Hamburg
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John Marchioro
Jul 17, 2018, 7:49:06 PM7/17/18
to not-honyaku-redux
Hamburg, July 17
Well, yesterday I did some errands (like doing the laundry and so on),
and devoted today to seeing the city.
There are a number of buses doing a number of different routes of the
city. I chose the red double decker, which costs around 18 Euros for a
day pass, and allows you to get on and off as you please. Which I did
several times.
But first this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
The "Hiroshima of Germany".... So this ranks with Dresden and the
fire-bombed cities of Japan (most of which I have visited, obviously),
though like Hiroshima Hamburg was a legitimate war target (the same
cannot be said about Dresden, which may not have been as culturally
significant as Kyoto, which was spared firebombing due to Henry
Stimson's repeated interventions for that reason, but whose
destruction has tarred the reputation of this fellow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet (read
"Legacy")). And it was one of a few places (Dresden was another) where
a true firestorm occurred, which the results you can read about above.
So it is a new city, like a lot of German and Japanese cities are,
like Osaka and Nagoya and most of Tokyo and most other big Japanese
cities, which were similarly obliterated during the war.
And it is quite pretty, especially the nice lake in the middle of the
city with its esplanade, and then a few elegant city squares... It
invariably reminded me a bit of Seattle, though the two Alster Lakes
are only 160 hectares, about 2/3 the size of Lake Union (and there is
nothing remotely like Lake Washington, of course) and then the large
port area. But Hamburg is mostly flat, and therefore lacks the hilly
terrain of both Seattle and San Francisco, and the corresponding
multitude of places to get a nice view of the cityscape and the port.
And like Luebeck it is pretty far from the open sea, so you cannot see
that either.
One place I got off was Davidstrasse. This is where the red light
district is, though no hookers were out at 2 PM. It is also where the
club where the Beatles played was once located:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_in_Hamburg
An American woman on the bus told me that the original club has been
torn down, though it appears there were multiple clubs.... What I did
see was a small circle with a modern sculpture showing 5 musicians in
outline.... one of the musicians is off to the side, carrying his
guitar upside down.. I assume this is Stu Sutfcliffe.
Directly across from the small Beatles sculpture was a Hooters. No, I
did not go in.
My overall impression of the area (Reeperbahn is the name of the
street) was that it was filthy. There was broken glass from beer
bottles and bottle caps everywhere, and all kinds of other litter as
well. There were a lot of tourist shops selling the usual trash and I
did buy a couple of postcards showing the cityscape before WWII....
And there were also the typical things you see in German cities, the
many Doener (Turkish) restaurants, a Vietnamese place, even a Greek
place.... And then there were about 10 sleazy sex clubs along just the
small stretch of Reeperbahn that I saw on the way to the Beatles
sculpture, with subtle names like "Sex House" and "Blue Night". At one
spot there was a shop called "Sex Angels" on one side of the street
and one called "Sex Devil" (singular) on the other side.... I was not
sure if this was a coincidence, a joke or some kind of deeper
theological statement. In front of "Sex House", there was an obese
female tout. As I walked past her she barked something at me in
German. I said in English, "I am sorry, I do not speak German." She
responded in English, "Come inside, nice international girls." I
replied, "I have a weak heart and it could not take the shock", and
kept walking.
Anyway, it was a filthy and sleazy place, probably doing some nice
business right now as I type this... The tour guide on the bus, who
gave her spiel in both German and English, noted that prostitution is
legal in Germany, and if that is your deal you can find it on the
Reeperbahn or Davidstrasse, which is perpendicular to it. And I
retraced my steps and walked down Davidstrasse, since it leads down to
the harbor, and I did notice one street perpendicular to Davidstrasse
that had been sealed off by a kind of poster board wall with a large
warning in German to the effect that entry thereto was forbidden to
young men and ladies under the age of 18. I did not see any hookers,
not that they wear signs identifying them as such.... All in all, a
pretty depressing sight.
I got down to the port area, which was actually much cleaner and much
nicer.... And I had noticed the following on the bus, and went to gape
at it:
https://www.hamburg.com/museums/u434/
A Soviet U Boat, right by the fish market, though there was no fish
market (apparently that is on Sunday mornings).
