Checked out of the hostel, took our last S-bahn ride over and across town (partially accompanied by a street clarinetist playing Love Me Tender) to the ZOB (Zentraler Omnibus Bahnhof) to catch our bus to Hamburg.
When the manager of the Hamburg hostel saw our big heavy bags he offered us a room on a lower floor with a double bed. "No thanks," we told him, "We'd rather lug our bags up to a 3rd floor walk-up than accidentally touch legs in our sleep. Just who do you think we are?"
Took a walk downtown, to see the town hall,
which in German is called the Rathaus. Tee-hee! Hamburg is Germany's second largest city, probably due to it's position as a shipping center. Connected by waterways to both the Baltic and North Seas, it even reportedly has more canals than Amsterdam or Venice. Huh.
Ian and I had a nice dinner on the Elbe River, fortifications for the night ahead.
I thought this was a cool building:
The main tourist draw in Hamburg, however, has nothing to do with architecture. It is a small strip of street called the Reeperbahn.
Probably best known to Americans as the place where the Beatles honed their craft in small bars and clubs, it is now Hamburg's red-light district, where anything goes and usually does.
After a brief voyeuristic stroll down the boulevard, evidently some god was upset because the sky cracked and split and rained down furious precipitation on us. We quickly dove into the first bar that didn't have pictures of naked women on it, a sort of beer hall with a DJ/singer at the front. He was a middle-aged man who would play old songs, sing along occasionally and encourage the crowd (Germans of all ages) to join in. We got into the act on Que Sera Sera, but most of the standards were too foreign to us.
As is the case with all the good parts of our trip, my photos just pale in comparison to the experience itself. Speaking of experience, we couldn't just walk up and down the street all night without going in to some of these places, right? Right.
Our first attempt, the Funky Pussy Club, was a fairly typical dance club. All your Beyonce, Eminem, and Rhiannon needs could be met in here. Btw, can you read the banner above the entrance? Evidently they offer the finest in "black music." I didn't know we had the technology to color music. Where can I hear some purple?
As you can see, the police maintain a presence here, but I didn't really see them do anything but patrol. Prostitution is legal here, so I'm not sure what exactly they were looking for, but I digress. Next we paid our 5€ cover to go into a place called Safari. The first thing we noticed was the old-timey pianola music playing as we were led to our seats. Looking up at the stage, it was like we'd transported back in time, to a vaudevillian burlesque show, complete with feathers and a red velvet curtain. It was soon after we sat down that we were offered our first drink, at a price of 25€ (for those of you bad at math, that's like a $36 beer) so we up and left.
By now the crowd is swelling, it's getting harder and harder to see where you are, much less where you're going. We crossed the street to the Dollhouse (sounds promising), paid a ten-euro cover and headed towards the bar. When the entertainment turned out to be male, we couldn't get out of there fast enough. "No, guys, don't go! The BIG show is coming right now! BIG show." said the bouncer, but we were pretty sure that we had seen all we really wanted to.
Back to the Funky Pussy for a little more bump and grind, a quick bratwurst at the imbiss ("It's famous!") then we cabbed back to reality.
You know in Pinocchio, when he goes to that Pleasure Island place, and everybody's having a great time, shooting pool and smoking cigars, but his ears start growing and a tail sprouts and the more time he spends there the more he turns into a jackass? Well it was kinda like that.
I hope there's something else in Amsterdam to occupy my mind, because I'm getting pretty sick of the sex trade.
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