Volume 2, Day 23
I woke up early as usual and puttered around in the morning, waiting until my host woke up. R slept in, so I had plenty of time to read the news (and what a news day), study German, and work on my computer. My only significant plan for the day was to visit an art museum and I needed to ask which of the bikes in the courtyard was the spare one to borrow.
It was nearly noon by the time I set off and it was fine weather to cycle along the waterfront. I passed a climate demonstration at the Landungsbruke and continued along following the signs to the Hauptbahnhof. Hamburg’s art mile is all in the surrounding area of the train station, and I was aiming for the Kunsthalle, which lays to the north of the station. There are tons of museums in the city, but with only one full day to explore, I decided to prioritize this one. There was another demonstration of some sort near the train station, but as they were marching away from me I couldn’t make out what was going on.
I locked up the bike and headed over to the entrance of the Kunsthalle. Fortunately, I had eaten the remaining rye bread I bought when I arrived in Hamburg (it’s nice to know I can stretch out 500g loaf of bread over three meals) so I didn’t need to worry about starving to death while exploring the vast museum. I was impressed by the Kunsthalle because the gallery rooms were numbered with a fairly limited amount of backtracking to see the works in order and almost every room had a bilingual placard introducing one of the pieces in detail. Of course, I don’t bother with too much reading when it comes to art as I prefer to take it in subjectively, while multitasking with podcasts in the background.
The art started with medieval religious works and proceeded along the usual progression. An underground passageway connecting the main hall to an annex contained a few modern installation artworks, such as a 500 year project to grow a stalagmite from rain water, and a special exhibition contain 5 tiny sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. One is supposed to reserve a viewing time for those, but because the museum was not crowded, I was able to slip in. Utterly unimpressive, though the rest of the crowd oohed and aahed as they pored over everything with magnifying glasses.
The annex contained a loan from a Danish museum and a gallery of video art, which I sometimes wonder how one is supposed to view in a museum. Are you really supposed to just sit there for the 20, 40, 80 minute length of the art film?
I was pretty much done by 3:30 and I decided to head across the street to a bakery for a cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake. After recharging, I bicycled by a different route back to St. Pauli and could see that Reeperbahn was both beset by Harley Davidsons and was already gearing up for the Friday night. I returned to the apartment around a quarter to five to find R already back from whatever his daytime activity was, and we grabbed the food and headed over to the community garden on foot.
A few people were in the garden working when we got there. We dropped the stuff and had a look at the box of food from the food sharing program. I’m getting the impression that food sharing programs are quite popular in Germany, but I was thinking of it in terms of people sharing food that they produced. As in, oh my tomato harvest is in and I have too many tomatoes. In reality, it is more of an organized gleaning, where people gather produce that supermarkets are on the verge of throwing out. So, as I poked around the massive box of slightly wilted veggies, I had to make a conscious effort to roll with it. To be fair, there was one package of mushrooms that when I went to open, discovered was moldy beyond acceptable levels, so that went straight into the compost. After inspecting what was available, I made a quick supermarket run to grab some extra needed veggies.
Without belaboring the point, I had a lot of waiting around since we weren’t aiming to eat until 8 or 8:30, so I kept myself busy with food prep. The menu included: Chinese cucumber salad, fried peanuts, tomato egg drop soup, Vietnamese summer rolls, daal, hot and sour cabbage, stir-fried cauliflower with tofu and bell peppers, and a giant mala hot pot (in a paella dish) featuring more cabbage leaves, enoki mushrooms, these little root vegetables, broccoli, and asparagus. Apart from the summer rolls, I was in charge, though I had plenty of offers for help.
Because the wok was a little small, I had to cook the two stir-fried dishes in batches. I had been snacking on peanuts and a summer roll during the long prep/waiting period, so I told people to go ahead and start eating as I frying up the fresh dishes. What surprised me was that by the time I sat down to eat, I discovered that the group of seven people had pretty much destroyed most the food. It was wonderful. The food came out much better than I expected (because I really don’t have that much practice stir-frying) and was well received. In the end, there was still too much food and the leftover soup, hot pot, and summer rolls (which were basically untouched) had to be thrown in the fridge when we finally got around to clean up at 11.
The evening really dragged on and I’m not sure if it was because I had mentally switched into Chinese mode to cook or if I was tired from the intellectual challenge of looking at art in the afternoon, but I felt like I was “sundowning” and really incapable of stringing together a couple words in German. I had to exert myself to suppress the Chinese that wanted to come out. Of course, everyone could also speak English, and the dinner conversation drifted between the two languages. I was happy to mostly listen while eating my fill.
Eventually, the dinner came to a close and the cleanup work was mostly finished. Some people had headed home, but others were keen to go “cornering.” I was up for one more drink and headed along for the ride. I did have just one drink, but I have to say the experience of cornering is not for me. I was really full from the dinner, and couldn’t get comfortable. Then, I needed to use the restroom. I looked at my watch at one point and discovered it was already past 1 in the morning. No wonder I was so tired. Since I had my own key, I said good night to R–who was engrossed in a conversation with some old friends he had bumped into–and headed that way. Luckily, one other girl in the group also lived in that direction and wanted to go home too, so we walked most of the way together. I say “luckily” not because I couldn’t find the way, but it kept me from getting hassled by street walkers. I would say the vibe of St. Pauli reminds me most of Las Vegas. People travel here for stag or hen parties.
| Hamburger Kunsthalle | 14 |
| Coffee and cake | 2.9 |
| Vegetables | 5.75 |
| Total: | 22.65 EUR (176.7 RMB) (USD 25.83) |
Running Total: 8843.3 RMB (USD 1292.46)
Daily Average: 384.5 RMB (USD 56.19)