The Hamburg Page

Or perhaps to be retitled "The Much Neglected Hamburg Page." My internet efforts of late have largely been going into my cooking class, which gets its own separate page here: http://www.oggimusic.com/CookAndTalkEnglish.htm

But now that I've got a digital camera, there's no excuse to not get busy and tell you about life here in Hamburg. Some of these pictures are older, and taken with other cameras before I got mine (beginning of May 2007).

< Spring is here! Field full of rapeseed (I think that's English?) in Buccholz, outside Hamburg

> And with spring, the appearance of small strawberry-shaped huts all over the city, selling berries and asparagus...

< The view from the beach on the River Elbe, at Olvegoenne

> And the view from the ship... At the Hafensgeburtstag (harbor birthday party), aboard a Russian sailing ship

< With my American colleague and friend Glynnis, at the English school in Eppendorf

> and with some of my students, English teacher in action

< The reason I am having trouble with the German language: one word, translated roughly as "Floor-sanding-machine-rental-shop"

> The beautiful Isemarkt, a farmers market which happens on Tuesday and Fridays in Eppendorf under the elevated train tracks

< On the boat tour of the River Spree in Berlin, in front of the Museum Island

> A piece of East German history - an old Trabi (Trabant - complete with plastic body), now safely in a museum

 
< Unfortunately, photos cannot do justice to the true ugliness of this building - a hulking mass of ugliness (including the nearly-windowless rear view >) in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin. You'll just have to go in person to marvel at its hideousness yourself

< Ralph (as usual, on the phone) in the living room of my apartment. Look, I have furniture now!

> And Ralph's dog, Max, under the table at the local Turkish bar, Munzur

< The lovely ladies of Franzbroetchen, my new all-girl band

> Richard and Sara, at the Molotov bar before seeing some band

 

< At Hagenbeck's Tierpark (zoo), where you can feed most of the animals - including climbing a stairway up to giraffe-feeding height

> And the baby elephants

< With Stefan in the foyer outside my apartment, where my photographer friend Patrick took a snapshot of us while he was d a photo shoot (doesn't it look like a cardboard set?)

> Prairie Dog at the zoo

< My hairdresser, Dieter

> Melissa and Marian, at the Christmas market, drinking Gluhwein (hot wine spiked with rum)

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Hello from Hamburg!

where I am still living happily, enjoying life and otherwise prospering. Forgive the mass email, many of you I've written to individually over the last few months, but I've been awfully busy and may not have gotten around to everyone - so here I am.

I've been going through my old emails lately trying to reconstruct the last 6 months, and realized that my email updates stopped abruptly at exactly the point when I started teaching my cooking class 6 months ago. "Ginger, you teach a cooking class?!?" many of you are undoubtedly asking. ("But Ginger, you can't cook..." some of you may even be mentally adding.) In fact, after 6 months of teaching a cooking class, I'm now a pretty damn good cook. And fearless. It's my one class where I think I learn more than my students! You can read the history, get some delicious recipes, and finally see PHOTOS at:

http://www.oggimusic.com/CookAndTalkEnglish.htm

Yes, I finally got a digital camera about 2 weeks ago. And now that I've finally got the cooking class online, I promise to get more photos up soon. So at long last, you will see a) photos of me b) more photos of Hamburg c) photos of my new band and d) The Schrebergarten Project.

(A) and (B) are likely self-explanatory. The new band is an all-girl pop-rock band called Franzbroetchen (named after the beloved Hamburg specialty, a small cinnamon-croissant-like breakfast roll). I play guitar and sing (in English) and write some songs, and the keyboard player also sings and writes. It's really great to be playing music again, and with girls. Hopefully we'll be playing some gigs soon and making some recordings. We're working on a MySpace page, will send link when it's up.

So what's a Schrebergarten? You'll just have to wait and find out!

May 2006, Mallorca

Mallorca:

<---Maria being walked to the "altar" (in the garden)

A toast ---> to Thomas and Maria

June 21, 2006

The longest day of the year – which this far north, is quite long indeed, probably about 17 hours. Further contributing to my sleeplessness – I find it nearly impossible to go to bed when it’s still light at 11:00 at night. Like everyone else, I guess I’m making up for that long dark winter.

So last weekend I finally left Hamburg – and Germany – and headed to the Spanish island of Mallorca, where my old college friend Maria was celebrating her wedding to her German now-husband Thomas. On Thursday afternoon I landed at Palma de Mallorca airport and hopped in a taxi, wondering why I’d flown for three hours to vacation in a place that looked like the San Fernando Valley… Fortunately, the airport is on the least-picturesque part of the island, and it wasn’t long before my taxi whizzed through a long mountain tunnel and up into the peaks themselves. After about 30 minutes, we were surrounded by mountains, dotted with little (and big) stone houses built into the mountain sides, and at one of the big houses, my taxi left me off, standing bewildered in the driveway. From the balcony above, I heard Thomas’ voice call out, “You must be Ginger!”