Then I walked back the other way, along a long pedestrian boardwalk
that is linked to the above by a series of bridges, one through 10....
And in addition to the usual shops selling the usual crap and the
usual cheap-o restaurants, there were a lot of boats offering one hour
tours of the harbor. I initially balked at spending 20 Euros on this
but then thought, what the hell, it might be interesting, it is a nice
day, and when are you ever going to see this again? So I hopped aboard
one, and it was quite interesting in the end.
http://www.hamburg-citytours.de/en/roundtrips/harbour-tour
Needless to say you do not get anywhere near the sea, you just go out
for about 25 minutes on the North Elbe River, but you do get to see a
bit of the container ship area and it was quite amazing to see those
containers being loaded and unloaded, quite quickly and efficiently,
by the largely automated equipment that is used for it.... I was of
course aware of such ships, have read plenty about them, but it is
another thing to see it with your own two eyes. The thing I have never
understood is how the containers remain on top of the ship in rough
seas.... quite remarkable, the whole thing.
We also sailed past this:
https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/en/
Quite an interesting looking building.
And there was also a little spot called the Stage Theater im Hafen,
which is currently featuring two shows, "The Lion King" and "Mary
Poppins".... At least it wasn't "The Sound of Music".
When the boat tour ended I went to the nearby Hard Rock Cafe, adjacent
to Bridge 5, and bought the obligatory T-shirt. $30! Yipe! But I
passed on the ones with blood curdling skull and bones stuff and
instead settled for a nice understated simple one in gray....
And then back to the hotel, by the red double decker.
One thing I noticed walking around is the large number of posters for
musical performances. Apparently there are a lot of "North Sea" music
festivals not far away, and this is one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deichbrand
This year's festival is headed by a band called the "Toten Hosen",
which I think means "Dead Pants".... I saw another poster for a band
called "Die Toten Aertze", which means "The Dead Doctors"....
Creative, though I daresay nowhere near so as "Dead German Tourists",
the tasteless but amusing name of an American punk band (I think; not
my genre, have no idea what the music was like) back in the 1990s. But
there were countless other posters for this or that performance....
Clearly a town that (like Berlin) caters to a young audience.
To sum up, the day reminded me of Tom Harsanyi's comment about German
cities (and of course my own feelings about Japanese cities): Most of
them are really not that interesting. Sure, Hamburg is a nice modern
German city with a lot of amenities, on a nice natural site. It has
done what it could to restore what was left of the city after the
firestorm and the rest in WWII, and I do not want to put it down for
that... It must have been very difficult and costly to restore the
older buildings that you do see here and there in the city still, and
it must have been painful for the people doing it as well, this could
only have been a massive trauma for the population to go through such
destruction, as it was for Dresden, as it was for almost all city
dwellers in Japan. But Hamburg is not Prague or Budapest or Vienna,
that is all I am saying. It is a place where you could spend a day or
two, perhaps more if you were a museum rat (which I no longer am), but
it is not a great city, not compared to those other ones. And I saw
much the same in Stuttgart last year, and sort of feel that way about
Berlin too, though Berlin has a lot more places to see and Potsdam is
of course nearby....
OK, end of handwringing, time to sleep, gotta move on to Bremen tomorrow.
Well, yesterday I did some errands (like doing the laundry and so on),
and devoted today to seeing the city.
There are a number of buses doing a number of different routes of the
city. I chose the red double decker, which costs around 18 Euros for a
day pass, and allows you to get on and off as you please. Which I did
several times.
But first this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
The "Hiroshima of Germany".... So this ranks with Dresden and the
fire-bombed cities of Japan (most of which I have visited, obviously),
though like Hiroshima Hamburg was a legitimate war target (the same
cannot be said about Dresden, which may not have been as culturally
significant as Kyoto, which was spared firebombing due to Henry
Stimson's repeated interventions for that reason, but whose
destruction has tarred the reputation of this fellow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet (read
"Legacy")). And it was one of a few places (Dresden was another) where
a true firestorm occurred, which the results you can read about above.
