Hallo aus Hamburg

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Conversation at a Doner Kebab store in Hamburg (In the little german I understood, amd with english subtitles for your convenience)

Shopowner: Guten Tag (Good day.)

Me: Hallo. Ein hähnchen kebab bitte (hello. A Chicken Kebab please).

Shopowner: blah blah blah mit alles? (do you want it with everything?)

Me: Nein. Keine das pointing to onion (No, none that)

Shopowner (quizzical look): mit alles? (with everything?)

Me: er Ja, mit alles (er yeah, with everything.)

Shopowner: blah blah blah blah kommst du? (So where do you come from?)

Me: Ich komme aus Australia (I come from Australia).

Shopowner: Australia? blah blah blah sprechen deutsch im Australia? (Australia? don't they speak German in Australia?)

Me: Nein, aus Australia, nicht Österreich. Mit Kangaroos und Koalas. (No, from Australia, not Austria. With Kangaroos and Koalas).

Shopowner: Also, Australia. Vier euro fünfundsiebzig. (Oh, Australia. 4 euro 75.)


My German teacher Frau Zeffert would be so proud 😊


Hi Everyone,

hope you're all braving winter well down in Australia, and still enjoying your summer if you're still in the northern hemisphere.

From Bergen, I've taken a 30 hour transit from Bergen straight to Hamburg. Without wanting to relive that memory too much, it basically went like this:
6hr train from Bergen to Oslo
12hr ferry from Oslo to Hirtshals (Denmark)
3hr train from Hirtshals to Aalborg
3hr train from Aalborg to somewhere
2hr bus ride from somewhere to somewhere else
3hr train ride from somewhere else to Hamburg (Germany)
It gets a bit hazy in the middle because I had no idea where in Denmark I was.
In Aalborg I was feeling very sorry for myself so I splashed out on a really nice meal. The best I could find ended up being Chili con carne, but it served its purpose 😊

I must say that Hamburg is a really nice city, and Germany has been a bit of a surprise. Despite their retentiveness, they are generally really nice and helpful (unless they work for the rail service). When I was looking for my hostel, the 'Instant Sleep' hostel (very much false advertising), a German guy asked me if I needed any help and guided me in the right direction without me even asking, and that's pretty cool. This hasn't happened in many other places.

Although not generally known as much of a tourist town, Hamburg does have its moments. For instance, they have the 'Reeperbahn', Germany's answer to Amsterdam's famed redlight district. When I walked down this strip, it was saturday night, which made it pretty seedy already, but it was also 'Harleyday' weekend (read lots and lots of bikers), which means it just dropped to a new low. The American guy I was travelling with thought he had died and gone to heaven with all those girls and bikes.
If you're not interested in the wares on offer on the Reeperbahn, it can be a bit of a dull affair, but it's definitely a sight you won't see everyday (for better or worse).

Another highlight for me was visiting the Deichtorhalle, a photo gallery/museum. They had a special exhibition on and it was phenomenal. I've taken more of an interest in photography since I've started travelling and I was utterly staggered by this man's talent. To me, a great photo of people is being able to capture the moment, being able to capture the mood and spirit of the people in the photo, and he was able to do it 9 times out of 10. The exhibition covered the time from when he was in Budapest, to Italy and even in Hollywood photographing Fred Astaire and Katherine Hepburn. I was partly in awe but mainly just jealous....

The things I enjoyed most about Hamburg though was the food and all the conversations I had with people with my woeful German.

I had lunch at the cafe in the photo gallery and I was served far and away the most odd pasta dish I have ever seen. It was one of those very arty, new fusion kind of places so I should have known what to expect. The only thing I could read on the menu was penne, and I was thinking it was probably the most safe option considering I couldn't read the rest of the menu. After ordering, the chef comes out 10 minutes later holding my pasta dish with an enthusiastic grin on his face. In hindsight he seemed really pleased that someone was trying it I guess. Out my penne came, with a sauce that consisted of white wine grapes, fetta cheese, nuts that looked like almonds (but weren't), and garnished with spring onion. Yum....
I must say it actually worked a lot better than I thought it would, but it would hardly be a favourite 😊

However, my favourite food story occurred at a Chinese restaurant.
I went to a Chinese restaurant in Hamburg, hoping I could get something familiar and be able to communicate properly (maybe even in Cantonese). However, this particular restaurant I walked into happened to be run by vietnamese people, who didn't speak a word of Chinese or English. I could see this was going to be fun. Here we were, two Asian people trying to communicate in German (his was better, but not significantly better) 😊

I open the menu, and funnily enough, it's all in german. This was getting better and better. I started pointing to certain words at the menu and saying 'Was ist das?' (What is that?). After 2 or 3 attempts he leads me into the kitchen, and everytime I pointed to a word in the menu and said 'Was ist das?' he'd pick up the ingredient and shove it in my face.

With this new information, I ordered my meal in the classic way of the chinese restaurant: nummer fünfundzwanzig bitte (number 25 please).

While I was waiting I had the classic Asian conversation with him (Where's your family? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Are they all in Australia?). Through our crap german and sign language we had a grand old time, and we got along so well I got free beers for the rest of the night...ah life is sweet. Oh, the food was ok too.

The rest of the time in Hamburg was fairly lazy. I think I'm beginning to slow down and my energy levels just aren't what they were at the start of the trip. I've resorted to spending afternoons lying in parks and next to rivers and lakes and watching the world go by, much like a grandpa that needs his afternoon nap. How would've thought this would be so strenuous?? )

Anyway, I'll take leave of you guys now. Be safe!
cheers,
Ben

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