I still had a full day in Bremen, but it was going to be my last day in Germany. As it was a Monday, I had a very limited choice of tourist activities to choose from. Ideally, I would have signed up for a tour of Beck’s Brewery, but the tours only happen if there are at least 20 people signed up. A quick check of the availability of said tour online quickly dispelled any hopes for that. So, I had an intention of taking a walk around old town to soak in more of the charming atmosphere.
However, I spent most of the morning doing my regular routine and working on something. I sent in my resume to a company on my first day in Hamburg. There had been a quick reply, but I had been delaying on looking at it because … reasons. It would be a good job, but it may mean I’d have to cut my travels short and settle somewhere less than ideal. Well, I had finally gotten around to looking at the response and it was a test, so I took some time in the morning to look it over carefully.
I took a brisk walk through the park to clear my head and on my way back, swung by the supermarket to look at the local beer. If I couldn’t take a tour of the brewery, I could still have some Beck’s beer in the town where it is brewed. I ended up grabbing a six-pack and a bag of cookies (planning ahead for afternoon tea), then headed back to the hostel to prepare my lunch–grilled cheese and tomato soup.
After lunch, I took a short nap and as I was gearing up to get some work done, the internet stopped working. That was rather unfortunate. Rather than take it as a sign to go out into town for a long walk, I decided to put on a movie. It’s been so long since I just spent an afternoon watching a movie (not counting a new release in a theater), that it felt somewhat subversive to be so idle. How did I get so caught up in the cult of productivity when I am on a permanent vacation? The real killer is that I consumed the entire package of cookies when I wanted to save at least half for the bus ride tomorrow.
Anyways, I basically wasted the whole day, but let’s call it a valuable R&R. In the late afternoon (and without completing all the items on my to-do list), I packed up my picnic bag and invited my Malaysian roommate to go hang out in the park. We drank the beers and I finished the last of the remaining salad. It was pleasant in the sun though a bit windy. The temperature was quickly dropping again after the passing of the heat wave, so when the sun started to dip behind the trees, it was a good time to go.
I insisted we swing by the train station so I could satisfy that compulsion to eat one last German sausage before leaving the country and we popped into the supermarket to get a couple more beers to drink back at the hostel. Like always, the hostel had the hush of a library over it with barely any signs of life. After sitting in the lounge for a bit, I threw on a plotless movie so we could have something to focus on and talk about. Another guest who was cooking up in the kitchen sat down to eat at 9:55. One minute later, we were all kicked out again.
Some people had checked into the hostel between 8:30 and 10:00 pm and were already passed out on the beds in the dorm snoring louder than the roar of a Harley Davidson. This is so ridiculous. I have go sit in the dark and listen to people snore because sitting quietly on a couch is “disturbing the peace.”
In the morning, my body wanted to wake up at 5 or 6 am, but I forced myself to stay in bed and managed to stay asleep until 7:30, at which I promptly got dressed and dashed to the kitchen to make my first cup of coffee. The hostel has a newspaper subscription and I flipped through the local paper only to realize just how small the town really is. The front page story was about the German team’s defeat in the World Cup and I couldn’t even find a section on news or world events.
I enjoyed a leisurely morning frying up two eggs and slathering two slices of toast with butter and mixed berry jam for a stretched out breakfast. I was about to settle down work the rest of the morning, but I realized I would be better served going out briefly to see the weekly flea market.
The flea market is held in the parking lot north of the train station and this was the most flea-ridden (?) of the markets I’ve seen so far. By which I mean that it was the most loosely organized and potentially authentic reselling of used goods. I do wonder how someone can have such a huge collection of CDs or bicycle parts to sell at a flea market, and given my aggravations of the previous day, my thoughts drifted towards how one simply needs to move stolen goods to a different city to offload them in a flea market. There was even someone selling some old luggage and I did my best to analyze how long I can expect my current luggage to last versus something of an unknown quality. In the end, I resolved to pick up a few items to attempt a more aggressive repair, but the stall selling superglue (which must have fallen off the back of a truck) mysteriously vanished.
I headed back to the hostel for a quick, early lunch of two grilled cheese sandwiches, then set off again to head into the old town to the south.
Who dis?
Bremen’s old town is the most impressive of the handful of cities I’ve visited. Every building is an architectural masterpiece and they are clustered together so tightly that photos cannot do them justice. I didn’t wonder too far because it was already noon and there was something on my secret agenda.
A group of volunteers performs a reenactment of the Bremen Town Musicians every Sunday at noon (May through September) on the plaza between the modernist Neptune fountain and the cathedral. Yes, it is for kids, but much like the flea market it is not available everyday, and therefore special and worth spending a little time. After a long introductory spiel in German, the donkey repeated it in crisp English to my surprise. Their spoken German was a little hard to understand, but I appreciated the 30 minute listening practice.
Improv in the Park
After the show, I shot over to the Bremen Kunsthalle because Sunday would be my only chance to visit a museum and of all the things listed in the Lonely Planet, art sounded the most interesting. The museum was good and I tried a new strategy of going through it twice. The modern art was very limited (thankfully, though I never thought I’d see John Cage* in a museum), and the best room was that of the French Impressionists. Nevertheless, I am starting to feel a greater understanding of German art and its superstar painters because this handful of names appears in every museum. Quite frankly, I could definitely become a fan.
