007 Travelogue: Hamburg (GERMANY) 2023: Hamburg Break In

007 Travelogue: Hamburg (GERMANY) 2023: Hamburg Break In

August 3, 2023 0 By 007 Travelers

Bond locations of this 007 Travelogue:

Hamburg Airport

Hotel IBIS Hamburg Alster Centrum

Hotel Atlantic Hamburg

The place where Bond’s BMW is parked in Hamburg

The route Bond drives when Elliot Carver calls him

The parking garage where the car chase ends

Reeperbahn

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997)
Photo © EON, United Artists, Danjaq, LLC

Hamburg Airport – Bond meets M

With Finnair, this time we landed in Germany and Hamburg, whose airport was immediately the first Bond destination. 007 (Pierce Brosnan) arrives here in the movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997), and he is met by Q (Desmond Llewelyn) himself, dressed in the suit of the AVIS rental car company, who hands Bond a BMW 750 iL, which is of course full various gadgets. Raymond Benson has also made a novelization of the film with the same name. The quotes in this 007 travelogue are from that book.

Welcome to Hamburg!

In March 1997, the scene where Bond meets Q was filmed in Terminal 4 of Hamburg Airport. Today the terminal is known as T2. It is easy to make a mistake with the terminals, because T1 terminal is very similar.

Mika and Pirita / 007 Travelers at Hamburg Airport’s T2 terminal, in the small pic Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and Bond (Pierce Brosnan) in the same place

Mika and Pirita at Hamburg Airport’s T1 terminal

T2 terminal has not changed much

In the movie, the AVIS rental point is in the middle of the terminal building, but it was built there only for filming purposes, in reality, the AVIS car rental point can be found along the terminal corridor.

“The British Airways 757 touched down at Flughafen Fuhlsbuttel, otherwise known as Hamburg Airport, on time in the afternoon. The terminal was ultramodern, sporting a unique passenger pier with a roof shaped like an enormous aircraft wing. The arcade contained a variety of interesting shops and boutiques – even a branch of Harrods – and several restaurants.

Hamburg is often compared to Venice and Amsterdam due to the canals running through the centre. At other times, considering the reputation of the infamous Reeperbahn, it has been called “Sin City Europe”. Nevertheless, the city is rich with history. Plagued by disasters during its 1,200-year existence, Hamburg was rebuilt after the war into a larger and more beautiful metropolis with spacious parks, skyscrapers and influential cultural institutions. As the second-largest city in Germany, Hamburg is also considered the greenest. Fifty per cent of its surface area is water, farmland, woodlands and some 1,400 gardens and parks.”

Hamburg Airport was officially called Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel until November 2016, when it was renamed and is now named after Helmut Schmidt.

Hotel IBIS Hamburg Alster Centrum – This is how a Bond blogger stays

By train, you can easily get directly to Hamburg’s main train station (Hauptbahnhof), from where it was a short walk to our hotel, which was also used as a filming location for the movie “Tomorrow Never Dies“. From the roof of Hotel IBIS Hamburg Alster Centrum, the villain Stamper (Götz Otto) watches as Bond arrives in his car to his own hotel in Atlantic Hamburg (formerly Atlantic Kempinski). The staff at the IBIS Hamburg Alster Centrum kindly let us take photos in a room with a good view of the Atlantic Hamburg door where Bond enters the hotel.

“Stamper was positioned on the roof of the building directly across from the Kempinski Atlantic Hotel. If the Englishman was a fool, he would come back to the hotel to fetch his new girlfriend. Stamper had just off the walkie-talkie with the man he had left in charge of security back at the complex. Bond had eluded them and was now probably on his way back.”

