Reeperbahn

Okay so first of all I was just want to state the obvious and apologize for my hiatus from posts. You shouldn’t even expect backdated posts. Basically the last few days, mainly since my arrival to Germany, has just been one awesome, nonstop blur of activity and I can honestly say that I have not had one moment to sit down and reflect and write which is unfortunate, but should speak to the good times that I’ve had in this country so far. So, what I think I am going to do is recap as best as I can all the while trying to retain the funny and interesting details of the trip (which are the first things to get lost as time rolls on) but the next couple of recap posts may not be so chronological as the others in favor of addressing issues by topic rather than by the time they were experienced. Let’s give it a shot!

I left you in Hamburg, if my memory serves me correctly, where I arrived to my ex-brothel hostel in the middle of the city’s red light district of St. Pauli along the famed Reeperbahn. I was also expecting a friend, Alex (met in Chengdu, from Berlin), to meet me there the next day and then we were going to plan to head down to Dusseldorf, pick up his brother, and then drive to Berlin. I’ll skip to the chase and just say that that plan did pan out and it was awesome.

Alex is a friend I met in Chengdu during my language studies at SWUFE. He’s an original Berliner (a person from Berlin) but his father is Russian, his mother is Ukrainian,  and he speaks Russian, Ukrainian, German, and English fluently as well as some French and Chinese. Again, putting my skills to shame and serves as even more of an inspiration for me to continue my language learning prowess. Besides all that, he’s just a really cool guy and a good friend. He had been to Hamburg a few times but never really as a tourist and only for a brief duration each stay. Since he had some time (he just returned from his own two month adventure through Southeast Asia), he figured he’d meet me in Hamburg to “pick me up” and take me around Germany a bit. After my evening stroll around the downtown and harbor areas of Hamburg, I returned to the hostel and crashed. There was a German couple, fun indie types by the look of them (although we didn’t talk to much), and a Swiss girl who spoke English well and was on a quick two week holiday from her nursing job in Bern. We stayed up talking awhile. But they left in the early morning and my plan was to get up, find a place for breakfast and a coffee, and then return to the hostel and meet up with Alex who would be arriving around 1PM.

So I did that. I found a university coffee shop, got a cappuccino and pastry, and went to a nearby drug store to buy some soap and shampoo (as well as a soap dish) to replace the ones that were stolen from me in my hostel in Copanhagen. I mean, who steals shampoo and soap? That’s just petty and a little bit gross. So I can chock those items off as the first (and hopefully only) items that I’ve lost so far on the trip. But no big deal, easily and cheaply replaceable. I returned to the hostel and lounged around a while while I waited for Alex.

Around 1:30 I could hear Alex walking with the eccentric owner of the hostel towards the room, talking in German. They opened the door and I gave Alex a big bro hug and we chatted awhile in the room while he settled in. He told me all about his adventures through warm, balmy, beautiful southeast Asia and we swapped stories for awhile. It was really cool catching up. Then we discussed the details of the next few following days, the logistics of our roaming about all of northern Germany, and the timing of it all. I learned that Alex, rather than taking a train out to Hamburg from Berlin, went online to this really cool German website that allows you to sign up for a ride by car between cities. Basically, if you have a car and you plan on driving somewhere, say Berlin to Hamburg, and you have empty seats, you can go to this website, post the details of the trip (when you’re leaving, how many seats you have free) and name a price which compensates the cost of gas. So for a trip of around 300km, like Berlin to Hamburg, you can ask for 15 euros or something and it is way cheaper for someone to catch a ride like this than it is to take a train or plane or something. So Alex did this from Berlin and he proposed we do it from Hamburg to Dusseldorf the following day to meet up with his brother, who lives there, before taking me to my final German destination of Berlin. I was immediately onboard with this plan for several reasons. First, it would save me money on transportation costs (I’ll save my valuable eurail pass days for longer, more expensive rides), save me on lodging (staying with his brother), I get to go to Dusseldorf, a wonderful city but out of the way for tourists and just so happens to be the city where my grandmother’s family is originally from, and even further, I get to experience the famed German autobahn, the national highway that connects all German cities and is famous for its lack of speed limits, all the while seeing the country by road. A pretty good deal, all in all.