So it is a new city, like a lot of German and Japanese cities are,
like Osaka and Nagoya and most of Tokyo and most other big Japanese
cities, which were similarly obliterated during the war.
And it is quite pretty, especially the nice lake in the middle of the
city with its esplanade, and then a few elegant city squares... It
invariably reminded me a bit of Seattle, though the two Alster Lakes
are only 160 hectares, about 2/3 the size of Lake Union (and there is
nothing remotely like Lake Washington, of course) and then the large
port area. But Hamburg is mostly flat, and therefore lacks the hilly
terrain of both Seattle and San Francisco, and the corresponding
multitude of places to get a nice view of the cityscape and the port.
And like Luebeck it is pretty far from the open sea, so you cannot see
that either.
One place I got off was Davidstrasse. This is where the red light
district is, though no hookers were out at 2 PM. It is also where the
club where the Beatles played was once located:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_in_Hamburg
An American woman on the bus told me that the original club has been
torn down, though it appears there were multiple clubs.... What I did
see was a small circle with a modern sculpture showing 5 musicians in
outline.... one of the musicians is off to the side, carrying his
guitar upside down.. I assume this is Stu Sutfcliffe.
Directly across from the small Beatles sculpture was a Hooters. No, I
did not go in.
My overall impression of the area (Reeperbahn is the name of the
street) was that it was filthy. There was broken glass from beer
bottles and bottle caps everywhere, and all kinds of other litter as
well. There were a lot of tourist shops selling the usual trash and I
did buy a couple of postcards showing the cityscape before WWII....
And there were also the typical things you see in German cities, the
many Doener (Turkish) restaurants, a Vietnamese place, even a Greek
place.... And then there were about 10 sleazy sex clubs along just the
small stretch of Reeperbahn that I saw on the way to the Beatles
sculpture, with subtle names like "Sex House" and "Blue Night". At one
spot there was a shop called "Sex Angels" on one side of the street
and one called "Sex Devil" (singular) on the other side.... I was not
sure if this was a coincidence, a joke or some kind of deeper
theological statement. In front of "Sex House", there was an obese
female tout. As I walked past her she barked something at me in
German. I said in English, "I am sorry, I do not speak German." She
responded in English, "Come inside, nice international girls." I
replied, "I have a weak heart and it could not take the shock", and
kept walking.
Anyway, it was a filthy and sleazy place, probably doing some nice
business right now as I type this... The tour guide on the bus, who
gave her spiel in both German and English, noted that prostitution is
legal in Germany, and if that is your deal you can find it on the
Reeperbahn or Davidstrasse, which is perpendicular to it. And I
retraced my steps and walked down Davidstrasse, since it leads down to
the harbor, and I did notice one street perpendicular to Davidstrasse
that had been sealed off by a kind of poster board wall with a large
warning in German to the effect that entry thereto was forbidden to
young men and ladies under the age of 18. I did not see any hookers,
not that they wear signs identifying them as such.... All in all, a
pretty depressing sight.
I got down to the port area, which was actually much cleaner and much
nicer.... And I had noticed the following on the bus, and went to gape
at it:
https://www.hamburg.com/museums/u434/
A Soviet U Boat, right by the fish market, though there was no fish
market (apparently that is on Sunday mornings).
Then I walked back the other way, along a long pedestrian boardwalk
that is linked to the above by a series of bridges, one through 10....
And in addition to the usual shops selling the usual crap and the
usual cheap-o restaurants, there were a lot of boats offering one hour
tours of the harbor. I initially balked at spending 20 Euros on this
but then thought, what the hell, it might be interesting, it is a nice
day, and when are you ever going to see this again? So I hopped aboard
one, and it was quite interesting in the end.
http://www.hamburg-citytours.de/en/roundtrips/harbour-tour
Needless to say you do not get anywhere near the sea, you just go out
for about 25 minutes on the North Elbe River, but you do get to see a
bit of the container ship area and it was quite amazing to see those
containers being loaded and unloaded, quite quickly and efficiently,
by the largely automated equipment that is used for it.... I was of
course aware of such ships, have read plenty about them, but it is
another thing to see it with your own two eyes. The thing I have never
understood is how the containers remain on top of the ship in rough
seas.... quite remarkable, the whole thing.
