Tue, 15 Jul 2003

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 09:21 17/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Bremen, into Hamburg ( 21 photos )
We awoke wanting to have a look around the city of Bremen, so that's pretty much what we did. Liz drove Rosie out of the park and up the road to a parking lot, which appeared to have people wandering to a nearby beach. More on that later.
A walk back up the road past the park and a little further brought us to a tram stop. The driver waited while we ran and jumped in, and we expected to be asked to pay. No such luck. In fact, try as we might, we couldn't work out how to pay for the ride. Many cities appear to have chosen their own way of accepting fast payments with a special card, thus increasing the speed of payment for the locals who use it a lot. Unfortunately, by doing this it means that the tourists, such as us, have absolutely no idea how it works.
Perhaps a conductor would come and fire some Deutsch at us we thought, but no such luck. We alighted near the centre of town for a look around. With Liz around, it's hardly suprising that we found a chocolate shop fairly quickly and made a purchase which was quickly opened and "tested".
Attempting to see some things around the place, we wandered around the pretty central pedestrianised section of town, taking in quite a few of the sights, such as the Rathaus (town hall), obligatory over-bearing St Petri-Dom cathederal and plenty of street cafes. Also, we wandered down the Bötterstrasse, a re-created medieval alley with lots of little shops attempting to snare the tourists in. We managed to avoid spending more money, heading instead to the Schnoorviertel. This was a similar place, instead focusing on the history of fishing in the area. There were some great little shops and alleys however, and we wandered in and had a look around a music shop, where Liz bought a notebook.
Lunch was next, and we attempted to decypher the menu of the cheapest looking place in the central square, eventually settling on zwei rostbratwurst, meaning two large sausage things in two tiny bread rolls. Oh, and zwei Coca-Cola to wash that down. We're getting better and better at spending as little as possible in these places, including dodging the expensive tomato sauce in favour of the free mustard.
We needed to post some things at the post office, so we of course needed to find it. Liz cheated and asked for directions in English, which at least meant that we found the place alright. Letters sent, it was time to head back to the van. Again we attempted to find a way to pay for the tram, but no luck. We promise to spend more in the next city to make up for free-loading on Bremen's public transport.
Re-tracing our steps, we got back to the van and decided to find out what the fuss wass all about with the beach nearby. By now the carpark was overflowing with people, so there had to be something interesting going on. We wandered down the forest path for a while, and eventually it opened up to the beach with lots and lots of people. With a difference. We had wandered into a nudist beach. Trying to look unfazed, we walked a little while down to the beach itself, past people ordering ice creams, wandering down paths and playing games all stark naked. Deciding this was not for us, we turned and wandered back. Sorry, no photos from there are available.
Next on the itinerary was a drive into Hamburg, to meet and stay with friend Sebastian (and his girlfriend Jessi), who was an exchange student at Sydney Technical High School when I was there, and we got to know each other well due to his musical interests. We met them a little while ago when we were in Amsterdam the first time.
A hot drive later, we found our way into the middle of town via his directions, parked, and called him up to come find us for the last tricky part of our journey. We opened up all of the doors for some cool air while parked in a little back street awaiting him to wander down, which he did after not too long.
He guided us to a good parking spot just down the road from his place in Paul-Rossen Straße, St Pauli, where we climbed the stairs to arrive at the great little flat they live in.
After a while of cooling down, he took us out for a wander around the western area of the city to get familiar with the layout of the place. This included a wander down the nearby Große Freiheit, Hamburg's famous Red-Light district (quite an eye-opener, even after Amsterdam), then down to the Fischmarkt, which still operates on Sundays. Wandering along the Elbe River, we cut back through the city along the Reeperbahn, then grabbed a few European plugs and adaptors at a cheap electrical place on Talstraße.
After a genuine Deutsch dinner (or so we are told!) prepared by Sebastian, he had a band rehersal for his band Mindcuffed. Not having any other plans, we tagged along. This involved a ride through the city on the underground train to a place in an industrial area (with a few brave souls living nearby) where rooms were rented out for bands to use as practice space. Luckily we had Sebastian with us, as he had enough trouble figuring out how to buy a ticket, so I hate to think how we would have done.
Liz played Wonderboy on the laptop as I bravely attempted to insert some saxophone lines on Sebastian's Alto we had brought along into the band's heavy guitar riffs. It was good playing again, as I don't have my sax with us and am missing playing it after almost a year(!).
After the rehersal, we came back to the flat before heading out for a night at one of the local bars. This involved riding there on bikes - quite an experience with four of us on only two bikes. Liz manged to balance well on the back of our bike, better than I can say for myself riding it as we swerved and nearly topped while dodging traffic. I didn't care what gear I was in or give more than a passing thought to the road rules, but it was a huge amount of fun.
The night was passed chatting to various friends of people, who, on discovering that we were from Sydney were suprised and interested, but mostly a little worried that they would have to speak English to us. This didn't stop some whose English was very good (as in far better than our Deutsch), and we had a great chat to lots of people, not even noticing that the clock ticked over to something like 3am before we decided that pushing the bike back was a better idea than trying to ride it.

(customised)