The ground floor special exhibits, of course, were the most interesting with an entire gallery dedicated to the titular fairy tale. Colorful signs at eye level for short people gave children tasks to focus on the art (such as “count this” or “think about that”), but overall the exhibit was surprisingly not-child friendly. The highlight and featured work on their promotional materials was a pair of real-life recreations of the stacked musicians (donkey, dog, cat, rooster) using taxidermied animals and their skeletons. The next room had a photo series from Ukraine with nudity. The next room had a video of the artist marching down the street of his hometown in Iraq playing a harmonica. It turns into a street protest and bloody violence ensues. After finishing the loop, I found the English language pamphlet explaining the ideas behind all the works and had to give it a second pass.
Oil on Canvas (really)
Finally, there was a whole section dedicated to a contemporary artist who has a really fascinating gimmick of painting photo-realistic paintings out of focus and creating the illusion that one is viewing the scene in the painting through a lens.
Despite taking as much time as I could in the museum, I was still done relatively early. I took a brief stroll through more of the old town, admiring the section with the more bauhaus looking architecture and heroically resisting the urge to buy handmade sweets or gelato.
I wrapped up my tour of town and headed back to the hostel, where I treated myself with some coffee and toast. I killed time until the right hour for a skype call, then quickly made my dinner (which was a repeat of Saturday night). Once again, I threw a movie on the TV and watched it while eating and finishing the bottle of wine.
When I got kicked out of the lounge, I wondered to the picnic table in the front yard of the hostel, where a kid was having a smoke. I’d seen him around these days but we hadn’t really spoken yet, but we got to talking then. He was from Turkey, learning German, and about to start university classes the next day. Another fellow with dreadlocks (who had arrived that day and was in my dorm) also joined us. He was from Malaysia and on a cycling tour of Europe. It can be hard to be social, but I guess you just have to push a bit to talk to people. The conversation was really just a bit of small talk and sputtered out very quickly, but it was a welcome break from the minimal grunting of “morning” and “hello” that makes up the entirety of most conversations in a shared space.
* The John Cage installation was a large room with 32 speakers hanging from the ceiling playing different noises. I think I prefer 4’33
It was a late night for me, but an even later night for R. I got up once at 4 am to use the restroom and noticed the hall light I had left on for him was still on. When I got up for good at 8 (which is sleeping in for me) it was off. Of course, I had the luxury of a lazy morning because my bus wouldn’t be until noon, while R had a standing appointment to go to a flea market at 10am. I wouldn’t have enough time to go and get back, so when he woke up and rushed out the door half asleep at 9:59 (because a car was waiting downstairs), we said a quick goodbye and I lazily packed up my stuff.
Knowing that the train station was full of goodies, I figured I’d head over that way a full hour before my scheduled bus time. That way, although the S-bahn would take a whopping 8 minutes to travel four stops, I could grab a snack to eat and still be waiting for my bus at its departure point a full 15 minutes early per instructions (though to be fair, I have yet to see a bus arrive more than 1 minute before the scheduled departure time).
dav
I dragged my stuff around the corner to the Reeperbahn station, bought a ticket, and waited for the train. And waited. And waited. That’s funny, though there was a signboard indicating a train was only 1 minute away, the train never came. Then the signboard switches over to a “Police action — all trains canceled” notice. And the loudspeaker goes on a loop saying that some unauthorized people are on the tracks, be advised to take alternate transportation. Well, there really wasn’t much choice for alternate transportation. It’s not exactly like I was going to walk 2 km to a different staion (an U-bahn, maybe), but even worse was that I had purchased a ticket.
At one point I wandered upstairs from the platform to weigh my options and I overheard some young people talking to a station employee through the glass. No refunds for tickets. Tough luck. This is Europe. My blood pressure rises just to think of this shitty service attitude. I miss Japan.
I was plenty early for my bus, but the minutes ticked by. Do I take a taxi over there? No way. A taxi costs 12 euros, which is still more than the price I already paid for a bus ticket plus the price of a later bus. So, I waited. A train came. I looked at my watch, and the timing would work.
I flew out of the train station and hurried over to the ZOB, arriving exactly 15 minutes prior to the scheduled departure, then sat there sweating for 20 minutes because the Flixbus came late.
It wasn’t a long ride to Bremen and we were dropped off under what looks like an elevated highway near the train station. Fortunately, the independent hostel I booked in advance was not a far walk away, though it took me a minute to find. It is actually a guest house with a hotel and a hostel in separate, but essentially adjacent buildings. My first impression was that it was very nice, though I was a little taken aback when I was asked to pay.
Having booked it through Ctrip, I was under the impression I had prepaid, because that is usually the case (and sometimes the hostels make a mistake and try to charge you twice). My internet with its perfect timing decided to fail so after hesitating a minute while trying to load my booking record and double check, I just forked over the cash. When I finally logged onto the internet, I found that they had overcharged me by 2 euros. What thieves! Nevertheless, I’m so afraid of confrontation, I just let it slide.
I was pretty starving by that point, so I found a nearby Edeka to grab some sort of pastry to make do for a afternoon tea (coffee), and while I was there I grabbed a salad for dinner. I’m still struggling with my weight and always scheming about how to eat healthy. After my coffee break, in which I caught up on a bit more work on the computer, I decided to change into my exercise clothes and explore a bit of the city (by which I mean the Burgerpark).
