staring at my feet on the car floor in an attempt to keep myself grounded. After about a minute, the ride started to slow down, and we took deep breaths, ready to depart our car… but the speed picked up again. Legitimately, this ride must have spun us around for four or five minutes total, and during this time, I was screaming at Tyler about how this was the end, how we had a good run, but this was where we were going to die. I had my eyes squeezed tight, not ready to believe the ride was really over until it actually came to a full and complete stop.
And eventually, it did. A teenaged girl was obviously eager to take our car for her turn, but she paused her approach as I stumbled out of it, holding on to the front for stability as I scooped up my bag and practically rolled down the platform. There was no coming back from the DOM Dancer. We promptly left the festival, and I sat at the closest metro station until my stomach settled enough to actually ride the metro (which was still horrific) back to our hotel.
The combination of carby German food and the longest ride I’ve ever been on left me unable to do anything for the rest of the night because I felt far too sick. We did not leave the hotel again until the next morning, when we headed back to Copenhagen to start the trip home; if we hadn’t had a train and a plane to catch, I doubt we would have even left then. Never in my life have I experienced the effects of a ride like that, even after eating “fair food,” and I hope not to in the future.
In summary: would I attend Hamburger DOM again? Absolutely. But would I ride the DOM Dancer again? Absolutely not.