Maria has lived in Frankfurt, Germany for a little more than 10 years now, but nonetheless I was a little surprised to realize that the wedding party consisted of 3 Brazilians, 31 Germans, and me. But it was wonderful – they rented an entire finca (inn) called Son Bleda (www.sonbleda.com, the pictures are worth looking, really), a former monastery perched up on the winding mountain road between Sóller and Deia. The finca is absolutely beautiful, having been lovingly restored by Dieter and Thomas (not Maria’s husband), a German couple who run the place, cook, and otherwise made us feel warmly welcomed. We were a bit cozy, 35 of us in 11 rooms, but it was worth it to all stay together and enjoy a really fun weekend without the hassle of driving or finding places to stay.

The wedding was Friday morning, in the garden. I helped Maria with her dress and hair, and she was the only bride in the history of time to be early for her own wedding (her motto: “Keep it simple.” If only all the world’s brides were so sensible.) The wedding itself was a short German/Brazilian ceremony, conducted by a Brazilian priest who lives in Frankfurt and Carlos, his guitar-playing accompaniest, with lots of singing and laughter. After the ceremony we drove 5 minutes down the road to Bens D’Avall, an amazing restaurant perched above the Mediterranean, where we spent 4 hours nibbling 8 courses of amazing little plates and drinking really good wine. Afterwards Maria and I hiked down the cliffs to the beach, and I had my first swim in the Mediterranean. It really is as blue as it looks in all those pictures (though maybe not as warm as you might imagine). In the evening we went back to Son Bleda and sang along with Carlos on the guitar (thankfully, most of the songs he knows are in English!) and later danced on the patio. I topped off the evening with a dip in the pool before returning to my room, where my roommate’s astoundingly loud snoring awaited me…

Saturday we spent on the beach again (I got stung by a jellyfish, but thankfully only a small one) and then by the pool. Thomas and Maria drove me along to Deia, so at least I could see a bit of the island (damn me for leaving me camera in my room) and it was beautiful. We had a great rustic meal at a local mom-and-pop restaurant (the exact opposite to the previous evening) and lots of shots of Yerbas, the local anise-flavoured liquor (kind of like Ouzo, but golden and cloudy when the ice cubes melt in it).

I was sad to leave Sunday morning, but it’s nice to be home again, and to have such a lovely home. My new apartment is coming together nicely, though the mountain of boxes is still lurking in the corner of the kitchen, pretending to be ignorable. I’m waiting for the right moment to nicely ask Herr Deutrich, my Hausmeister, if I can stash most of them in the cellar. But I’m gearing up to try out my new kitchen table, purchased at the Flohmarkt for 10 euros – when extended, it seats 8 people, far more than I have chairs for, but I’m looking forward to having dinner guests soon.

Singing with Carlos on the patio gave me a little boost of confidence to do something that I’ve been meaning to do for ages but hadn’t yet mustered the courage – until this afternoon. Having a few hours free between classes, I grabbed my guitar and headed to the S-Bahn station in the Sternchanze. It was great fun to be able to sing as loudly as I wanted, without worrying about the neighbors – I’ve always had a very loud (if not particularly pretty) singing voice, and it was most enjoyable to belt out some songs for about an hour (until the Polizei politely asked me to move outside, at which point I decided I should give my frayed fingers a rest and go home). I really wasn’t doing it for the money, so I was quite surprised to find that I’d collected about 6 euros in my guitar case. Walking home, I used my newfound earnings to buy a giant bouquet of lilies. And as I rounded the corner by Mr. Kebab, the neighborhood junkie called out, “I heard you singing in the Bahnhof – your voice is really loud!” I could only laugh.

Write to me and tell me wonderful things.

<--- Church down the street from my old apartment in the Brunnenhofstrasse, with amazing yellow flowering tree

Heiko's cute little house in a ---> tiny town outside Luneburg

<---- Kaffee und Kuchen in a little village in the woods

Cycling ----> through the woods in the Luneburger Heide (heath)

 

<--- The really beautiful and really old city of Luneburg

Me with ----> Heiko's brother and his friend from Holland in Luneburg

<--- Crazy flowering tree outside my window

Cherry tree ----> in the park

<--- View over Hamburg

View from the ---> rooftop

Hamburg ---> School of English, in Eppendorf (one of my 4 employers)

<--- Flowers by the curbside... everywhere. Hooray for Spring!

 

 

 


June 10, 2006

Schoen Pfingsten!

Which, after asking loads and loads of my German students, I finally found out (from a very advanced class) that Pfingsten is, in the christian church calendar, "Pentecost" - or celebrated in England as "Whitsun". A non-holiday in most places, yet one of the biggies here. Bigger than last week's "Mariahimmelfahrt" (Ascension Day of the Virgin Mary) which, for some reason, is a Thursday upon which Fathers' Day is celebrated. Which involves lots of men going to the park, pushing a keg of beer in the baby carriage, and drinking themselves into a stupor. I only hear this from reports, since last Thursday was cold, rainy and miserable. And the running race around the Alster, wherein each participant carries a case of beer (which he drinks whilst he runs) was cancelled. Personally, I would think, that if you're stupid enough to run 7 miles while drinking a case of beer, what's a little rain to slow you down?

