Day 8: Hamburg

Highlights:

• Sternschanze
• Desire, a travelling painter
• Kunsthalle - Philipp Otto Runge Stiftung's awful baby paintings

After a restless night, I got up early and headed to the Hauptbahnhof for a coffee and German-sized pastry to start the day. We're literally talking the size of my face. I hadn't really known the Germans were famous for pastries - I thought it was the Austrians and the French - until I went to Nepal, and in every city they had German Bakeries. But there are maybe two bakeries a block here in Hamburg.

I started walking towards the Planten und Blumen park (I'm presuming that the translation is Plants and Flowers). The reason I'd come to Hamburg was based on two recommendations; my friend Jonny studied here for a while and said he preferred it to Berlin, and when I worked at the Japanese Bank, I eavesdropped a conversation in the kitchen between two German guys (Hamburg ist mein LieblingStadt. Es ist sehr schoen). This park was supposed to be one of the most beautiful things here. But it started raining, so I jumped on a U-Bahn before reaching it and accidentally ended up in a place called Schlump.

I got a little lost, and found myself next to the Hamburg Fernsehturm. Both Hamburg and Berlin have one of these, and seem to revere them as some sort of tourist sight. But it's just like the BT Tower. Seriously nothing impressive/noteworthy about it, other than that its quite tall. It rained a bit more, so I sheltered under the bridge of the Messehall, which I thought was a government building (based on the word congress), but apparently is a Trade Fair.

I made it onto Marktstrasse, following a group of German school kids wearing face paint. Lovely, tall houses and flats in this area, and lots of graffiti. I like that in Germany there seems to be more acceptance of graffiti, and whilst there are the occasional tags (PENIS), generally it's more of an art form, and is always brightly coloured. Jonny had recommended Marktstrasse, which was a cool street with boutique shops and tattoo parlours. The street led into Feldstrasse, which is just North of the main red light district on Reeperbahn. I was on the look out for a place called Zoe's Bar, which Jonny had also recommended and called a couch bar. I found it later on, and it was really worth the visit; lots of 18th century style couches, in a concrete floored, paint-stripped-off-walls spacious room. The drinks were cheap too, and I think there was a second Zoe's bar next door, which only opened in the evening.

It started raining again, so I jumped into a place called Frank und Frei on Sternschanzenstrasse), which I later found had been mentioned in my Lonely Planet guide. I had a €2.80 Cheese Omelette (I've got no one here to talk about this with, but that IS pretty cheap, right? It came with two slices of cucumber and a piece of tomato as well, which I presume were thrown in for free) and sat listening to the Muse album they were playing. Europe is still pretty big on Muse, and since being here, I've developed a sort of embarrassing like of their new album. I know logically that it's a bit of a shit album, and it sounds a bit too much like Queen, but when they play it in a cool German bar, I can't help but bop along. I think I've been in this country too long. 

As a recommendation though, if you like the Eastern grime/arts scene of Berlin, or that style of city, avoid the main centre of Hamburg, and just head over to Sternschanze, as this is by far the best area I've found. It may not have so many tourist sites, but it's right next to the park and has a lot of cafes and bars.

In the sort of dorm room chaos, and as I didn't quite understand the rules for making noise early in the morning, I hadn't showered, so I headed back to freshen up. The room was empty except for the homeless guy so I struck up a conversation. Not homeless after all (I feel I shouldn't have categorised him so early) but a traveller. His name was Desire, and he called himself a painter. He gave me his paintings to look through, and turns out that at present he actually just sold printed posters of Miles Davis and 2-Pac. Desire had just come from London (the atmosphere was great during the Olympics), and was spending about 10 days in Hamburg, before heading to Copenhagen, then Koln, and then Paris. A quick look at the newspapers he was carrying, told me he was French, or at least a French speaking nation. I happily lent him some shower gel (we'd both benefit from its use) and waited whilst he took the longest shower known to man. I didn't notice at first, but as I went to the bathroom next to the shower, I noticed he'd left the door wide open.

I headed to the Kunsthalle next to Hauptbahnhof next, and skipped straight through the Alte Meisteren (presuming this meant Old Masters) and went to the Neue Meisteren (New Masters) and Gegenwart (Present) sections of the gallery. With the exception of the Louvre (don't go there, as it's really dull and expensive, and has nothing on London's (Free entry!) National Gallery), I like going to art galleries in different cities, as they obviously try to focus on local artists as much as possible. Vienna was great for that, where there was a really big focus on Klimt and Schiele, and in this gallery there was a lot of German art. I particularly liked this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/menesje/6405129641/ (isn't he good looking?) and Philipp Otto Runge Stiftung's awful baby hands http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/archiv/bilder/runge10_kinder_gr.jpg (you can't see how awful the hands are in this picture, but generally, the kids look pretty awful. He's much better at doing grown ups, though only seems to have dark colours to hand when doing so). 

I headed back over to Feldstrasse to go to Zoe's bar in the evening, and then came back to do some food shopping (first prostitute spot in St Georg's) and then get an early night to beat Mr Snore. It didn't work, and I lay in bed eavesdropping on my two new dorm mates. First, an Italian who used to work in Hamburg in an Ice Cream shop with his brother. He'd lost his job in London, so was trying to find work in Hamburg in an Italian Restaurant. Strangely his ex-brother in law lived here, hence him trying to return, but wouldn't let him stay at his place. The Italian was talking to an un-sympathetic French girl, who insisted he find work on the internet and firmly highlighted when the Italian repeated himself.

End of day 8.

*Correction, apparently it's Jay Walking and not Jade Walking? I don't think I knew that. One to send in to Adam and Joe.