A block north of the train station, there is a huge park that goes as far as the university (which would be rightly described as being in the suburbs). I took about an hour jog around on the gravel paths, enjoying the grass lawns, drooping trees, and sunny afternoon. Returning to the hostel, I suddenly remembered it was Saturday and that the shops would be closed tomorrow. Since this hostel had a spacious kitchen, I should take advantage of it and cook as much as possible. So, before even showering, I looked up an Aldi on the map and headed over to do some shopping.
Unfortunately, the Aldi was closed for rennovations or something like that, but it was on the north plaza of the train station and I learned that I could cut through the shopping mall like passageway of the train station. Several of the food vendors selling bratwurst, doner, pizza, ice cream looked both delicious and reasonably priced and I’m starting to realize just how little “authentic” German food I’ve eaten on this trip so far. I think 90% of my calories have been from supermarkets…not even specialty bakeries or sweets shops so much. Its a real pity, but necessary to real keep the costs down. But maybe, if/when I swing back through Germany and I am doing good on the daily spending average, I can relax the purse strings a little bit and eat more of this fast food.
I’m not a big fan of Edeka supermarkets, so I was delighted when I found an underground Rewe on the south plaza of the train station, two streets away from the hostel. I went a bit nuts with the shopping (per usual), grabbing a second salad, some antipasta mixes (olives and goat cheese) that were on sale, fresh tortellini, a loaf of sandwich bread, butter, jam, eggs, sliced cheese, tomato soup (can). Going with Italian, I can’t not drink a bit of wine, but I only “treated” myself with one Rittersport bar. I can’t trust myself with more junk food.
Later on, when I looked at the receipt, I noticed that the cashier ripped me off by about 2 euros. I got double charged for the butter and I was only given the 30% off discount on one of the olive packs. I specifically bought two because they were both on sale. Knowing how great German service is, I had to swallow my seething resentment at being robbed again. It’s funny how often I’ve wondered if the cashiers were doing some shady business on me. They usually try not to give you a receipt and you are so busy trying to put all your food in a bag quickly to really pay attention to what they are doing. There are thieves all over Germany, but they are the merchants and capitalists.
I took a shower and got cooking. After eating a large salad and half a package of tortellini (still two servings), I plugged a USB stick into the TV in the lounge and put on a movie. I had about five minutes left on the movie (which I had been fastidiously adjusting the volume so as not to disturb the one or two other people who were scrolling through their phones in the lounge), when the hostel staff kicked us out of the room.
The hostel has a rule that the kitchen and lounge are closed from 10pm to 7:30 am. Such a rule could be seen as reasonable if this was St Pauli or Friedrichshain, but it is a very quiet hostel with a handful of people sitting quietly in a room. The “neighbors” make more noise than any of the hostel guests. Most disturbing, however, is the fact that the showers are also in this section that is locked up. It is summer time and the sun hasn’t even set yet at 10 pm. Everywhere I’ve been, Germans who should otherwise being eating their dinner punctually at 7 pm are barely starting to cook at 9 or 10 pm. This rule is utter madness.
The 11pm sky
I retreated to my dorm (a spacious with six beds) to find two people snoring away in the dark. So, I was nowhere near ready to sleep, but I suddenly found myself with nowhere I could be. I started to get anxious about what is going to happen when I wake up at 5 or 6 am and can’t access hot water to make coffee. People might get murdered.
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.
My kitchen
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.
In the morning, since I didn’t have the luxury of available hot water or unlimited coffee, I got my pick up the old fashioned way with a jog around the lakes. It was surprisingly chilly in the gray, windy morning, but I had tons of company on the water-peripheral paths. There must have been at least 100 other joggers out there on the Thursday morning. My running tracking app failed again mid-run, and despite being more vigilant to catch it when it crashes, I must have lost at least a kilometer from the record keeping. For a person who somewhat obsessively lives by numbers and measurements, this is getting very frustrating. I’m not so much a “Luddite”, but I think the reason I am pessimistic about so much technology is the inexorable march towards suckiness. I so often get hooked into some legacy software tool that is svelte and streamlined, but with each iteration (and good lord some of the apps update literally every f*cking day [I’m looking at you Firefox]), they become worse and worse.
Anyways, I took a quick shower back in the hostel after my roughly hour long jog and mostly packed up so I would be ready to checkout at 10am. Since I had ample time, I headed down to the lounge and ordered a double espresso while internetting and surreptitiously munching on leftover bread dipped in butter (taken with me from Magdeburg). At the appropriate hour, I grabbed my luggage, checked out, put my luggage in a storage room, and returned to the lounge to continue internetting. I had plans to meet R, whom I had met in Berlin and arranged to crash two nights with, at noon.
When it was time to leave, I crossed the street to the Hauptbahnhof to take the S-Bahn over to Reeperbahn, which happens to be Hamburgs red light district. I had trouble purchasing a ticket, but with patience and trying several machines, eventually figured out the secret navigation through the menu to find the option for a day pass. I had a feeling I might be doing a bit of running around, so it seemed like a good precaution.
R was waiting for me on the platform and we walked to his apartment together. He is quite a collector and a frequent treasure hunter of flea markets, and his apartment looks like a curiosity shop. Today was the first day of the summer vacation (R is a teacher), so he was free to show me around town. After a quick coffee, we headed over to a “alternative” pizza place. On the way, R pointed out old buildings which had been saved from destruction in the 1980s through clashes with the police. Though Reeperbahn is a bit seedy, the debauchery is basically limited to a narrow zone, while the rest of St. Pauli is quiet and residential. The area was originally working class, though like everywhere else is slowly gentrifying after that initial wave of students, artists, and immigrants.
