Moving to Hamburg

Hamburg is a city of the port, maritime trade and logistics, and Germany’s second-largest city. Shipbuilding engineers, freight forwarding staff, doctors and students all come here. Moving to Hamburg is a longer route for us than Berlin, but a well-known one – half the journey is the same as the route to the capital, and the other half runs across the plains of Mecklenburg straight to the Elbe.

How we drive from Wrocław to Hamburg

The A4 motorway to the Krzyżowa junction and the A18 to the border at Olszyna.
The German A15 to Cottbus, then the A13 onto the southern section of the A10 Berlin ring road.
Around the western side of Berlin on the ring road to the Havelland junction, without entering the city.
The A24 motorway through Brandenburg and Mecklenburg all the way to Hamburg’s eastern districts.

That is about 650 kilometres, or seven to eight hours by van. For a full flat, we load in Wrocław the day before and enter Hamburg in the morning, before the traffic builds up on the bridges over the Elbe.

Hamburg at unloading

Tenements in Eimsbüttel and Ottensen

High ceilings, steep wooden stairs and no lift. The ground floor is often half a storey above the street (Hochparterre), so even the lowest flat involves carrying things up.

Bridge and tunnel across the Elbe

Addresses on the south side of the river, such as Harburg or Wilhelmsburg, mean crossing busy bridges or taking the tunnel under the Elbe. We factor this into our arrival time.

New waterfront districts

HafenCity has modern buildings with lifts, but also limited places to stop and underground car parks with low clearance.

The Port of Hamburg and moving further afield

Some clients come to Hamburg only briefly, before leaving for another continent. Hamburg is one of the largest container ports in Europę, and we handle transport outside Europę by container, working with partners from the FEDEMAC network. If you plan to move overseas after a few years in Hamburg, we will pack your belongings from the start so they are suitable for a shipping container.

Registration and parking

In Hamburg, you register at one of the city’s customer service centres (Kundenzentrum) within two weeks of moving in. A temporary parking suspension outside your building is ordered in advance, and in the narrow streets of Altona or St. Pauli it is the only way to get the vehicle next to the entrance. We describe the full list of German formalities on the moving to Germany page.

Things worth packing differently

Hamburg has a damp maritime climate, and the cellars of old tenement buildings can be damp. If some of your belongings are going into a cellar or storeroom, we pack them in boxes with extra film and set wooden furniture on spacers so it does not stand directly on the floor.