I realize now that the crap of the weather here isn't the winter - it's the summer. After a long, cold winter, during which you think: "it's ok, it'll be summer soon." And then in the summer you're still wearing a scarf and gloves. Or you should be, but you're too resistant to wearing gloves in June: and so your fingers freeze. In my new apartment, I've still got the heaters cranked on high (fortunately the rent is inclusive of heat - maybe that's why I've got them on high?)

But today, finally, was sunny and warm, with acres of pale flesh sprawled across the Planten und Blomen garden, all desperately seeking the sun, exposing body parts that had not seen UV rays for many months. Taking advantage of a midday break between classes, I joined the throng and read a book in a comfy chair (how civilized! real wooden lawn chairs in the park) in the sun.

Last weekend I finally left Hamburg and took Heiko (the ticket-giver from the St. Pauli football match) up on his invitation to visit the Luneberg Heide (heath), about an hour south of Hamburg. It is, indeed, a heath: rolling hills covered with scrub brush, and on one side a dense old forest with huge beech and maple trees. The countryside reminded me a bit of Vermont, but with more leafy trees and fewer pines. Absolutely gorgeous. Heiko's parents run a small business taking tourists for carriage-drawn horse rides through the woods, and though the horses were out for the day on business, we did pick up two bicycles and go for a long, long ride through the dirt paths in the woods, over little bridges and lovely roads, to a tiny village of about 8 ancient brick cottages with thatched roofs, where we stopped for Kaffee und Kuchen. Yum. Then back on our bikes and returning to the "civilzation" of Egedorf, a town so small I've never been able to find it on a map. We met up with his brother and some friends visiting from Holland, and went into the "city" of Luneberg, which is about a thousand years old (literally) and stunningly beautiful. We had dinner and beers at the oldest pub in town (happily, a vegetarian restaurant, and very funky!) and then I headed back to St. Pauli on the train. All in all, it was a wonderful, relaxing day in the country, and I hope to go back again soon this summer. Exactly what I needed after a few stressful weeks of apartment hunting and otherwise wrapping up post-production on the film.

Ok, that's all the news I feel like typing for now, the internet cafe sucks as much as ever (something about the slimy keys, and of course the damn umlauts again) while I wait for a new phone - Hansanet tells me it will be same number, which baffles me why it then takes three weeks to connect. Ah, the romantic slow pace of life in Europe. Or something like that.

Write to me! I miss you all.

PS. In case you don't happen to live in Germany (in which case, I wouldn't have to tell you this, because you could not escape the game ANYWHERE), the German team won the first game of the World Cup (against Costa Rica, 4:2).


May 9, 2006

Greetings from Hamburg - where at last we have spring - not spring, even, but instant summer.
Everything is suddenly green, and I think it is the most beautiful city on
earth. Pictures coming soon, I promise.

And with the advent of warm weather, a non-stop parade of festivals: Maitag!
Hafengeburstag! Cherrie Blossoms! (Ok, I can't remember the German word for
"Cherry Blossom Festival." Haven't gotten there in Deutsch Grundstuffkurs
Einz yet. So shoot me.) Thousands of people sitting outside in cafes until
10pm, when it finally gets dark. Lots of girls in short skirts, and ice
cream at every corner. Our payoff for the winter - christ knows we deserve
it now.

So Saturday evening I went with my friend Ralph to the Hafenfest (somebody
decided that, in search of another reason for a festival, the harbor needed
a birthday party - a guesstimate that it might be now around 800 years old).
A hint here is that the fest is sponsored by Jever, another wonderful brew
- herbed beer, I know that sounds revolting, but it's smooth going down and
the great wonder of it is that when you drink too much of it, the next
morning (or afternoon) you awaken with a minty fresh taste on your tongue.
German engineering at its best!

So many old ships, with sails and masts and the whole rigging, sailing up
and down the Elbe (sorry, no pictures, who really wants to look at this
anyway), and boats full of sailors from faraway ports (including many
16-year-old Russian boys - criminal!) and lots and lots of folks drinking
lots and lots of Jever bier.

At some point in all this madness, I discovered that my purse was hanging
open and my wallet gone (I think this was well after the midnight fireworks
over the water). Knowing that there was little I could do, I made a brief
search of the area and continued with the party. The following afternoon, I
got out of bed (minty fresh!) and remembered that my wallet had disappeared.
After calling my bank and few other credit card companies, I headed down
to the Polizei and filed a report, figuring that maybe, just maybe, at least
my California drivers' license (the one irreplaceable document therein)
might turn up again someday. I stood in line behind 3 others (still drunk,
unlike me) making the same complaint.

But you can imagine my shock when Monday morning the Polizei phoned me to
tell my they'd found my wallet. I rushed down to the Davidwache station to
find not only the leather wallet, ungesmutchzed, but all of the contents
including the five euro note I had hidden inside for emergencies (the 1.63
worth of coins was gone from the changepurse - and so what???) All my
credit cards, drivers license, the rest - still there. And recovered within
24 hours. Honey, you ain't in Brooklyn anymore!