We also sailed past this:
https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/en/
Quite an interesting looking building.
And there was also a little spot called the Stage Theater im Hafen,
which is currently featuring two shows, "The Lion King" and "Mary
Poppins".... At least it wasn't "The Sound of Music".
When the boat tour ended I went to the nearby Hard Rock Cafe, adjacent
to Bridge 5, and bought the obligatory T-shirt. $30! Yipe! But I
passed on the ones with blood curdling skull and bones stuff and
instead settled for a nice understated simple one in gray....
And then back to the hotel, by the red double decker.
One thing I noticed walking around is the large number of posters for
musical performances. Apparently there are a lot of "North Sea" music
festivals not far away, and this is one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deichbrand
This year's festival is headed by a band called the "Toten Hosen",
which I think means "Dead Pants".... I saw another poster for a band
called "Die Toten Aertze", which means "The Dead Doctors"....
Creative, though I daresay nowhere near so as "Dead German Tourists",
the tasteless but amusing name of an American punk band (I think; not
my genre, have no idea what the music was like) back in the 1990s. But
there were countless other posters for this or that performance....
Clearly a town that (like Berlin) caters to a young audience.
To sum up, the day reminded me of Tom Harsanyi's comment about German
cities (and of course my own feelings about Japanese cities): Most of
them are really not that interesting. Sure, Hamburg is a nice modern
German city with a lot of amenities, on a nice natural site. It has
done what it could to restore what was left of the city after the
firestorm and the rest in WWII, and I do not want to put it down for
that... It must have been very difficult and costly to restore the
older buildings that you do see here and there in the city still, and
it must have been painful for the people doing it as well, this could
only have been a massive trauma for the population to go through such
destruction, as it was for Dresden, as it was for almost all city
dwellers in Japan. But Hamburg is not Prague or Budapest or Vienna,
that is all I am saying. It is a place where you could spend a day or
two, perhaps more if you were a museum rat (which I no longer am), but
it is not a great city, not compared to those other ones. And I saw
much the same in Stuttgart last year, and sort of feel that way about
Berlin too, though Berlin has a lot more places to see and Potsdam is
of course nearby....
OK, end of handwringing, time to sleep, gotta move on to Bremen tomorrow.
John Marchioro
Jul 18, 2018, 1:31:12 AM7/18/18
to not-honyaku-redux
PS: I forgot to mention that as the double decker went through the
city, I espied this place on a corner somewhere and could not help but
laugh:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187331-d5945850-Reviews-Meyer_Lansky_s_Hamburg-Hamburg.html
That's right, a cocktail bar named after Meyer Lansky!
I wonder if Lansky's family gets a cut?
And no, I did not see anywhere called "Bugsy Siegel's"!
city, I espied this place on a corner somewhere and could not help but
laugh:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187331-d5945850-Reviews-Meyer_Lansky_s_Hamburg-Hamburg.html
That's right, a cocktail bar named after Meyer Lansky!
I wonder if Lansky's family gets a cut?
And no, I did not see anywhere called "Bugsy Siegel's"!
dav...@gol.com
Jul 18, 2018, 8:39:24 AM7/18/18
to not-hony...@googlegroups.com
While you're busy trotting the globe, most Americans can't find the globe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRh1zXFKC_o
(It's painful, but has a twist at the end.)
By the way, you mentioned container ships being big. As a kid, I sailed at Community Boating and at MIT I sailed at the MIT club, so I wanted to know how (one and two-person) sailboats worked, so I took a Navy ROTC course* called Air, Water, and Interface Vehicles. Didn't learn much about sailboats, but managed to pass tests on supertankers and the like. (Also in a Materials Science course, we had to calculate the current generated by the battery created when a supertanker runs aground with one end in the ocean and the other end in a polluted river: it's enormous and the supertanker corrodes away rapidly.)
*: Back when I looked like this: http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/151837214/large
(MIT had the rule that if ROTC wanted to play on campus, they had to let anyone take their courses, so I called their bluff.)
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
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