Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9. Hamburg
I travelled to Hamburg, by way of Osnabrck and Bremen, and arrived in the early evening. I hadn't
been to Hamburg before. Katz and I passed through it by train on our way to Scandinavia, but it was late at
night and all I recalled was a dark city and a dark station where we stopped for half an hour while more
carriages were hooked on. The station was much as I remembered it, vaulted and echoing, but brighter and
busier at six in the evening. People were everywhere, hurrying to catch trains.
I threaded my way through the crowds to the tourist information desk and, having had so much trouble
finding a room in Amsterdam, gladly paid a handsome fee to have accommodation found for me, and then
was chagrined to discover that the Hotel Popp, the establishment to which the pleasant and well-spoken
young man directed me after relieving me of a handful of notes and a selection of coins, was directly
opposite the station. I could have found it on my own in thirty seconds and applied the money to a night of
abandon in the Reeperbahn. Still, it was convenient and had a bar and restaurant, so I couldn't complain.
Actually I could. The room was tiny and depressingly basic, with a twenty-watt bulb in the reading light, no
carpet, no television and a bed that could have passed for an ironing board. But at least with a place called
the Hotel Popp I wouldn't forget the name and end up, as I often do in strange cities, asking a cabbie to just
drive around until I spotted it.
I went out for a stroll before dinner. Lounging at intervals along the side streets around the station were
some of the most astonishingly unattractive prostitutes I had ever seen - fifty-year-old women in mini-skirts
and black fishnet stockings, with crooked lipstick and tits that grazed their kneecaps. Where on earth they
get their trade from I couldn't begin to guess. One of them gave me a 'Hello, dearie' look and I was nearly
crushed by a bus as I faltered backwards into the street. But within a block or two things improved
considerably. I had left my city map behind in the hotel so I had no idea where I was going, but it all looked
inviting in every direction. It was a warm spring evening, with dusk settling cosily over the city, like a blanket
around one's shoulders, and people were out walking aimlessly and browsing in shop windows. I was
pleased to find myself among them.
I had expected Hamburg to be grimmer, a sort of German Liverpool, full of crumbling flyovers and
vacant lots - I already knew that it had the highest unemployment rate in Germany, over twelve per cent, half
as high again as the national average, so I expected the worst - but Hamburg proved to be anything but
struggling, at least on the surface. The department stores along the Mnckebergstrasse, the main shopping
street, were bright and spotless and full of fancy goods - much finer than anything on Oxford Street - and
the side streets glowed with restaurants and bistros through whose yellowy windows I could see people
dining elegantly and well.
I walked through the big town hall square and around the darkened streets of the warehouse district,
handsome and silent, then rounded a corner to find one of the more arresting city sights I have ever seen -
the Inner Alster, the smaller of the two lakes around which Hamburg is built. I knew from maps that Hamburg
had these lakes, but nothing I had read or seen in pictures had prepared me for just how beautiful they were.
The Inner Alster is much the smaller of the two, but it is still large enough to present a great rectangular pool
of silence and darkness in the midst of the city. The lakeside is agreeably lined with trees and benches,
overlooked by office buildings and a couple of hotels of the old school, the sort of places where the
doormen are dressed like Albanian admirals and rich old ladies in furs constantly go in and out with little
dogs under their arms.
I sat on a bench in the darkness for perhaps half an hour just watching the lights shimmering on the
surface and listening to the lapping of water, then stirred myself enough to walk over to the Kennedybrcke,
a bridge across the channel where the two lakes meet. The Outer Alster, seen from here, was more
massive and irregular and even more fetching, but I would leave that for tomorrow.
Instead, famished, I strolled back to the welcoming glow of the Popp, where I dined amply and
surprisingly well for what was after all just a small station hotel, bloating my cheeks with bread rolls and
salad and meat and potatoes till I could eat no more, and then filled all the remaining space inside me with
good German beer and read half a book, until at last, at about half-past midnight, I arose from my table,