So since then I've been trying to get back into the idea of teaching English
- it seems very odd after 10 days in Los Angeles - and otherwise adjusting
to peace, quiet, public transportation that works and strange things as
such. My jetlag is almost gone, I'm embarking on the remixing of the
newly-dubbed film sound on Thursday with my German sound editors. In case
you haven't seen the film's trailer yet (shameless plug) check it out at
www.oggimusic.com - I've now moved it straight to the homepage, easy to find
and easy to watch. Let me know your feedback!
Tschuss!


May 1, 2006

Hello from Los Angeles, where I've been for almost a week now, working on sound
looping with some of the actors from the film of "Rockin' Romeo & Juliet".
I've also cut a trailer with Steve Burr (OGGI drummer Balthasar) featuring a
voice-over by Big Hollywood Voice-Over Guy Bill Sotelo. Please watch it at:

http://www.oggimusic.com/featurefilm.htm

and send me an email to know your thoughts, comments, and if you had any
technical problems trying to watch it (also helpful to know which format you
watched it in, Windows Media or Quicktime).

I'm back to Hamburg on Thursday morning, where I'll complete the last of the
sound mixing and then finally have a finished movie! I'll keep you all
posted for screenings and all our progress in finding distribution.

Best wishes, and let me know what you think of the trailer!

April 1, 2006

Greetings from my kitchen -

where I am perched atop the kitchen counter watching the fire brigade exhuming the remains of my downstairs neighbors' home meth lab. At least that's what I surmised when, 45 minutes ago, I heard a massive explosion that shook the entire building, and then went downstairs to find said neighbor woman covered head to toe in black soot and smoke pouring from her apartment. The operators for 112 (the equivalent of 911) speak excellent English, which is good because my German totally deserted me when I had to come up with the word "explosion." Sorry, I've only taken 3 German classes so far, haven't gotten quite there yet... Saturday night in St. Pauli. Someday I will live in a building where my neighbors burn only casseroles and candles. Of course, then it wouldn't feel like home... The fire brigade is very Francois Truffaut (see "Fahrenheit 411", the original version where the fire brigade all stands on the back of a modified go-cart on their way to fire calls) dinky and quite sweet, none of the swagger and bravado of American departments. Nonetheless, they seem to have done their job quite effectively as the captain is now going around to all the neighboring apartments knocking on our doors to assure us that everything is OK and taken care of. How very un-American indeed.

Of course the nutso part of this is that my first reaction to finding my neighbor covered in soot was to think "well, at least I left the hard drives at Jonas' apartment!" Jonas and Christina, the former residents of this apartment, a film editor and musician, respectively, have taken up my cause in my time of need and volunteered to help me transfer the film of "Rockin' Romeo & Juliet" from the digitized files on my 700 gigs of hard drive and onto a DVD where the film can actually be *watched*. And apparently this process takes 32+ hours, which is part of the reason all my previous editing students couldn't help me with this. So maybe, in a few days, I will actually have a finished film I can watch/sell to distributors/submit to film festivals/use as a Frisbee. Right now, I'm so sick of the whole thing, the Frisbee option is sounding very enticing. As my friend Heiko told me, "You know, Ginger, in Germany, Frisbee is not very popular..." So now I've hit on a *real* way to make money from the film! It's time the Germans learned about Frisbee.

It rained on the St. Pauli football game today but they did win. Afterwards the fans stood, not violent but not going home, either, until the Polizei came and fired water cannons into the crowd to disperse them. The Dom - the thrice yearly carnival - surrounds the Millerntor, carnival rides and fried sweets all around as the fans pour out of the stadium, but for some reason they all wanted to congregate in the middle of the street. My German is still to crappy to understand why.

The snow is gone, finally, and Hamburg awakens in the wet state that is spring. Finally I understand why the colors of Easter are yellow and purple - everywhere, in the most unlikely places, on the barren dirt next to bus stops and also along the banks of the Alster, the crocuses bravely stick their heads out in a symphony of color, looking almost plastic. With the crap of winter comes the joy of spring. Last year when I arrived in Hamburg I laughed at all the "beach bars", concrete slabs of sidewalk with Germans sitting outside in lawn chairs drinking beer. Now I understand- every moment of sunlight is precious! Already the days start at 6:30 and end at 8pm, by summer it will be crazy. The payoff for the darkness of December.

****************

March 2006

<----Old man on Sunday morning, Feldstrasse

Rear entrance--->to the Sex-Messe (OK, "messe" means "exhibition" in German - but still a fab name)

<--- Wall across the street from my window, newly uncovered as the vines were removed. "What are we drinking?"

Bikes---> parked at the S-Bahn station, Sternschanze

 

<---Old and new - bunker, glass high-rise and old-domey thing.

