If anything, I thought Hamburg would be interesting. Perhaps a bit grimy, a little sad, some kind of sordid, with all the prostitutes on the Reeperbahn, the immigrants, the slightly desperate reminders that the Beatles got their start here 50 nearly years ago. No one told me that Hamburg is absolutely beautiful. It’s a watery sort of place, to begin with—endless canals and fleets and waterways, and the harbor and the Elbe and the sea. And, in September, the rain. The sky clouds up, the clouds go dark, the rain pours. Tourists huddle with locals under any available shelter and joke about the weather, and in a few minutes it lets up. The first brave souls ventures out and when she doesn’t melt, the rest of us follow, keeping our umbrellas close at hand. In a
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