The pizza was excellent, if pricey, and I followed R’s lead in ordering a beer–a local craft beer–which was quite tasty. After the lunch, we headed over to a water bus at the old fish market and took it some distance up the Elbe River. It was unfortunate that the weather had taken such a strange turn. The weather everywhere has been mostly warm (hot) and sunny, but even after hitting more than 30 yesterday, today’s high was barely 21. I wore jeans and might have even been better served with a jacket. The sky was completely clouded over and gray as well. After passing the stop where the cruise ships berth, we alighted and walked up to where there was a sandy beach along the river and well-known bar.
Not the Mississippi
After one round, in which I tried Astra–the local beer, we headed back to take the water bus down to the philharmonic building, which took the city 15 years and 80 million euros over budget to build. The building is open to the public and it was interesting to go up, both for the views of the harbor and for its interior architecture. The way up is an incredible long escalator that follows an elliptical curve. We had to queue for tickets to enter the building, but the tickets were free. So, instead of recuperating the building costs by charging a little admission, the city pays an employee to hand out pieces of paper with a bar code that unlocks the high tech entry gates. Germany can’t be bothered to put turnstiles on its public transportation, but does for the concert hall.
Old warehouses
A fairly short walk through the Altstadt brought us to a Chinese supermarket, where I did some shopping. I offered to cook dinner and had a menu of dishes in my mind, while there was also a regular Friday night gathering in a community garden. The Asian supermarket was pretty cool, with a good selection of recognizable brands from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese supermarkets. The prices, on the other hand, were enough to cause a heart attack. As R had been picking up the check so far, I made sure to buy the groceries.
I think we caught the S-bahn over to the Landungsbruken and took a minute to explore the architectural wonder from the 1910s–an art deco tunnel under the river with car elevators. We dropped off the groceries and I grabbed a jacket, then we went to a local craft brewery and sat outside. It was quite crowded despite the weather, and reminded me of Beijing or Shanghai. It’s funny how much I associate craft beer with the handful of brands in China, but either there aren’t so many options in the cities I travel or in my travel mindset, I balk at the fairly universal pricing of craft beer (from Beijing to Seoul to Hamburg, a glass of craft beer costs roughly the same). Of course, whereas it is a mark of “expat-ness” to get a craft beer in Asia, its just another street cafe in Europe.
R had an errand to run, so after another swing by the apartment, he pushed a DIY wagon-bicycle with some supplies over to the community garden he works at and ultimately a fab-lab where he stores a lot of stuff for tinkering. It was past nine at this point (he had barely slipped into an Edeka supermarket before closing to return a bunch of bottles for the Pfand), and we had a supper of lentil soup at a Turkish restaurant. It’s notable that though I see Turkish eateries everywhere, I have so far only gone in them with locals.
I was getting pretty tired so I turned down the offer to “corner.” Cornering is a pastime in Hamburg where people buy beer from a shop and sit on a street curb. It’s so weird, but I can attest it really is a thing and there are a couple parts of St Pauli where people travel to for the privilege of sitting on the dirty ground. I guess St. Pauli doesn’t really have much green space, so sitting in a park is out of the question.
Back in the apartment, R put a record on and poured out a nightcap (a Scotch-style whisky from India) and I looked over his library. We talked about books, TV, and movies, so I also got to show off my digital library.
I finished off the toast in the morning and took a walk over to the river (which I couldn’t let myself leave town without at least seeing). I probably should have jogged it, but the short walk was nice and I hung around the apartment until about 9:45, when the landlady showed up. I was already packed, but would have waited until exactly the 10 am checkout time before setting out. The superglue seemed to help with the two wheels I repaired, but by the time I reached the Magdeburg ZOB, the two other wheels had started to fall apart. I I had booked a Flixbus for 11:30 or so and had a good hours wait, but there were seats in the shade and I brought the remained of the salad with me to serve as an early lunch. By the entrance of the train station, a trombonist provided background music and it wasn’t an unpleasant wait.
The bus to Hamburg took several hours and we had barely set off before we stopped at a mandated rest point and were all kicked off the bus so the driver could have his lunch. The highway rest area had a small shop, a restaurant, and a McDonald’s, but the prices were outrageously high. I wonder if the city McDonald’s actually charge 7-8 euros for a “value” meal. I had already consumed two meals, but the boredom was starting to eat away at me.
Can you spot the traditional windmill?
Once we were back on the road, I passed the time by browsing Twitter, listening to German podcasts, practicing Duolingo, napping, and staring out the window. The German country side was pleasant looking. It is quite flat in the northern parts of German (basically everywhere I have been so far) with lots of fields and almost always at least one wind turbine visible. I’m reminded of a trip I took across the American heartland in 2008 when wind energy was just taking off and they were being put up, and I can’t help but wonder how long these windmills have been there and will there be more. We also passed the occasional village with traditional German timber buildings and what not.
When we pulled into Hamburg’s ZOB, also conveniently across the street from the Hauptbahnhof, I hauled my luggage the roughly 100 meters to the Generator Hostel. Though I wish I could be rid of this corporate monstrosity, it was both the most convenient and cheapest option in town. Fortunately, I know exactly what to expect by this point. Almost. I was shocked to find an electric fan in the room, and as one of my roommates (a Californian) explained, they had special requested the fan because it “was so hot.” The room wasn’t hot and situated to catch the prevailing winds so long as the door was left ajar for the air to move through.
