The theme I set this young man was to describe Hamburg as
if he had just returned to it. The thread of ideas he followed from the start
was the sentimental one of his mother, his friends, their love, patience and
help. The Elbe remained a stream of silver, the anchorage and the town counted
for nothing, he did not even mention the swarming crowds – one might as easily
have been visiting Naumburg or Merseburg. I told him this quite candidly; he
could do something really good, if he could give a panorama of a great northern
city as well as his feelings for his home and family. - Goethe
'Apparently the people from Hamburg are unfriendly and cold,
but those are just lies spread by the Bavarians.' Said Laura matter-of-factly.
We were sat around the table in a lovely wooden family house
in the suburban district of Sasel in north Hamburg. Quadrants of big attractive
houses with triangular sloped roofs nestled amongst small pockets of extant
forest and plots of land where sheds clustered next to tidy lawns. It was
winter and the trees were naked. In spring and summer the Hamburgers would
escape at the weekend to these sheds, sit out on their lawns, tend to flowers,
eat, stay a night or more. Like a small German version of the popular Russian
dacha. Now though they sat silent and wet. My cousins filled up my
glass of wine. Red, and slightly sweet.
'So, what do you want to see in Hamburg?'
Hamburg is a big and wealthy port. Jogging around the outer
Alster lake, where the mist clung to the water and only permitted milky grey
visions of ghosts, I saw the money. Huge lavish houses and embassies set on the
waterfront. Dormant bars and restaurants peppered the lapping shores and little
barges and boats drifted silently. It was Stygian and I could only imagine its
seven-kilometre circumference. Only a handful of plucky runners passed me by.
There were no nods of acknowledgment. There were dogs too. The people looked
happy and comfortable. The inner Alster, split from the outer by a road, is far
smaller. It lies at the feet of the famous skyline. Spires prodded into a sky
that was slowly succumbing to a December sunset. The lake became a liquid
mirror. A Christmas tree in the centre of it was surrounded by rowers. After
the lakes, feet take the visitor into the centre. And it is grand. The Rathaus
– town hall – stands gothic and fun. The Hamburgers are proud of the claim that
it has six more rooms than Buckingham Palace. Even if it didn't it is far more
attractive. Greens and creams and frills in lieu of dull grey blocks. It looked
religious. At its base was a Christmas market. Every road had one. Wooden huts,
steaming with the heat of cooking. Sausages and mulled wine. Nuts and molten
chocolate. The air was a maelstrom of smells and temperatures. It is not the
most beautiful city centre – it doesn't hold up against the Madrids or St
Petersburgs of the world – but not one corner was unattractive. The whole city
was pleasing. Old and new sat side by side like friends. It reminded me of
London. Christmas lights twinkled along the streets and candles were suspended
in the trees. Legions of overcoats and scarves were huddling around, clutching
hot Glühwein and laughing. Here and there a canal would cut up the road
and smart flats or old north European style houses would trail off along them
with cafés selling Kaffee und Kuchen. Every bridge was confettied with
colourful padlocks bearing names; engagement promises. Hamburg is the second
largest port on the continent and there is a sense that the city is a slave to
water. 
Water has been the catalyst that gave the city some of its
distinct neighbourhoods. The most infamous is the Reeperbahn, proudly
proclaimed as a red light district far larger than Amsterdam's. In the 1930s
sailors would come to shore seeking to enjoy land. As well as drink and rest
they wanted the flesh of a woman. The Reeperbahn, like many similar
districts have, grew out of a need for sex. Today the seediness has somewhat
disappeared and a Las Vegian theme park atmosphere has taken hold. Streets are
lined with brightly coloured shop fronts: sex shops full of inappropriate toys,
blue cinemas, lap dancing bars, peep shows, brothels. In the sky above and on
the doorframes neon lights entice the visitor. 'Paradise point of sex! Welcome:
open 24 hours' 'kino sex' 'Dollhouse table dance' 'Safari'. It was blinding.
