Thursday, October 21, 2010

Hamburg! (More than a week after the fact, and very very long)

So I gotta apologize I guess.  I've had the past two weeks off and I've done diddley squat with my time (well that's not true, it's just that you really don't need to hear about the time I transferred money into my German account and the guy was kind of snooty about it), with the exception of going to Hamburg, one of Germany's 3 city states. 

Anyway, now that we can all forgive one another (if you were better readers you'd comment more, hint hint wink wink nod nod I don't really care) I've got the German language dub of Law and order on the TV (muted because I can't concentrate when people are talking) and some Charles Mingus on the iTunes (he is the best blogging music.  Not many people know this, but he deliberately composed some of his most famous tunes to facilitate blogging and in the process invented the form) so let's get to it.


First some background: I have two weeks off for Herbstferien, which is more than Grinnell gave me for fall break.  I still didn't get to go home (no hard feelings) but I did get to have time off for the venerable Grinnell drinking tradition of 10/10.  10/10 is a magical holiday celebrating the reception of our first paychecks, some dudes birthday, Jerry Orbach holding that gun on screen as I type this, and above all campus unity, both at home and abroad (abroad being loosely defined as off-campus, or the rest of the world).  Every year on the closest Saturday to 10/10 we Grinnellians gather and celebrate one another, and this year it was even more special because the holiday falls on 10/10/10 (which is actually a Sunday but the party only starts on Saturday, it keeps going).  Clearly something special was in order, so I hit up my friend Christine, who is Fulbrighting over in a small town outside of Kiel, to see what was up.  She said there would be a small gathering of Grinnellians (her and an alum friend of ours named Hilary plus this other girl who is cool named Lauren) in Hamburg, a city I have never been to but that is only an hour away by train.  Seriously it was pretty convenient, also the tickets were only 20 euro.


ANYWAY


We have the scene set, Hamburg, Grinnellians, Lauren, Germans looking at us funny for speaking English.


So I rolled in around noon and noticed that Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (the central station) is a pretty big place.  I wandered around looking for my party when I stumbled across a guy dressed as Mario.  Apparently it's Mario's 25th birthday (I'm only 3 years younger than Mario, weird).  I got excited, like every 22 year old young adult who is secretly still an 11 year old boy but doesn't have access to video games, and took a couple of pictures with my phone.  While I was waiting by the Mario for everyone to show up (it seemed like a natural focal point) some drunk homeless guy yelled from above that he loved Mario, though he called him Mattheus or however you spell the Matthew in German so I'm not sure exactly who he was yelling at.  He came down later and gave the guy a hug.  It was after this that Christine showed up and we preceded to wander aimlessly around the station looking for Lauren.  We eventually found her and moved to the U-bahn where I bravely led us in the wrong direction on the U-bahn, instructed everyone to get off on the wrong stop then boldly waited 4 or 5 minutes for the next train to come that was already going in the direction we were going. 

I should mention that we didn't really have a very clear idea of where we where going.  We just knew that we wanted to see boats. 

We eventually did find one after like 20 minutes of riding the U-3, which is a great way to see the city by the way.  Christine noticed that there was a huge boat, the Rickmer Rickmers, about sitting right outside the station and we decided to get off and check it out.  Fun fact, she knew a bunch about boats so the it was way more enjoyable! 

Afterward I think we got lost for a little bit before ending up in St. Pauli, which is the alternative district in Hamburg.  It's home to the infamous Reeperbahn district (red-light district) as well as the football team FC St. Pauli.  It's also the location of some cool old churches and a statue of a guy we are pretty sure is Bismark.  I'll post pictures later on my picassa account and you'll see what I'm talking about. 



From St. Pauli we wondered over to the beautiful old Rathaus, where important decisions regarding the city are made by elected officials.  Again I'll post pictures elsewhere to show you what that's like.  We scrounged up some dinner over at an EDEKA (grocery store) and bought some drinks to bide our time till the sun set and we could start drinking.  I called Hilary to make sure she knew that we were in Hamburg and when she asked me what we had planned for the next couple of hours I got really confused and had to hand the phone off.  I wish I could attribute that to alcohol, but I can't.