I dropped my stuff and with stomach growling headed up the street to find a supermarket. The area to the east of the train station (where I was staying) was pretty sketchy with plenty of homeless and junkies hanging out on the streets. The plaza is completely strewn with litter and a faint odor hangs in the air. It’s hard to untangle the feeling of urban blight with the heavily immigrant vibe of the street leading from the train station to residential neighborhoods, where every restaurant and shop was Arabic, Turkish, Afghani, or otherwise associated with some exotic far-off land.
I grabbed a half loaf of bread, water, and sliced cheese and continued on my way to a thin stretch of green to make a picnic. It was an early dinner at 5 pm, which was fine by me as my stomach was already growling. After finishing my meal, I finished walking the park and crossed the street to the “Outer” Lake, which was full of small sailboats enjoying the sun and wind. I followed the path south along the edge of the lake, snapping tons of photos and cross the bridge that separates the inner lake from the outer lake.
Not quite the sea, but a See
Having looked on the map, it seemed like there were long distances from my hostel to the lakes to the old town, but the walk had taken me so little time, I decided to continue exploring Hamburg, cutting into the old town and checking off most of the major highlights–Rathaus, Mahnmal St. Nikolai, Chilehaus. Apart from the historic architecture, the neighborhoods are essentially giant shopping malls, and I even popped into one outdoor sporting goods store to price backpacks. Omg, they are expensive: 200-300 euros. I finished walking back to hostel, where I pulled out my computer and worked on it for some time.
It was after 9 by the time I finished up my work and I was nearly ready to pack it up for the night, but I had a hankering for a sweet and decided to reward myself for abstaining from alcohol for two whole days. I popped up to the supermarket to grab a rittersport and another bottle of water. Up in the room, I moved the fan and propped open the door to maximize in the inflow of the already chilly night air. I took a shower and watched some YouTube videos, and decided to go to bed at around 10:30, just at the time that some other travelers came in for a pit stop before going out drinking.
I don’t expect this name to mean anything to anyone. I think most Germans haven’t even heard of the city. It lies to the west of Berlin (though firmly ensconced in former East Germany) and is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Stradling the Elbe River, Magdeburg has an impressive cathedral and is probably most famous for a canal bridge. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t travel the 13 km out of town to see said engineering wonder.) Most importantly for me, it was on the way from Leipzig to Hamburg and had a hostel.
Contrary to my typical modus operandi, when I checked out of the Sleepy Lion at 9:55, I didn’t hang around killing time, instead taking the long walk over to the ZOB (Zentral Omnibus Bahnhof, i.e. bus station). I wanted to get there well in advance of the scheduled 10:50 departure to Magdeburg to see how feasible it would be to pay cash. Though there was a Flixbus office right there, the company charges a 3 euro “service fee” for even talking to the employees. Considering that the bus fare listed in the app was 5.99, I wasn’t exactly going to pay 50% more to save the company those insane credit card fees. It’s not quite the same as buying a stick of gum with a credit card, but how can they break even. So, having successfully ruled out using any of the official ticket counters, there was still the option of paying the driver cash per their FAQ. I was bored while I waited for the bus to come, and shocked when I refreshed the route in the app (just to make it didn’t sell out) and found that the price jumped up to 19.99 euros within 15 minutes of departure. Ah, so that is the “true” price of the journey and the 5.99 cited in the app was the discounted price. Again I am confused by the business operations. Why not mention the higher price at the point of sale to encourage the user to place the order immediately?
I might have really screwed myself over but figuring out the edge cases of this tech-centric budget transportation company, but luckily there was another bus at 11:50. In fact, it even had a shorter travel time than the one I was certainly not going to pay 20 euros for. I booked it through my phone and settled down for a long, boring wait.
Pricing in Europe is so weird. Some things are so cheap while some things are so expensive. The weirdest bit is that sometimes it is the same thing with such wildly varying prices. I don’t ever want to drink a beer in a restaurant and pay 4 euros when I know the same beer costs under a euro. Okay, maybe there is a strong precedent for high markups on alcohol. But 2-3 euros for a small bottle of water in a kiosk when I pay 19 cents in a supermarket for 1.5 L? There was a little convenience store in the bus depot and the prices of the things there blew my mind. Especially because one could walk 3 minutes to a discount supermarket. If I have mind left to be blown, its amazing how happy people are to spend money in these situations. I would rather go hungry for a bit.
I napped a bit on the bus and studied some German. We reached Magdeburg’s ZOB fairly promptly at 1:40. While I was on the bus, I received a text message from the hostel with a key code and some directions. I thought that was odd, but I had been communicating with them via email in German for the booking. I had to cut through Magdeburg’s train station to reach the main street and walk the couple blocks down to find this centrally located hostel. The walk was pretty exhausting and I realized that another suitcase wheel was in the process of falling apart.were disintegrating
The “Ringel Hostel” was actually more like an Airbnb. I grabbed a key from the streetside lock box and let myself in to the apartment. It was a hallway with four bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. My “dorm room” was a large bedroom with three beds (one of which a double), table, a full bookcase, and window seats. It was pretty amazing, though, to be fair, at least half of my joy in the accommodations stemmed from the fact that I had not only the room, but the whole apartment to myself. The kitchen was fully stocked, so I made a note to take advantage of the self-catering.
