Day 9: Hamburg to Prague

Highlights:

• Oma's Apotheke - lovely cafe opposite Frank und Frei (didn"t serve Fritz Cola though)
• Planten un Blomen - stunning
• Meeting other hostel users: Mai Chi Hai (Hai, the Vietnamese conference-attending Travel Consultant), Alex (the Philippine party photographer) and Fatih (the Turkish Intern)
• The City Night Line from Hamburg to Prague

So as my sleep plan hadn't worked, I was already half awake when the runner's alarm went off. And wide awake when it went off again, after he hadn't heard the first. Then for the next 30minute, another alarm went off every 5 minutes. There was a sort of collective sigh around the room as everyone was slowly woken up, but couldn't do anything about it. I sealed the deal by crashing the lid of my metal luggage container and yelling "Sorry!" to everyone.

I headed to the Deichtorhallen near Steinstrasse to see a photography exhibition, but after an unnecessary amount of faffing on my part, found it wasn't open, and I'd just followed a lady into a building site. I walked along the Elbe from here, past Hafencity, which is an area they're building up for residents, as Hamburg grows in size. It's the wealthiest city in Germany (you can definitely sense this in comparison to Berlin) and as such the population is increasing as people are drawn here for work. Past Hafencity, you hit the warehouse district of Hamburg along the river. These are warehouses in the Shad Thames sense, rather than the Big Yellow Storage sense, and so are pretty picturesque...There are a few museums along here, including the Hamburg Dungeon (run by the same company as the London dungeon) and a Miniatur Museum. Jonny recommended I go here, but I'm pretty sure I've grown out of looking at miniature cities and pretending I'm a giant. I kept walking West along to Landesbrucke, which is the main port of Hamburg. I hadn't really heard this area mentioned (aside from that the restaurants were overpriced) but it was rammed with tourists. As the main port, there were lots of leisure and trading boats everywhere, but I couldn't see any other draw to the place. I then headed to Reeperbahn, which I figured was a safe bet during the day. Quite a few sex shops and erotic cinemas, thrown in with normal restaurants and bars. There were a group of 8 year old kids playing football along the road, and I just find it a bit odd to have sex toys and stuff on display in windows for the kids to see.

I was going to return to Frank and Frei's as this was on my way to the park, but figured it'd be a waste of a trip to go to the same restaurant twice. So I crossed the road and went to the one immediately opposite, called Oma's Apotheke. There were a few tables reserved (I presume regulars pop in for lunch and have their favourite tables), but I grabbed a seat by the window and bopped along to the cheesy pop they were playing (I literally can't get away from Carly Rae if I tried). From here, I walked back through the Messehall to Planten un Blomen. The park was divided into sections, and heading in from the West you reach the Japanese section first, which is by far the best. Unusual squared sections, going downhill, with huge round stepping stones staggered along the way and beautiful greenery everywhere. I'd thought October was a bad time to go travelling, but it means that all the leaves are changing colour so there's just some lovely rust, orange and red colours everywhere. Great for this setting, and as the sun came out I sat on one of the white wooden chairs dotted along the way, and (perhaps nationally appropriate) finished reading Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood'. I'm a bit wary about trying out new authors, but this was a brilliant find. Read it.

Went back to the hostel to have my standard middle of day when nobody's around shower, and bumped into both Desire and the guy from bed 8. Hai was a Vietnamese Travel Consultant, who'd flown into Frankfurt and taken a train to Hamburg for a Conference. He was heading out that night as well, and was looking for a gift to buy his daughter Minh. He was a very sweet man, and gave me a tourist map of Vietnam and his business card. I packed up, and went down to the bar and had a local beer (Astra) and chilled out, preparing for my overnight train ride. After some comfortable silence, I got chatting with two guys sitting opposite who had been staying in the hostel that week. Alex, my dormmate, was a Philippine guy, who was a club photographer, mainly in Hamburg but also out of town. He'd been out partying the night before and so received a comically large number of high fives from people who walked past. We under-estimated his age by about 7 years, but turns out he was 34 and had an 8 year old son who was going with him to Copenhagen that weekend whilst he worked. Alex was definitely energetic. We were also hanging out with Fatih, a Turkish guy who was over from Istanbul interning for Airbus for 4 months. He was studying Electronic Engineering, and had found out about the Airbus position whilst talking to a girl in a bar (the best opportunities come over beer) and then he'd spent the next seven months pursuing it. Fatih explained how he was going to weave his way out of Turkish Military service with a nice donation to the government...

I'd been prepared to twiddle my thumbs until my 00.31 train to Prague, but this (and a long wait at the bar) had killed the time, so I said my goodbyes (and got a handshake from Hai) and headed to the station. I was there with plenty of time, but as the train pulled in I couldn't find my carriage and logically started to count down form 197, to 196, to 195 and had the two angry German platform attendants yelling at me "Einsteigen! Einsteigen!" as I waddled/ran along with my heavy bag. I got the gist, but I just googled this and it means "get in! get in!". I'm going to have nightmares about those shouts. EINSTEIGEN. Turns out, my cabin 162, was actually in the other direction past 197. Surely not my fault I couldn't find it? A nice officer on the train directed me to my 4-berth cabin. The train had come from Copenhagen, so there were already people asleep in the cabin, and I had to fumble around in the dark looking for bed 26. Turns out, someone from Copenhagen had decided to take my nice spacious bed, so after remembering my friend Sarah telling me about how tightly you could be shoved in, I presumed the next bed down was mine. I somehow squeezed in, and the roof above was literally 5cm from my head. It was hot, and I was verging on anger, but I calmed myself down thinking that maybe the person above was fat, and so embarrassingly couldn't fit in their allocated bed. And as I wondered how I'd get to sleep when I was so uncomfortable and tightly packed in, I tried to remember if there had been a warning on the website about obesity and space availability in overnight cabins. And how it must be really embarrassing if you'd booked a ticket for something, but then were too big to fit. I started feeling sorry for the dad (I presumed it was a dad, mum, and child) and so just sort of accepted my uncomfortable bed, that I could at least fit in. As I wondered this, the light came on and the ticket officer came in asking to check my ticket. He looked at me and said "Why are you sleeping there and not down here?". He pointed to the two areas I'd assumed were seats, and not for sleeping, and in an attempt to shift my body sideways and escape from my mini prison, I sort of fell out of my bed and landed on one foot in front of him. In the light I could see the opposite 'bed' that I'd thought contained a packed-in child, was actually being used for luggage...I fumbled around with my ticket, as the inspector told the other two people off for not sleeping their allocated seats, and then I dragged my belongings down next to me and settled on the below bed (with an extra metre above my head). And then the train, slowly rocked me off to sleep.

End of day 9.

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.