The ---> Neuer Pferdemarkt ("New Horse-Market") around the corner from my apartment

<--- The German obsession with garden gnomes meets the German obsession with kink, in a local shop window

This ----> should have highlighted the snowflakes in the foreground sparkling in the sunlight
  The ---> Hamburger Berg, last holdout of the early (and mid-) morning drunks, looking lovely and unusually calm on a Sunday morning

 

 

******************

February 14, 2006

Greetings to all, and Happy Valentine's Day, which thankfully is something of a non-holiday here in Germany. It's obviously starting to get commercialized, but nothing like in the states.

So some of you have asked, "What happened with the next game???" St. Pauli won, in a loud and crazy game, which involved me (and everyone else) getting utterly soaked in beer. Apparently the tradition (in the cheap "seats" which are standing-room-only) that every time a goal is scored, you must toss your entire plastic cup full of beer over your head. The score was 4-1, which meant that by the end of the night I was drenched. And the next big match - the Biggie - is St. Pauli vs. Bayern (Munich) - which is sort of the equivalent of Lori Gravel's local Sunday afternoon softball team playing against the Yankees. Literally, since St. Pauli is a neighborhood club, not even Hamburg's official city team. The odds are against them - but it should be a helluva game. Unlikely I'll get a ticket for that one - but I'm sure I'll hear it all from my apartment.

I've got some new photos up on my web page: http://www.oggimusic.com/Hamburg.htm
courtesy of my brother Geoff, who was here to visit last week for a few days as a side-trip to his business trip to Amsterdam (hmm, beats getting sent to Houston, eh?) We visited many bars, and more bars, and some restaurants. And Geoff is possibly now the most well-travelled tourist to Hamburg ever, since I took him around to all my lessons for two days - 90 minutes in Tiefstack, another 90 in Schenefeld, some time in Eppendorf, etc. NOT places your typical tourist sees. But it was a fun time, and I'd forgotten how much I really missed the American sense of humor - or more likely, my brother's sense of humor. We even found a pinball machine, and Geoff made the discovery that alcohol-free beer in Germany actually tastes like beer (god knows how they do it, to even create an alcohol-free Weissbier that actually tastes like the real thing).

I've finally got a home phone, as of yesterday, but won't give out the number yet since I'm still having technical difficulties. The machine seems to have set itself onto the "play greeting and hang up without taking a message" setting. Which makes me want to leave the greeting, "Hi, you've reached Ginger's answering machine, but TOO BAD you can't leave a message. Bye!" Why on earth would an answering machine even HAVE such a function? And how do I make the German bitch who controls the thing ("SIE HABEN - ZWEI ! - NEUER ! - NACHTRICHTEN !!! ") to switch it to a regular setting? I know the Germans are into kink, but I seem to have gotten the dominatrix version of an answering machine. My friend Martin dropped by to fiddle with it, but despite his fluent bilingualism and adequate technical skills, he was unable to conquer her. Will keep you posted.

Hope you are all well, keep writing to me and I really really will try to send individual messages in response!

Proust!

************


Sankt Pauli FC rocks!

So last night I came home from my 9pm English class to find the lights of the football pitch still blazing and the singing growing to deafening proportions. My apartment is 3 blocks from the field where the Sankt Pauli Football Club, a neighborhood football team, plays their home games in the field beside the bunker where we’re doing the editing of “Rockin’ Romeo & Juliet.”

Wildly popular but ever the underdogs, St. Pauli is having a good year, and has beaten every local football club in the league. Last night was a special game, St. Pauli played against the Bremen team, not a local club but an actual national league in the top of the rankings.

I returned to my apartment, brushed my teeth, thought about going to bed. The singing was getting louder. One thing that fascinates me about the Germans is their love of singing – mass, drunken singing. Americans shout, stomp, clap, cheer – but they don’t sing. Maybe it’s something to do with our unsingable national anthem. The Germans seem to burst into song at every opportunity – on the subway, in the street, and most definitely at the football matches.

So I bundled myself in several layers of clothes – it had been snowing all day – and wandered over to the pitch to see what it was all about. A security guard in an orange vest was propping open one of the exit doors. “Is it over?” I asked in my very bad German.

“No, two minutes left.”

“Which team is winning?” This was *very* bad German, since I had suddenly forgotten the word for “team,” and wasn’t sure about the word for “win,” either. So it came out something like “Which one wins?”

“St. Pauli 3, Bremen 1. Do you want to go in? You’ve got to leave your bottle here.”

I drained the bottle of Oettinger (beer) I’d picked up as ammunition against the cold and handed it to him. “Danke!” I called, running up the steps to join the mass of signing, swaying bodies – mostly male, but a fair number of die-hard girlfriends in the mix.

Standing on my tiptoes, I could barely see the field, where the teams were still playing – IN THE SNOW. Running around in shorts and t-shirts on the grass covered with snow. Madness. From my side, a new song came up, this one in English: “Saint Pauli, we love you, we love you we love you St. Pauli.” One of my British colleagues at the school where I teach told me that in England there is a man whose sole job it to compose football chants. I wondered now who was busy writing English football chants for the St. Pauli team. (I imagine it was borrowed from elsewhere, the tune sounded vaguely familiar.)