Early skyscraper
I set out to explore a bit and discovered just how small a town Magdeburg really was. The cathedral was nice, massive really, and I spent a bit of time wandering inside its grounds. I passed the “Green Citadel”, which is some building designed by some famous architect. It had a sort of Moorish, Gaudi-vibe to it (but not as colorful). I considered spending some time in a cafe in the courtyard, but
Not a block away, I decided to stop at an Eiscafe. I ordered a spaghetti eis and an espresso and spent a leisurely two hours in the shade outside. I was reading through a German textbook when I overheard two Americans who sat down at the table next to mine. I readily spotted a missionary nametag, though they weren’t dressed in their typical uniform. It wasn’t too hard to ignore them (I usually find it hard to block out Americans when they talk), but I couldn’t help chuckling when I realized that one of them had inadvertantly ordered a sundae with liquor in it. There was a consultation of the menu and a dictionary, followed by indecision about whether or not to finish it. Missionary A: Does it taste like alcohol? Missionary B: I don’t know, I’ve never had alcohol. It got even better when he started selectively eating parts of the sundae while audibly reasoning reasoning whether or not it was alcoholic. “I think the whipped cream is okay” “May it’s in the chocolate sauce” and so on. After my entertainment left, I didn’t stick around long.
Frutti di Mare
I wondered through two shopping malls and looked at the big cinema next to the train station that had caught my eye with a poster of Spider-Man: Far from Home. About ten days to go before that comes out, but I looked at the prices and schedule because I was curious anyways. So Germany, or at least “Cinemaxx” (what a porn sounding name), follows the American tradition of cheap tickets on Tuesday.
There was an underground Kaufland right there and I wandered in to get some dinner. I bought a giant salad that was 50% off and some pineapple that was also marked down 50%. Then I got a little excited by how much I was saving and bought a ton of stuff, inlcuding several beers that were also on sale (such that the 2 liters of beers cost the same as the 500g salad).
I schlepped all the groceries back to the apartment, which was still empty. Ideally, I should have changed into my running shoes and taken a jog along the river, but I was feeling tired after a strenuous day of sitting around, so I cracked open a beer and the package of dried fruits and nuts and relaxed. Did I mention I found a package of bratwurst on sale? I fried up three of those, toasted two brotchen, and ate a plate full of salad while those were cooking. I think I have figured out why I hated salad so much when I was younger. It’s simply terrible in Germany. It is convenient and relatively cheap (compared to China/Korea/Japan) to get some salad mixes, but the vegetables usually don’t taste so great, and it is such an ordeal to get a decent tasting dressing. I bought a bottle of something called “herb” dressing that looked like Italian. Even though it is a “lite” dressing, the second ingredient is sugar and the dominant flavor is either dill or farts, I can’t really tell. The one time I bought a “oil and vinegar” dressing it was canola oil and distilled white vinegar. Seriously wtf. What is wrong with a little EVOO and Balsamic? The German “Balsamic” flavored salad dressings have the color of grape juice and the viscosity of slime.
Just as good as a streetcart
It was a long movie and somehow three sausages (for the price of one from a street cart) made me even more hungry (or it was the fact that I had polished off two beers like they were water). In any case, I decided to have a look at the Edeka supermarket around the corner from the apartment. Needless to say, I’ve been having some extremely poor impulse control when it comes to consumption in Germany and despite my self-rationalization of “I’ll just eat half the package,” I ended up having a fine old time.
In the end, I didn’t find any reasonable accommodation in any of the nearby cities which I might have otherwise wanted to visit (such as Dresden or Wittenburg), but I was able to secure a booking for two more nights in Leipzig and send out a request for a booking in Magdeburg through the Independent Hostels of Germany. Unfortunately, in order to stay in the Central Globetrotters, I would have had to move to a more expensive room. Fortunately, I moved to an even cheaper hostel.
Of course I spent the entire morning hanging around and even after checking out, simply returned to the lounge and plopped down on the sofa for a few more hours. I was in no rush to walk the 700 meters over to the other hostel until I could check straight in.
I did not sleep well. That massive quantity of food left me with a nightlong case of indigestion. After giving up on sleep in the early morning, I had a coffee and decided to sweat it out of me by going out for a run. On my various incursions into the old town, I had noticed the occasional historic marker with a blurb about the history of music in Leipzig. The markers are connected in a music trail of Leipzig covering more than 20 site around town and with stainless steel arrows embedded in the street to show the way. The Bach museum actually had a full map of the sites and said it takes about 2 hours to walk it (excluding visiting museums). Having put off the full trail, I decided to follow it on my jog as a scavenger hunt. It was barely seven kilometers (including to/from the hostel), but it was fun.
Follow the yellow brick road
While I was hanging out in the hostel lounge waiting to make my maneuver to the next hostel a guy sat down at nearby and set to work decorating black and white printouts with highlighters. We got to talking and he gave me a full sales pitch for Leipzig. He was from England, but had lived there a long time and loved the city. He made several references to business partners, but I didn’t inquire into what he actually did for a living. He, very helpfully, suggested I teach English or apply for uni in Leipzig. Okay.
The Sleepy Lion Hostel wasn’t far, but it was not a fun walk with my luggage and a very uneven sidewalk. I paid cash at checkin and took an elevator up to the second floor to find my 10 bed dorm room. It was actually a series of three connected rooms with four, four and two beds. Each room more cramped but with lockers and a few other pieces of furniture. The bathroom was en suite.
