Hamburg Has My Heart

It's 10:3o and I had an especially bad day with the babies (I did learn that the vacuum cleaner drowns out incessant whining and screaming. My apartment has never been so dust free....) Soon I will go to bed, but as I came to turn off my computer, for some reason, I started thinking about Hamburg.

Besides Berlin, Hamburg is the only other city in Germany I would consider living. Munich is outrageously expensive and not particularly interesting. Leipzig and Dresden are both pretty but Leipzig is too small and Dresden is somehow depressing. Hannover is a total and complete bore. But Hamburg? Hamburg has my heart.

In 2005, before the start of the World Cup, I taught English to the German Railway employees of each of these cities. A pretty sweet job really: well paid, hotel and train ticket included, three days in a different place. My ex-boyfriend watched my parrots while I taught during the day and took pictures and hung out by myself at night (theater, bars, movies, you name it) in these different places.

Hamburg, like I said, was by far the best. With around a million inhabitants, it is also a large city (though Berlin is three times that.) The city is on the Elbe river and has a lot of water and a lot of posh villas. But it also does have some fabulous urban grit. Namely, the Reeperbahn (where the Beatles got their start), the red light district formerly for sailors. To Americans, the place is undoubtedly incredibly risque, with buildings you walk through to pick out your favorite prostitute (sorry ladies, no admittance for you!) Still, even if that's not quite your style, the area has a lot to offer in terms of nightlife.

On the less positive note, I've heard through the grapevine that, since they are further up north, Hamburgers (yes, they are called that!)are even MORE closed off than Berliners. Pretty much the only chance you have of becoming friends with a native is if you went to grade school with them....Then again, this is heresay, so maybe it's not quite true.

Here are some photographs I took of Hamburg in 2005. May they inspire you to book a trip to the town and have some fun. ;)

Inspiration on the road...

In 2005-2006 I had the coolest job: I got to go to various cities in Germany (Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg, Hannover)several times to teach workshops for the Deutsche Bahn (German Railway.) They were preparing for the Soccer World Cup, which was hosted in Berlin, and they wanted to make sure (or at least be able to brag on paper) that their service employees and train announcers could speak passable English. I was sent to each of these cities 3 or 4 times to teach relatively well-paid 3 day workshops and also had my hotel and train expenses covered. The teaching itself was rather tedious. The students all worked at low level service jobs, were mostly middle aged and, although friendly for the most part, were not at all interested in learning English (only a few of them could really speak it passably.) Sometimes it felt more like highly paid babysitting for people thrilled to gossip and take lots of smoke breaks because they weren't technically at work. Still, I got through the days fairly easily and had so much fun in the evenings, roaming the streets of the various cities alone, armed with curiosity and a camera. It's funny how seldom we just wander for hours in the places we live. I remember getting visitors when I lived in the S.F. Bay Area and doing things with them that I simply had never done before: it was always there. I could go tomorrow if I felt like it. And yet, I never really did. Being in another city on business alone is the perfect opportunity for exploration because you have nothing else to do and NOTHING is more boring than sitting in the mid-range hotel room all by your lonesome....Anyway, I took a lot of great photos and am planning on using them for various art projects: collages, digitally enhanced/altered photographs and series of magnets. I already have some of them on offer in Etsy shop and am working on a couple of others. Here is a slide show of the photographs I know I want to do something with at some point. (I have already worked with and altered some which I have on offer in my shop Schaufenster, but the photographs shown here are the originals.) By the way, Hamburg was by far my most favorite of the cities. A big city (at least a million), it has a cool vibe and is really ethnically mixed and of course has its seedy edges with the Reeperbahn, the famous sailor red-light district where the Beatles got there start. Hannover is the least interesting (a city without a face, my husband says)but there was amazing stormy weather one of the times that I was there and the light just blew me away. That's when I took the series of Light and Longing self portraits (see blog below). Leipzig and Dresden are both cool, smaller cities but, except for one self-portrait in Leipzig, they proved uninspiring....Or maybe I forgot my camera when I went to Dresden. I don't remember anymore. Anyway, enjoy the show!