A loud bell clanged, and a huge roar went up from all over: 20,000 cheering, screaming fans. But not violent – just joyous. St. Pauli had won. The team amassed in the center of the field, celebrating.

The strange thing was that no one left. Though the game was clearly over, the fans all stayed in the stands, obviously in no rush to leave.

“You have to hold your hands up. One minute.” The guy beside me instructed me in English, raising his hands over his head, demonstrating, as around us the entire crowd did the same, with a rhythmic cheer.

“Eine ganz minuten?”

“Yeah, this is how we tell them they have done a good job.”

I raised my hands. The players ran around the edge of the field, thanking the fans.

“This one – number 2 – is American.”

“But Americans play crap football.”

“He’s good. There’s a Canadian on the team, too.” Which would explain the guy standing nearby with a giant maple-leaf flag.

“How did you know I spoke English?”

“Because you’re looking at the fans, the people around you. Everyone else is watching the game. I think it was your first time you come here.”

“I’m too short to see the game. Besides, the fans are more interesting.”

“How did you get a card?” (Ticket, I translated mentally, a mistake all my students make in English.)

“I didn’t. The guard let me in at the end of the game.”

“No! Really! 100,000 people have wanted tickets for this game, and there are only 20,000 places. And you just walk right in!”

So, the upshot of this is that I’m now an official Sankt Pauli football club supporter – or at least a curious one. After about 30 minutes of talking and cheering, Heiko had introduced me to his friends, a young couple from a small town to the south of Hamburg, who had driven in to the game. “There is a game on Friday, you must come. This is a normal game, in the season, not the special game like this one. It is easier to get tickets.”

“That sounds fun.”

“Wait, I have an extra one.” And with that he whips out his book of season tickets and tears one off to give to me.

“No, I can’t—“

“You must!” (Again, a polite suggestion for a German.) His friends are watching this with more than a little amazement. Giving precious St. Pauli tickets to strange American girls. But they are amused.

We all agree to meet by the Polizei station at the corner of the field, and I finally make it home to bed, where the singing has abated to a level where I might be able to sleep.

Viva Sankt Pauli! I’ll keep you posted on the score.

********

Hamburg: February 2006 - Six months!

My ticket to the St. Pauli football game (yes they won).

 

<--- The bunker where we're editing the film, all aglow in the haze of a cloudy night, just next to Millerntor (the field where the St. Pauli football team plays.

---> Me in the Hauptbahnhof (main station) wearing my new winter jacket

<--- The Rathaus (funny German name for the town hall)

---> View from a window near my apartment in St. Pauli, looking down towards the harbor

So all the photos in this grid were taken by my big brother Geoff who came to visit me in Hamburg at the end of January. Here we are riding the ferry in the fog. --->

  

--->Me in Tiefstack, the industrial armpit of Hamburg, where I was on my way to teach a class at Worlee, a spice-importing company

<---My students from Worlee, taking me to dinner at an Indian restaurant

SILVESTER BASH

OK, that was unlike anything I've ever seen...

After a certain amount of deliberation, my friend and I decided to pass up the revelries of the Reeperbahn in favor of passing Silverster (the German name for New Year's Eve, god knows why) quietly in my apartment with a few bottles of plonk. Quietly???

As the evening progressed, we became more convinced we'd made the right choice as the noise of the firecrackers and poppers escalated. But nothing could've prepared me for what happened at about 5 minutes to midnight... From all the neighboring buildings, people of every age poured out into the streets and began what was the biggest fireworks show I've EVER seen. Not just little bottle rockets and sparklers - major heavy duty explosives that went right on up over the tops of the buildings and rained fire everywhere. Not a professional show, just everyday people with major firepower. We hung out my 3rd floor window, which has quite an expansive view over the surrounding blocks, and watched in awe as miles of fireworks exploded right on down to the harbor (about a kilometer away). And the smoke settled thick into the streets, a heavy haze hanging over everything, reflecting the glow all around.

And it lasted, unabated, for at least an hour before it started to let up. At about 1:15 it slowed down considerably, likely because they'd finally run out of bombs. But it continued all night, and even now (2pm New Year's Day) there is sporadic booming going on out there.

I went out on my bike this morning about noon to survey the streets - a gummy mass of wet cardboard sprinkied with empty champagne bottles. Completely deserted - except on the Reeperbahn and the Hamburger Berg, where they were STILL drinking and blowing shit up.

Happy New Year!

**********

GUTEN NEU JAHRE!

Happy holiday stuff and New Year Greetings to All (with resounding apologies for more mass-emails) !

Whoo-hoo, I'm back online! Hooray. Thomas, the lovely young doctor who lives down the hall, has kindly hooked me up to his wireless whilst I fight with the phone company about precisely *who* is allowed to touch the phone jack in my apartment (which is currently dangling loose from the wall. The building maintenance man says he's not allowed to touch it, since it's phone company property, and the phone company says that since it's in my flat, they aren't resposonsible. And no one else I talk to seems to know how to get it fixed. Or maybe I just don't understand what the hell they're saying...) Note that my own laptop possesses *asterisks* which German keyboards completely lack. Down with umlauts!