I dumped my stuff and immediately headed into the old town to find a cafe. It wasn’t that I needed much more coffee (having liberally helped myself to free coffee), but that I wanted a lazy afternoon. I had also skipped breakfast and lunch as my stomach kept working away at that pizza. I found a bakery, ordered a large coffee, two pastries, and sat there for not even two hours. I took an inside seat to avoid the smokers and the direct sunlight. I eventually got bored, especially when I ran out of my 30 minutes of free wifi, so I returned to the hostel.
I went to the kitchenette (much smaller and only consisting of fridge, microwave, and tea kettle) to get some water and I bumped into a familiar face. I don’t think I’ve mentioned, but there was a Chinese lady staying at the last hostel. She sometimes listened to her programs without headphones, and she found out I spoke Chinese when I intervened in a misunderstanding between her and another guest (they were both trying to help the other one when neither of them needed help). Since then, she hasn’t constantly tried to push food on me or ask me for favors, such as ordering beauty products online for her niece. Of course, she also kept asking me why I don’t teach English in China. Anyways, one of the perks of moving hostels was finally getting some distance from this overly friend, but completely inept traveler (for example, she doesn’t quite understand the alphabet. Seriously, how do people survive in foreign lands with so little competence?). But she also moved to this hostel and began asking me to help her book a hotel for her in Naples. I tell her to just use Ctrip like I do, you can even (sometimes) pay in RMB with WeChat or Alipay.
Frustrated, I even tried to pull up the app to prove that you can use your mainland payment options overseas, but the hostel was experiencing some internet issues and I didn’t even have a workable signal with my cellular data. I went upstairs to grab my shopping bag because I needed to buy enough food on Saturday to last me until Monday.
When I got to the Aldi, I kind of went a little nuts buying this and that, cookies, gummies, yogurt, liverwurst, sliced rye bread, sliced cheese, canned goulash soup, paprika chips, mixed nuts, wine, etc. I’m finding it harder and harder to resist the call of all the junk food that is so reasonably priced, compared to China. Apart from fresh vegetables, everything in the supermarket in Europe is cheaper and more delicious than what can be bought in China.
Back in the hostel, I had my dinner, then headed upstairs. I gave myself a pat on the back for rationing out the food. I chatted with one of my roommates (a Korean guy) for a bit then settled in to watch a movie. When I finished the movie, I went to sleep.
One of the more interesting things about Leipzig is that it appeared to play a critical role in the Peace Movement that helped bring about the downfall of the GDR. Weekly “peace prayers” in the St. Nikolai church as well as the environmental movement were the basis of a civil society that allowed organization outside the control of the Stasi. The annual Leipzig Messe (trade fair) shined an international spotlight on the city that sometimes made it harder to fully crack down on dissent. My goal for the day was to brush up on my history by visiting two museums. As an added bonus, each of them had free admission.
I headed to the Stasi Museum in the morning. The museum and archives are located in an actual Stasi headquarters, which was been preserved with original paint, furnishings, etc. The museum was entirely in German, and I made a slow pass through testing my reading comprehension skills with the aid of a dictionary. Eventually, I decided I should shell out the money for an audio guide because I wasn’t getting the full story. Though it was a bit expensive, I am glad to have gotten the guide. However, it was a little verbose. I got impatient at times as the British narrator droned on for five, six, nine minutes at a single display case. I spend so much time listening to podcasts at 1.5 times speed, I wish I could do the same with these devices. I guess I was also getting hangry.
That’s not ominous at all
Regarding the actual history of the Stasi, I suppose it seems quaint to look at all the analog surveillance and record keeping. But, how can we be shocked, disturbed, angered by the total control of a society when our so-called liberal governments are doing the same on a much grander scale. Snowden blew the whistle on NSA, a few tech companies had a public shaming, but that hasn’t slowed down the march of complete government intrusion into every aspect of our personal lives. From surveillance cameras to biometrics to wiretapping, honestly speaking, the citizens of the GDR were probably better off than Americans today. I should be drawing analogies to China, which gets itself in the news regularly for its overt surveillance, but I couldn’t help thinking about the US and its partners in the Five Eyes. Stasi is shorthand for Ministry of State Security. Plug in some synonyms and we are talking about the National Security Agency.
After the museum, I hurried to the Aldi to source a cheap lunch (salad, pretzel, Zwiebelbrot) and returned to the hostel to chow down on it with a couple cups of coffee. I took a quick power nap, and headed once more into the old town to track down the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum (Forum of Contemporary History).
Collage of defeat
This museum was awesome. It began with the end of World War II and continued all the way to the refugee crisis, but the focus was mainly on life under the GDR. The DDR Museum in Berlin was pretty good and maybe better in a few aspects, but overall it would be worth the trip to Leipzig to see this museum. At this point, I’m familiar with the broad strokes, so each pass through a museum fills in some details and provides extra context to my mental history book. The museum had a lot of archival footage accessible through touchscreen video displays. I watched a lot of them, listening to the German and reading the English subtitles. Much like my visit to the German History Museum, I ran out of time and had to speed up when I hit reunification.
At 5:55, I exited the museum, looked at my watch and hurried over to St. Thomaskirche, which fortunately was only 2 minutes away. This time the doors were wide open and I paid my 2 euros to enter and found a seat. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but timing is impeccable, visiting Leipzig in the midst of its annual Bachfest–a two week celebration of classical music with dozens of concerts across the city. I had checked the online schedule and made note of the relatively cheap cost to listen to some music inside this famous church. Of course, much like the “Opera for Everyone,” I was suckered in by some false advertising. There was barely any Bach on the program. Also, I didn’t know what a “motet” was. The hour long program mostly choral and quite nice to listen to, except for the little sermon that the church snuck in there. I think I got tricked into going to church.
