Hamburg

I lived in Hamburg for four months during the summer of 1998. It's hard to look back after so many years and remember exactly what it was like. I left Winnipeg with very mixed feelings, unsure whether to take this step and yet very enthusiastic about living in a different country and hoping to do lots of travelling around Europe. The travelling plans never really materialised to the extent I had hoped, but I did sign up for German lessons and made many attempts to practice when out on my own in the afternoon, but most of the people in Hamburg switched immediately to fluent English as soon as I tried to speak. I can still order meals, discuss the weather and find directions in German, but I find I'm better at reading it than speaking it now. Each morning on the way to language school I would go past the Little Alster (right), which was surrounded by boutiques and cafés and led to the marketplace. Hamburg is famous for its swans and I was bitten by one (accidentally, I like to believe) after running out of bread.

Hamburg itself was undergoing a city centre revitalisation and I enjoyed returning here in 2001 to see what it looked like once all the scaffolding had been removed. Buildings in Canada are considered historic after about 70 years, so it was fascinating to see a country with centuries-old shops and houses. One of the strangest juxtapositions of historic and modern was the Burger King in a former public library building, complete with bronze statues in the fountain and a large tacky neon sign hanging from the side of the building.

Hamburg had wonderful art galleries and museums, and I attended a Titanic exhibit in an old warehouse. This was shortly after the movie had been released and I passed by a crowd of hysterical teenaged girls crying, "Leo, Leo", but otherwise enjoyed my visit. I later caught the same exhibition in London in smaller settings, and felt that the warehouse in Hamburg was by far the better venue.

Early on I took a bus tour around the city, getting on and off at various locations. There were some lovely churches and I saw the burial place of Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, who had been the organist at one. His gravestone, down in the vaults, was surrounded by an ankle-high iron fence to prevent people from standing on it and wearing down the lettering, but the graves of those buried around him had been rendered illegible by thousands of feet over the years. I left wondering more about his neighbours in the crypt than about Bach.

Hamburg was lovely at nighttime, with the city lights reflecting in the Lower Alster (above) and Upper Alster. Most days I would walk along the riverbanks from the flat next to the New Zealand embassy to the language school, but some days I would take the water taxi across the lakes. I remember the wonderful zoo where a penguin tried to snatch my keys from my pocket, and the Steinway piano store (and the factory I couldn't tour because of language barriers).