Hamburg main train station (Hauptbahnhof)

In the small pic, Stamper (Götz Otto) observes Bond’s arrival at the Atlantic Hamburg hotel

Accommodation: ibis Hamburg Alster Centrum

Address: Holzdamm 4-12, Hamburg, Germany

Room type: Accommodation with two bedrooms

Price: EUR 289.80 / 2 nights / 3 persons

Booking: Via the hotel’s website

ibis Hamburg Alster Centrum

Hotel Atlantic Hamburg – This is how Bond stays

We had also received an invitation to the Atlantic Hamburg hotel where we got a nice guided tour around the hotel. Later we visited the hotel again, e.g. for dinner.

Today, the Atlantic Hotel no longer has the ladder to the roof that Bond climbs in the film.

More photos of Atlantic Hamburg here

“The Kempinski Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg is one of the rare landmarks in its neighborhood to escape the destruction which World War II brought to the city. One of the best luxury hotels in all of Europe, the Kempinski is located near the Aussenalster in a scenic position surrounded by trees and elegant villas. It was designed with a turn-of-the-century maritime theme that was quaint and stylish at the same time. Bond particularly liked the hotel because of its Atlantic Restaurant, which he considered to feature the finest dining in all of northern Germany. He knew ten of the fifty-five chefs personally and they always made sure that he was treated well.”

The place where Bond’s BMW is parked in Hamburg

We walked towards the center and the place where Bond has parked his car at Monckebergstrasse. Escaping from Carver’s villains, Bond jumps into his car and starts driving towards Atlantic Hamburg.

The route Bond drives when Elliot Carver calls him

Ballindamm street at Binnenalster lake

Bond destinations in Hamburg can be found conveniently, very close to each other in the center of Hamburg. The chase scene, which, in the film, begins in the parking garage of the Atlantic Hamburg hotel, was filmed in several different locations. The scene was not filmed at the Atlantic Hotel at all. The beginning of the chase was filmed in London at the parking garage of Brent Cross shopping center. After the cars reach the roof, location change into Hamburg and in the parking lot on the roof of the Saturn shopping hall. Bond steers the car smoothly with the help of his Sony Ericsson mobile phone.

We tried to steer the car Bond style with our phone 🙂

Bond steers his BMW with his Sony Ericsson phone in “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997)
Photo © EON, United Artists, Danjaq, LLC

The BMW flies down the street between the houses and crashes through the window of the AVIS car rental office on Monckebergstrasse.

Hotel Fontenay Hamburg – Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again photo call hotel

In the evening we had the honor of meeting Thomas Rosenke of the James Bond Club Deutschland, with whom we had dinner at the Hotel Fontenay Hamburg, which also has a Bond connection to Pierce Brosnan. On the terrace of Fontenay Bar, the movie “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” (2018)- “photo call”- shoots was made, in which, in addition to Brosnan, were e.g. “Mamma Mia girls” Amanda Seyfried and Lily James. More photos of Hotel Fontenay Hamburg here.

Thomas Rosenke, Mika, Junior Agent Traveler and Pirita

On the terrace of the Fontenay Bar
Photo credit: Thomas Rosenke

Reeperbahn

In the movie, Bond doesn’t have time to visit the famous Reeperbahn, but in the novelization, Bond says he visited there too, so we followed in Bond’s footsteps there as well.

“Bond enjoyed Hamburg and had spent of his youth there. He fondly remembered visiting the Reeperbahn with some fellow Royal Navy sailors before he had joined the Secret Service. He had been to red light districts before, especially in Amsterdam, but nothing compared to what he saw on the Grosse Freiheit, a street meaning “great freedom”. The Herbertstrasse, where working girls displayed their wares in shop windows and invited visiting sailors inside for a business transaction, was an eye-opener.”

Beatles-Platz

Miniatur Wunderland

In Hamburg, we also visited the wonderful miniature model museum, Miniatur Wunderland. An absolutely amazing place that can truly be recommended for visitors of all ages. It is worth preparing for traffic jams and a large visitor crowd 🙂

Miniature model of Venice below

Checkpoint Charlie miniature

Evening view of Hamburg (this is not a miniature model)

The next stop was Berlin, where we took the train from Hamburg. More on this in our next 007 travelogue.

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