When the program ended, and people slowly, slowly filtered out of the church, I was feeling quite anxious about a number of things. Obviously I wanted to figure out my dinner, but more importantly, I needed some internet time to revise my travel schedule. Originally, I was planning to go to Hannover for a couple days, then head up to Hamburg. However, Hannover does not really have budget accommodation, so I had spent the week reaching out to Couchsurfing hosts. One by one, I had gotten rejected, and here I was on my last night in Leipzig with the final rejection coming through, so I needed a new plan. Skip Hannover? Go somewhere else?
I returned to the hostel, grabbed my shopping bag and hurried over to the Aldi. I grabbed a flat bread, hummus, mozzarella, salami, and some beers. The flatbread was quite thick, so I sliced it in half to make a doubledecker flat bread pizza with the oven in the hostel. While that was baking, I found that I didn’t have a lot of options, but I did discover that Leipzig still had availability in three budget hostels. So, worse case scenario, I could stay another day. That was enough to allow me to relax and enjoy my dinner. I can’t believe I ate the entire thing by myself.
It was surprisingly chilly when I woke up in the morning. When I had gone to bed, it was a bit too warm and I had lain in bed quite some while fanning myself. Yet, by the morning, the open windows had done their trick. I spent the morning in the usual fashion, opting to make my own coffee rather than help myself to that with the breakfast spread. Shortly after ten, I decided to head out.
The artist and his canvas
So, Leipzig is probably most famous for its connections to pretty much every major musician. Wagner was born there, Mendelssohn and Bach both lived there until their deaths. I even passed a building with a plaque announcing a connection to Grieg. I crossed the ring road and headed into the old town to find St. Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian is laid to rest. The church was not open, the Bach Museum and Archive across the street was. I shelled out the big bucks for a ticket and wasn’t expecting much.
The museum is housed in the former residence of a rich family of Leipzig and friend of Bach. Though not particularly large, there is a wealth of information and a back garden. Headphones with touch screen panels appear to contain the entire body of music, organized and searchable. I would have liked to spend a couple hours listening, but I was anxious to keep moving. The most notable aspect of the museum is that the sign in front, which points the way to the ticket counter, was written in German, English, and Japanese. True enough, there was a whole Japanese tour group working their way through the museum.
After leaving the museum, I was thinking of running to the Aldi and having lunch back at the hostel, but as I was meandering across the green plaza next to the church, I was quite taken in by the available foods. As if by magnetic pull, my eyes immediately spotted the gelato counter, but what I went for first was a burger stand. It was a nice bratwurst, but it made me hungrier to eat it than not. Deciding to hang out for a bit in the mini-park, I pulled out my phone to review a bit of German, but discovered that my subscription to Lingodeer Plus had expired. I was maybe five days away from completing all the currently available quizzes, but it was finally time to give the app the kiss off. I would recommend it as a free app, but it is far too undercooked to be worth paying top dollar for.
The old rathouse
I walked around a bit at random and found another half dozen ice cream sellers. If I hadn’t packed on so much weight in Beijing, I would be going nuts on pizzas, bratwurst, pommes frites, and eis, and that’s even before one browses the aisles of an Aldi and literally wants to buy everything available. Do I have a mission to try every available flavor of Rittersport? What about other chocolate brands? Between cheap grocery stores, affordable junk food stands, and reasonable street cafes, I might not need ever step foot into a restaurant. I wonder if I am ever going to get tired of supermarket bread so I have to start spending more on bakery bread. Anyways, after looking at lots of ice cream counters, cafes, and parlors, I picked one that appeared to have the best price-quality ratio and got two scoops in a waffle cone. Ambrosia.
The sky was dark with clouds and the weather report had predicted a better than 50% chance of rain at 1 pm, so I finished my ice cream and headed to the Museum of Fine Arts. It was worth the admission ticket, though I have the weird feeling I could have just waltzed in without paying. The museum is currently hosting an exhibition on Yoko Ono, which I wasn’t particularly excited about, but she won quickly won me over. It was really cool that some of the exhibits were interactive. For example, there was a room with a boat in it. Everything is covered in graffiti. At first glance, that is how it is supposed to be. But there is a table with paint cans and brushes. Each visitor gets to add their mark and contribute to the whole. Or, take the wooden block with a bucket of nails next to it. Or, the broken pieces of pottery and a worktable with glue and tape we are invited to use to piece them back together. Though Yoko Ono’s works were all over the museum, the usually galleries were still there covering everything from medieval religious art to mid-20th century works that somehow survived the Nazis (despite being labeled “degenerate”). I think I spent close to 4 hours, and I could have spent longer if not for the fact that I was craving a pick-me-up.
Beethoven; Jesus visiting Olympus
I swung by the train station “Promenade” and picked up a giant cookie-thing called a “Pig’s Ear” in a bakery and headed back to the hostel to have a couple cups of free coffee. I played on the internet for two hours before getting into the kitchen early to make a second spaghetti dinner. For future reference, if I am going to buy a 500g package of spaghetti (for 40 cents), I should probably try to split it into three meals. In any case, I had no problem eating the giant plate of spaghetti and finishing the bottle of chianti and half a salad from the previous night. Though I was somewhat inclined to drink a bit more, it was quiet in the hostel, and I realized I had time to watch a movie before going to sleep.