Anyway we eventually make our way over to the "cool" part of town where all the young people hang and there is much joviality.  From here on out we just kind of drank and set at bars, that being the thing to do around there.   Hilary showed up and we actually got to move inside where it was warm for a change.  We ended up at a cafe that had turned off it's coffee machine so they refused to serve us any coffee but they didn't ask us to leave (Europe doesn't make sense sometimes, though I guess we still bought beer there) so we chilled till about 2 when Hilary asked us if we wanted to head over to the Reeperbahn to check out the freak show (my collective term for the things that we saw there).


I've got to say, not being a customer of red-light districts, nor really knowing much about them, I was really underwhelmed by what I saw.  The Reeperbahn is essentially a trashier, more low rent version of Bourbon street, where people expend a lot of effort to get you to come into their clubs and spend 6-, euro on beer and look at women with no clothes on.   What WAS entertaining were the people frolicking around at 3 in the morning in Hamburg. 


By the way we also didn't have a place to sleep for the night, so we were just going to rough it till Sunday.




Anyway at around 4:30 in the morning we realized there really wasn't anything else to see and we were all cold.  Lauren's solution was the best, go to the McDonald's where they wouldn't care that we weren't buying anything, there was coffee, they had a bathroom, and it was warm.  We holed up there for a couple of hours and watched the FreakShow pour in and out.  Some guy asked me the standard question that all Germans like to ask people from Texas, "You like George Bush" being mildly intoxicated and quite tired I told him in very frank language that I did not and to please tell everyone else to stop asking.   I think he got the picture. 


We waited in the McDonald's for about 2,5 hours, I regaled Hilary with the Cheerio Joke (she slept through the end) and in general had a good time marveling at how the Europeans have elevated American trash culture to high end cuisine without actually making the food any better.  Finally 06:30 rolled around, which meant we could head over to the Fischmarkt for breakfast.


The Fischmarkt is a Sunday tradition in Hamburg, it's a truly wonderful experience.  You wake up extra early, or stay up all night, and you go to a giant hall where you buy fish and drink beer for breakfast.  Adding to the already festive atmosphere are live bands performing truly terrible covers of American and German pop songs.  Needless to say watching the rise over the Elbe as I ate fish, drank beer and did a shot at Grinnell midnight (there is a campus wide shot at midnight) made staying up all night and camping out at the McDonald's worthwhile. 

The fish market itself is also really impressive.  They've got fresh fish everywhere, but also vegetables and craft goods and junky souvenirs.  Everything and I mean everything, is sold with flair.  The people are friendly and though the crowds are actually surprisingly large, I didn't run into the kind of traffic problems I generally run into at other open air markets.  Hilary led us all around the fish market then slowly back to the Ricker Rickmers, where we got back on the U-bahn and eventually parted ways with Hilary who had to go back to work. 


The rest of the day was spent consuming caffeine and trying to stay warm.  I honestly don't think we did anything spectacular during the day.  We found our hostel for the night (a really nice, clean place that was only 12 euro!) and Lauren and I took short naps.  Feeling refreshed and alive again we headed out to the ferry which runs up and down the Elbe.  I took a bunch of pictures of the sun setting, which dramatically outlined the city scape and industry blah blah blah.  Truth be told it really was an impressive site, but that one hour nap had only really just made me more tired.  At this point it was a continuing struggle to stay awake.  We found a nice cafe that would serve us food and drinks and around 10:30 somehow found the energy to crawl into bed for blissfully calm night's rest.


I woke up early because check out was early and I didn't want to miss my train.  I said goodbye to Christine and Lauren (who headed out to Berlin, I didn't go because I was tired of traveling) and made my way back home.  A Russian girl asked me a whole bunch of questions about the train station that I didn't know how to answer, and thus my adventure in Hamburg came to an end.


Sorry this entry was so long.  Maybe there were a couple of sections that could be shortened or excised entirely, I'll leave that for the internet to decide.


Bis Später, y'all. 

1 comment:

  1. So far I've commented on almost all of your posts. So I don't think that your 'mutual forgiveness' thing works for me since I don't need to be forgiven. So there.

    ReplyDelete