In my excitement at having the internet again, I have immediately uploaded more photos, before Thomas decides to move out too (he's been talking about it, but he's perpetually at the hospital - intern - and so doesn't really stay in his flat enough to grumble about how small it is like the rest of us do). Here's the goods: http://www.oggimusic.com/Hamburg.htm

So Christmas in Hamburg has been quite a strange affair, all in all. One of the English schools where I teach is closed, and the other open still open, so I've had to stick around all week just to teach 4 classes - I suppose I should have declared myself "out-of-town" before the holiday so that I could actually go somewhere. The editing facility is closed until January 9th, so not much to do on the film except plan and wait for its reopening. The optical edit (except for the credit roll) is now done, and with the new year the sound edit begins. The screening a few weeks ago had the desired effect - attracting the attention of some of the sound engineering students, who were curious what was going on and suddenly want to be involved. As with the editors, I'll use all of them and see what happens.

The official Christmas holiday in Germany lasts 2 1/2 days - the Big Bash everyone celebrates on the evening of December 24th, and then the 25th is the first day of Christmas and the 26th is the second. Mr. Kebab, my local vegetarian take-out (despite the name) has been closed all week, and all the markets closed, so I've had the opposite experience of most people at holiday time...

Christmas night I visited with Florentine Bruck, the chairwoman of the German Society of Film Editors, who feasted her family and me with about 10 different kinds of smoked fish and plenty of wine. A marvellous 5-hour-long leisurely feast, in a beautiful old house by the Alster (maybe I'm glad Mr. Kebab has been closed all week). Christmas night I spent a bit too much time carousing (I was still rather inebriated when I finally made it home at 9am) and hence have spent most of the time since hiding in my apartment, trying to avoid a repeat episode...

Right now it's about 5pm on New Year's Eve, and I am hunkered down in my apartment deciding whether or not to brave the outside world tonight. As it grows darker (it gets dark at about 3:45 in the afternoon right now, and light at about 8:30am!) the outside noise has become louder and louder and more and more like the seige of a major battle. Lacking an official Blow Shit Up Holiday like the 4th of July, the German gov't permits the legal sale of fireworks in the 3 days preceding New Year's Eve. The combination of slippery sidewalks covered with ice (a white Christmas in spades) along with an unlimited supply of drunks wielding fireworks makes me a bit apprehensive. Fine, call me chicken. And there's no hiding from them - the favorite drunken trick is to toss fireworks into the doorways and arched entrances of courtyard apartment buildings, where the echos make the maximum bang for the buck (or euro). And it seems most of them don't bother to look before they toss...

Been writing again - songs, stories, random words. Don't know if it's the overstimulation of a foreign culture, or the total lack of stimulation (no TV, no phone, can't understand the radio, all my friends away on holiday). It's nice to be able to write on the S-Bahn: I'm not distracted by all the banal conversations around me, because I don't have to listen (my German has advanced to the point where I can understand almost everything if I concentrate - but I still have the blessing of being able to tune it all out if I want to. Sometimes I'm not sure I want to advance any further than this. As my colleague Jeremiah - a Spaniard - says: "I speak Supermarket German: 'Wo ist die zwiebelen?'" 80% of the time that's quite enough - but christ the other 20% is frustrating!).

Tried to go to the cinema the other night to watch "Oliver Twist" - was really looking forward to seeing a nice English movie, my first cinema experience here. But all the cinemas were only showing it dubbed in German. Dickens in German??? We ended up going to the arthouse cinema - one of the ones that shows films in their original language, with only subtitles - to see "Factotum," based on a story by Charles Bukowski. Except that, other than certain establishing shots of Los Angeles, the entire film was shot in Milwaukee. Apparently Milwaukee looks more like Los Angeles than Los Angeles does. Beyond surreal. And German cinemas show tons of commercials before the films - all for cigarettes and booze, which they can't show on TV. Never have I seen so many advertisements for cigarettes depicting what is so clearly supposed to be the pose-coital cigarette. Oh, and these ads are all over the bus stops, too...

I digress. Or maybe I ramble? (Since there was never much of a subject to begin with, it's probably rambling). My New Year's Resolution is to finish the sound edit in time to submit "Rockin' Romeo & Juliet" to Cannes in March. Stay in touch and tell me all your resolutions!

Frau Wade

***********

Pretty pictures!

After a long, long time, I've finally managed to get
some photos up on my website... OK, I know they were taken in September,
but at least it's something. Special thanks to Stefan next door for
finally getting me online at home via his wireless connection. Maybe next
weekend I'll get the most recent batch up... http://www.oggimusic.com/Hamburg.htm

Gosh it's nice to type on an English-language keyboard again (notice the
absence of umlauts). Send me mail and I'll write back!

