Chapter XII

Which describes Josh’s roaming; his visit to the port-city of Hamburg and the Eastern city of Leipzig.

So term happened to end for me on Valentine’s Day, a holiday of which I am not fond. It is sickening and stressful in a relationship and depressing when not. It is therefore fortunate for me that there was a special advance premiere of Les Misérables that day (yes, it has taken this long to be released in Germany). Even had I not been looking forward to seeing it for ages, the free champagne and “French-themed nibbles” would have been enough to get me there. Heiko came with me, which meant that I killed two birds with one stone, avoiding Valentine’s and had someone to cuddle (insofar as cinema seats allow) and hold hands with for the tear-jerky parts. It was quite interesting watching the film with him, as he knew nothing about Les Misérables, not even the general premise 9or that it was a musical), and was blown away by it. It was adorable too how shocked and upset he was each time someone died (which happens a lot) and when Fantine turned to prostitution! The film itself was incredible, and the German edition wasn’t dubbed over either, so I got to see it in the original. There were just subtitles, which they did a terribly good job of making unobtrusive, and the only dubbed bits were the three or four sentences spoken rather than sung, which led to a quite interesting shout of “Ach, Weihnachtsmann!” when the prostitute is shagging Father Christmas. My fondness of musicals (or, rather, the four or five good ones) is one of the few areas in which I am vulnerable to accusations of stereotypical behaviour, and I must admit that I frequently teared up (I’m dreadful for crying at films, and find myself weeping at most episodes of Grey’s Anatomy), particularly the Bishop of Digne’s reappearance at the conclusion. And Javert’s presentation of Gavroche’s corpse with the medal. &c. … But one o the things which pleased me most about the film was the various touches from, and nods to, the original novel, such as the elephant (brave, when it would make no sense to anyone who hadn’t read the book).

Anyway, enough of that. So: after the end of term, I decided with Sam to go for a little wander to see Hamburg and Leipzig. We had to set off quite early, so I naturally overslept. Sammy ended up having to wake me up by throwing stones at the window, as I slept through the doorbell, oblivious. We managed to catch a train just an hour later, but it was a hellish ten-hour journey. It was, however, broken up by five changes, which was nice, and we eventually got into Hamburg around eight. Fortunately for us, the hostel was right outside the train-station, within view of the platform. This meant that we avoided any stressful wanderings and could go straight up and dump our bags. Since we were so knackered from all the travelling, we just grabbed a McDonald’s for dinner, which fully lived up to expectations; three separate incidents saw drunk ne’er-do-wells being expelled from the “restaurant” and we stayed no longer than we had to. We got an early night to refresh us for the next morning, watching a film before bed, only slightly concerned by our unusual dorm-mates. One of them had milk and cold meat just in his backpack, which did worry me a great deal. Is he stupid?

The next morning we got up nice and early, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, in order to go on a walking tour. However, we only just managed to make it, as it left from outside a Starbuck’s and, as there were three along a 500m stretch, we were obviously waiting outside the wrong one. However, I realised that they would have to be going past the Rathaus, so decided to head them off at the pass and found the group outside another Starbuck’s on the way there. Our guide was a jolly nice German gentleman, who showed us all of the important bits of Hamburg, and we heard loads about the “big” fire of 1842. Naturally, he overheard me conversing with Sammy and realised that I was English, and would therefore occasionally ask me to confirm his English usage, or help with English words he was looking for, such as Gothic Revival. I felt slightly guilty for going on an English-language tour, but there were no free ones in German, so I was ok with it. Notable sights were the counting houses, the churches (Protestant, unlike in the South, thanks to Luther), the Chilehaus (a really beautiful example of brick expressionism, c.f. photo, above) and various memorials (Hamburg massively destroyed by Allied bombing – awkward – and between that and the fire of 1842, there was only one street of pre-19^th Century housing). We finished our tour at the Harbour City, which has been built as part of a regeneration programme, to function as a trendy bar/restaurant/club district.

Since we were already in the Harbour City, we decided to go to the Hamburg Dungeon. This, in contrast, was entirely in German, so I felt less shameful. Sammy was a colossal whuss; she hates haunted house things, so one wonders why she agreed to go into this, which is like the London and Edinburgh ones, with actors &c. And fair play, there was a lunatic asylum bit which was quite freaky. Indeed, I wasn’t quite prepared for the level of audience participation required, and a pale ginger and a curly-haired blonde obviously stood out rather in North Germany, so we ended up being called upon relatively frequently. We were initially stood at the front, quite unsuspecting, before quickly learning our lesson and moving to the back in the next section, in which they contrarily decided to punish those at the back. Sammy was accused of being, and tried as, a witch, put on trial in front of everyone. She had apparently been gathering and burning “secret and forbidden herbs” to cast a love spell. Sammy pled guilty, of which the judge approved: “saves a lot of time”. She did, however, vehemently deny the suggestion that I was the victim of said spell. Since she was cooperative, only half of her was to be burnt, with Sammy choosing the bottom half, and the judge, somewhat rudely, telling everyone to come and watch, because the burning “would probably take a while”.