The sailors stood no chance. And neither did the girls. One street – Herbertstrasse
– is boarded off at both ends. Women and children can't enter. It has been like
this since the days of the Nazis who, instead of banning the practice of
prostitution, were happy to be nominally blind to it. It is a 30m meat market.
Women sit on plush chairs in little booths. Many sit on their phones or talk to
their bikini-clad colleagues. The fronts are all large glass windows and doors
that swing open so they can talk prices. A few drunken twenty-year olds giggle
and flirt with a blonde woman hanging out of the opening. They rap on the glass
and call 'hey, halo'. They’re often more beautiful than words. Magazine covers
that have fallen into trade. I say hello back.
'Don't talk them!' Hissed my cousin Chris. 'Don't be so
English.'
'Why not?'
'You'll only get into trouble.'
I believed him. I made eye contact for only seconds. We
returned to the real world again.
'What did you think?' Asked Laura.
'Confusing.'
You want to look but you know you shouldn't. It is
depressing to see them there.
The lumbering waters brought sailors to the streets of
Hamburg, but it also brought ships to the harbour. From the top of the St
Michel cathedral you can see the extent of the city's industry. About a third
of the city is port. In the wintry waning of the day huge container cranes
stood like spectral ribs of some wasted giant's skeleton; the controversial new
opera house loomed blue and black like the prow of some ship looking out onto
the kilometres and kilometres of docklands. The old docks, the Speicherstadt
– storage city – lines the waterways with tall terracotta shipyard buildings
that are grand and topped with gothic flare. An industrial Venice, Hanseatic
style. Now the quiet roads and cobbled streets house boutique furniture shops,
flashy apartments and tourist attractions. Above the entrances large cargo
hooks still swing. Driving through the new docklands, Germany’s ‘gateway to the
world’, one gets a sense of the
post-apocalyptic. There were no cars there. A few whizzed past as if fleeing an
invasion, but the weekend was dead. The only life could be found on the
city-sized behemoths sitting motionless in the Elbe waiting for their boxes to
be taken away.
Comparatively few tourists come to Hamburg in December.
Sometimes I felt like I had the city to myself. Most, it has to be said, cling
to the guidebook lists or gravitate like satellites to the markets. My cousins
took me to Schanze. Laura’s boyfriend Tim flung the car into a parking
spot on a sleepy road and we headed for a coffee.
‘In Germany Sunday is still really sacred, that’s why
nobody’s about. Hopefully we can find an open café. Usually everything shuts
down all day.’
Schanze is the Camden Town of Hamburg. It’s hip and
trendy and its once handsome streets are now lined with bars and cafés and
foreign restaurants. It is also very expensive to live there. This
modernity and style is visually somewhat at odds with the surroundings. At
ground level all the walls are coloured with graffiti and fat with posters. Schanze
is a left-wing political base where demonstrations and clashes with the police
are commonplace. I believe my cousin once punched an officer there. By an old
theatre, stickered with advertising and political slogans, a community of
homeless people, or political activists, have hidden themselves away from the
world. On a gate hangs a sheet with the words ‘Fck the SPD’ – Germany’s Social
Democratic Party. It was a period of elections in Germany and you could see the
divisions on the walls of the buildings.
'What do you want for dinner? We have the Portuguese
quarter, there are lots of Italian places, maybe Thai?'
'German. I want German food. Only German.'
Germany is a place where you put food in your face and
grumble like a contented bear. It is to cakes what Britain is to desserts.
Sweet Stollens and Marzipanzopf mit Rosinen marbled with floral
marzipan and juicy raisins are piled high on shop counters. Bratwurst
are cooked on outdoor grills and served in simple rolls 'only with mustard'. Currywurst
changes my life; a sausage drenched in a piquant curried ketchup and served
with Bratkartoffeln – fried potatoes with bacon and parsley – or simple
chopped up and given to cold hands in a cardboard tray. Glühwein fills
the markets with clouds of wine and spice and is divvied up with warm bags of Schmalzkuchen,
little pillowy dough balls dusted with the finest icing sugar.
Many centuries ago some Norwegian peoples left a legacy in
the city of Liverpool. A stew of bashed up meat and vegetables called Lapskaus.