The "Rathaus" metro station entrance, downtown Hamburg

Interior of the main lobby area inside the Rathaus

The Rathaus, Hamburg's city hall, from the square in front of the building

But we had the day to explore Hamburg. After Alex finished settling, we suited back up and headed out for a walk to explore the city a bit. We first went to this German bistro to buy some lunch. I had this excellent German currywhurst, a long German sausage doused in curry powders and served with a small salad and I added a side of cucumber salad (like a potato salad but made with cucumbers). And we both got a Beck’s beer, the famous German beer known internationally, like Germany’s Carlsberg in Denmark. Then we headed downtown, walking through the older districts and seeing the “Rathaus”, the large council house (like a city hall), a beautiful masterpiece of Gothic architecture, and the city’s cathedral, another Gothic marvel. Churches in Germany, at least the few I’ve been to so far, all share this Gothic look. It’s a very minimal approach to grandiose architecture. These cathedrals share in the rest of European churches’ high ceilings and wooden pews, but they lack the intricate paintings and colors and golden plated crosses and high-backed pulpit chairs. Instead the walls and ceiling are left bare, exposing the original marble or stone structures, and the few decorations are usually carved from dark oaken wood, as are the pews. It sounds boring but they are quite beautiful and play off this attractive, minimal sensibility. Also, the vast majority of churches in northern Germany are Lutheran, named after the theologian and reformer, Martin Luther, who is famous for rebelling against the Catholic church and its abuses of power and excesses in luxuries of the time. So it makes sense that the Lutheran churches would share in their lack of excess luxuries and decorations.

A view of a Gothic church steeple, typically German architecture-wise

Hamburg is lined with beautiful canals stemming from the main river harbor

We also explored the harbor area. Hamburg is Germany’s main portal to the sea, located along a river that runs straight to North Sea and sees some of the largest traffic from shipping and container ships in all of Northern Europe. So the harbor is a bustling place, even in the cold of winter, for ships and other movers of goods. But the harbor is also beautiful. There is a walking promenade lined with beer houses where you can sit awhile and admire the view. We found one we liked and sat down to glüwine with rum (pronounced gloo-vine, a hot drink of red wine mixed with various spices), a very excellent sea-side drink for this cold afternoon stroll through the city.

The main promenade along the harbor in Hamburg

Alex in thought over some gluwine along the harbor promenade

We headed back to the Reeperbahn area, dropped off our touristy stuff (backpacks and cameras) at the hostel, and set out for dinner. We were recommended this very excellent traditional German restaurant, a bit fancy and expensive, but the food was superb. We both ordered an appetizer of traditional Munich sausage boiled in broth and served with a spicy mustard and a main dish of local fish over potatoes and greens. Fish is sort of the local specialty. And we each ordered an Alstor beer, the local beer of choice, a light lager, but very tasty, logo bedecked with an anchor. And then in true Chengdu fashion, we returned to the hostel with some cheap booze from the liquor store and lounged awhile preparing for a night on the town. Reeperbahn is famous all over Germany for its red light district and party streets of St Pauli. In fact, the actual red light district is a small square behind the buildings along the main road whose few access entrances are located along alley ways and are blocked from public view by large green fences with narrow entryways. On these fences are painted in large white letters, in English, and say “21 and up, no women allowed”. Pretty creepy. I’ll disappoint you now and tell you that Alex and I opted not to enter this area. Even the hostel worker, who was all about the night life of St. Pauli, recommended we steer clear of the actual red light district due to its creepiness and sort of dangerous setting. But the main strip of the Reeperbahn includes plenty of other creepy clubs and shows of its own (where women are allowed, thankfully) and are intermixed with very cool student clubs and bars. From now on, and since Germany and especially Berlin, is famous for its clubs and I will be exploring these with friends a lot, I’m going to kind of glaze over the goings on of all nightlife activity, not becasue I have anything to hide, but rather I think you get the idea and I simply don’t need to be going into any details. So then without going into details, we found some of these student clubs (nothing creepy, trust me) and spent the night out. It was a lot of fun. Hamburg actually has some pretty trendy spots within the famous Reeperbahn district. The DJ’s were all very good and we hit a few places that played everything from American indie rock mixes to German house techno. Just a really fun night out. I can’t do these kinds of night life romps without friends so I was really happy that Alex was able to come out and meet me.

Our ex-brothel hostel entrance along the Reeperbahn

We got back to the hostel pretty late (but not Chengdu late thankfully) and slept in to late in the morning. Alex had arranged our ride to Dusseldorf and we were supposed to meet the driver at Hamburg’s hauptbanhof (central train station) around 2 in the afternoon. We packed up our stuff and did some errands in the late morning. I picked up a German SIM card and we got some breakfast. So, since this post is already getting long and that I am easily failing at writing just the highlights, I’ll end this post here and continue the recap in the morning.

Stay tuned. Next up: power walks, ZEE AUTOBAHN!, and a pretty little place called Dusseldorf.