I, on the other hand, was instructed to strip by a simpleton piratess, who “took a shine to me”. Another pirate stopped me doing this though, and later chastened me for not standing in a sufficiently enthusiastic pose. I was therefore asked to strip again, or at least stand more dynamically. They made me adopt a Titanic-style pose, but the other pirate was doubtful I’d manage to keep this up. After we’d finished with the dungeon, we got dinner and spent the rest of the evening in the bar, where we were joined by a football tour, all of whom were in drag. I felt a bit sorry for the lady behind the bar, as this lot were all speaking English and made her pull 200 pints. As a result she made friends with us and was happily chatting away with us in German. In fairness, one of the football lads came along and tried asking us if we spoke English in German, so that we could tell him the word for bin. He was very entertaining, trying to repeat Mülleimer, whilst stroking me quite intensely on the back. As if they weren’t enough, we had some proper weirdos in the room that night, including a girl who just kept creepily laughing to herself (at nothing) from her bunk, and an impossibly fat asian fellow who insisted on wandering round in a pair of long-suffering leggings.

The Monday started with an ascension of the tallest church steeple in Hamburg, as we reasoned that first thing in the morning we would be the closest we were going to get to energetic. We went right up the tower, past the bells (which still function, meaning we had to hide further up until the half-past tolling was over, lest it start and deafen us. More than a little unnerving was the sinister waver which they make you sign and acknowledges that we were taking our lives into our own hands in going up there. It soon became apparent why; health and safety would have had a field-day with these steep, crooked, and most of all, rickety 500 and something steps. Sammy became uncomfortable and knackered, so stopped half way up, whilst I, pig-headed to the last – ascended all the way. “I’ve come this bloody far, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be beaten!”

It really did turn out to be worth it, the little cupola at the top offering an incredible view, despite the terrifying experience of reaching it. The cupola was a tiny room, about the size of a downstairs loo, furnished with three chairs. As it turned out, these were already occupied, and I was forced to totter on the edge of the little trap-door leading up to it, whilst they squeezed past to get down. There was rather a lot of graffiti up there, so I decided to add to it and leave my own mark, more to mock Sam than anything else (c.f. photo, below). Having descended, we spent the rest of the day window shopping in the fashionable district, in shops like Burberry, Boss, Mont Blanc &c., but got an early night as I was feeling fluey and was worrying about coming down with something ahead of my ski-trip. We also had to be up at half seven to catch the train to Leipzig, but still went to see the nice barmaid, and returned to find that we had no roommates that night, which was a terribly pleasant surprise.

The journey to Leipzig was altogether quite painless, with only 2 changes, getting us in at half three. We had a late lunch at Pizza Hut, and checked in at the hostel. Our roommate was absolutely mental, smoking in the men’s toilet, sleeping till seven and then later wanting to go back to bed at 10ish. She made the most horrific snoring noises too, rivalling the sex-noises Sammy makes in her sleep. To avoid her, we went for a wander round an absolutely freezing Leipzig, which was surprisingly even colder than Hamburg (which was cold enough). There was even snow on the ground, and coming down really heavily, forcing us to buy a woolly hat and gloves from the Euro Shop. We popped into tourist information and got some leaflets for ideas of things to do the next day and looked around the centre. Leipzig is actually terribly pretty, particularly the old Rathaus and stock-exchange (c.f. photo, below). I was quite glad about this, as I had begun to worry about it s we were driving through the environs on the train. We ended up buying some wine and drinking it in the common room watching Die Simpsons, then going up to the room and watching a film before bed.

The next morning we got up, coffeed, and went for a wander round the (now open) old parts of town. I had a bit of an Antiquariat (old/2^nd hand bookshop) binge, as Leipzig had many, in a sort of Haye-on-Wye-ish way. Sammy was very patient with me (as she doesn’t quite share my love of old books and incredible nerdiness when it comes to literature), but quite liked it herself and bought a copy of Grimm’s Fairytales. I managed to find an anthology of Opitz’ poetry, published in 1869, a collection of Hans Sachs’ works (also over 100 years old) and a book on belief in the Devil and witchcraft in mediaeval Germany, which was only £1.50 and has some hilarious woodcuts!

Then we went to look at the Nikolaikirche (above), a church which was terribly important in the Friedliche Revolution (the “peaceful revolution”, which led to the fall of the wall). A relic from my CofE upbringing even raised its head and I felt compelled to light a candle for Grampa. Otherwise, we did a lot of wandering about, and trekked right up to the Ossiladen (an utterly shit shop/warehouse selling kitch tat from the former DDR), only to realise later there was one in the central shopping centre. After a full day out, we took a KFC back to the hostel, where we had a chat with a very well-meaning, but toothless old lady. We also got chatting with a new roommate, who was actually really nice and normal. We watched Memoires of a Geisha and went to bed.

I wrote this entry the following day, having got up early, grabbed a Coffee Fellows and boarded the train back to Trier, no doubt positively tropical by comparison.