This is why Liverpudlians are called scousers. Locals ate a dish called scouse,
derived from lobscouse, and the nickname stuck. During the age of the
boat, mariners from Britain who travelled to Hamburg might sometimes take their
food with them. A legacy of which is one of the German city's signature dishes,
Labskaus: where the stew is blended a little and served with fried eggs
and rollmops. Little bakeries serve all manner of breads and put England to
shame: Pumpernickel (devil’s farts), rye bead, Zwiebelbrot (onion
bread), Dinkel-Kürbis Brot (spelt and pumpkin loaves), sometimes sliced
and toasted and covered in Gänseschmalz – rendered goose fat filled with
peppers and onions that luxuriously sticks to your teeth. In the millionaire
district of Blankenese, where Beverly Hills mansions and twee English
cottages crowd around a leafy headland like cold penguins, I sat in a café
drinking a perfect coffee and eating a Franzbrötchen, a gooey cinnamon
croissant where the sugar has gone crunchy.
Then there's the fish. Early on the Sunday morning we
shuffled of our hangovers and drove to the Fishmarkt. It was 8:30 and it
was fish for breakfast. A heavy sky hovered proudly over the harbour as wind
and rain lashed us. Little stalls, some enormous, some as big as an ice-cream
van, filled the Landungsbrücken – the old landing stages. A man, ruddy
faced and wearing a red apron, called out to passers by to come and try his
eels. Apparently he has become a minor celebrity. Others stood and waited
patiently. Windows hid shrimp and smoked mackerel, slabs of tuna and fruit
bowls. The champion of Hamburg however is the herring. I opted for a Bismarck
– pickled in salt and then vinegar – while Christopher ordered Backfisch.
'It's like fish and chips in a roll, but without the chips.'
The kiosks and fish vans were the only light and sources of
cover there. The Baltic Sea was churning and unhappy. Seagulls twirled about
overhead like drunken ballerinas and sang hopefully to us.
To leave the north of Germany having only seen Hamburg would
have left me happy but not satisfied. It is surrounded by history, filling
pockets of woods and lining the rivers that filter out into the wet plains.
Driving west through a world of dormant apple trees one reaches the town of
Stade, which looks like a child's drawing of a German town out alone in the Altes
Land. Hansel and Gretel buildings and half-timbered houses ran around a
small rise: brown and yellow and red and pink and green and gingerbready. The
old town was encircled by a river that entered to a beautiful plaza. There, a
mini harbour sat next to the ubiquitous Christmas market stalls. Festive
decorations and lights filled the skyline and twinkled fittingly alongside
brick churches. It was a fairytale.
Due north of Hamburg lies the UNESCO recognised pocket-sized
city of Lübeck. The whole place was a flurry of more Grimm Brothers chocolate
box houses and cobbled lanes, but all seemed pulled inexorably skywards by a
confusingly large number of very tall green spires atop muscular brick
churches. Once again bridges and water cut you off from the rest of the world.
If its city centre recalled a Germanic Oxford then the riverside echoed
memories of Henley-Upon-Thames.
Before the sun had time to set there was still an
opportunity to surge north to the beaches of the Baltic. Travemünde: where East
Germany met West over a thin line of water you could shout over. A line of
smart houses, spas for the elderly, woods and fine sands lent a Victorian
elegance to a resort where one pays to go on the beach. I ate a Brathering
– a fried and marinated herring in a bun with lettuce and raw onion – kicked
leaves at Chris and Tim, drank a beer in the warm and headed back to the city.
We were lucky to catch the last fires of the day’s end burning up the sky above
the Arthurian castle of Ahrensburg.
‘So, in England we have Shakespeare. Who’s your main figure
here?’
‘You know Goethe?’
Whether Germany’s great writer would be happy at my
attempts to paint a portrait of this city I couldn't be sure. I only had seven
days. Ultimately it didn't matter. It was an organic, open, imposing, racy,
beautiful, scruffy, calm and all together harmonious city. I went in a period
of brutal wind and rain and heady Christmas markets and I loved it.