******

Hamburg 2005

OK, so this is my new ABO-Karte - a monthly pass I got because I was tired of being hauled off the train by the Polizei when I bought the wrong pass/forgot to buy a weekly pass on Monday morning/otherwise did something stupid. Of course, now that I have an official yearly pass, I've not once been checked (there are no turnstiles here, just occasional random searches of tickets - the honor system, believe it or not it works here). The yearly pass is much cheaper, but also carries the implication: Am I staying for an entire year now??? I am told it can be cancelled with 30 days notice, but nonetheless it implies a certain permanence. My German work permit (not pictured here, not because of the *really* unflattering picture of me, but mainly because it has too much personal info to put on the internet) is good for five years, but that one involves no financial obligation to stay...

And who is this Virginia person? Somehow, in the process of applying for teaching jobs, the name Virginia stuck - I suppose it translates better, and my boss at Hamburg School of English is a tennis buff, which I think is half the reason I got the job. As a side-note, apparently most Germans don't have middle names - hence the need to constantly spell mine out. Does anybody like their middle name?

And who the hell is Frau Wade? Here's my pass to get into the factory at Hauni, a company where I teach in Bergedorf:

Greetings from Frau Wade... Okay, so here are some more photos, more recent although this roll of film has been sitting in my camera for 2 months (yes I still have a real film camera - see photos at the bottom of the page, I don't think all you digital people are there yet, sorry). But this batch is taken with my point-and-shoot camera, so bear with me...

<-- Here is the old WWII bunker where we are editing our film - it's been turned into an arts complex now, and is full of all sorts of schools and studios, etc.

--> Just in case you couldn't fathom how absolutely HUGE this thing is, here's a wider shot. The camper-vans are left over from carnies at the Dom, the thrice-yearly amusement park that comes for 30 days to the Feldstrasse.

<--Me in Amsterdam, October 2005. Not that you could tell where it was - the hazards of handing over your camera to another photographer.

--> What you should have seen in the background of the shot on the left - Amsterdam at the edge of the red light district.

<--The Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Hamburg. I love this place, even when I come here to switch to the train for Bergedorf...

-->Me and Barbara on her balcony in Eppendorf, 2 blocks from Hamburg Schools of English

<--View out the window of my new aparment, on a gloomy December day. The cage -thing across the street is a soccer playground, but it's nice to have a big view above it.

--> The Alster, all decked out for Christmas. At night it's really gorgeous with fairy lights. On the other side of the bridge (behind me) is the larger side of the Alster, a big lake that defines the center of Hamburg.


A Home of my own in Hamburg


Hallo!

(You can't see it from there, but I can see my breath as I call out to
you...)

At long, long last I am settled into my new apartment and have started to
unpack my suitcase (or at least, I would if I had a proper dresser to put my
clothes into). It was a bit of a rough ride, since I was scheduled to move
into my new flat on Monday morning, but Saturday afternoon I came home from
teaching to find the woman who I was subletting from madly painting away.
Our agreement was that I'd move all my stuff into one room while she painted
the others. But as soon as I came in, she started shrieking that I had to
get out and leave - immediately - so she could finish painting. After some
intense scrambling the movers arrived with a pile of cardboard boxes - and
within an hour I was all moved into my new place. Not having much stuff and
never having really unpacked, it was perhaps the easiest move ever, even if
a bit stressful. I even called back my friend and told him I was free to go
out to see a play later after all.

So English teaching is going well, I am feeling more comfortable and
confident in my knowledge of the English language. I've now perfected to
art of posing a question to my students and rocking back on my heels
awaiting an answer. And of course the obligatory stalking around the room,
pacing. It's kind of nice to have a job where I don't have to sit on my ass
all day, even if I spend as much time on the S-Bahn as I do teaching
classes. But for what it is, the hours are flexible, thus allowing time to
meet the editors at the odd hours they are available, and fairly well-paid
for part-time work. So for the time being I'm enjoying it, and the
opportunity to meet loads and loads of different people and be able to ask
them useful questions about how I survive here. All in all itÄs quite
fascinating. At least until I have to explain the difference between the
2nd and 3rd conditional at 8:45am, when maybe I briefly question my new
career path. (No, there §aren't§ any rules to it - Iäm sorry, i know
Germans like rules, but sometimes the English language does not readily
provide them!)

I really do feel much more secure here having an apartment that is actually
mine, and it's in a fantastic location - right near the bunker where we are
doing the editing, close to the S-bahn and U-bahn lines and in a really fun
neighborhood full of cafes and bars. And across the street from Mr. Kebab,
who has fantastic vegetarian food (yes, one can survive as a vegetarian
here.) After my crazy move last weekend I went out to The Irish Rover (yes,
even Hamburg has Irish pubs, this one crawling with ex-pat Brits) to see a
play, andafter getting home VERY late, had the wonderful experience of just
lying in bed Sunday morning and for the first time NOT worrying about where
I was going to live. Wonderful.

The Master Edit of the film is nearly finished, next week we are having an
in-house screening for the four student editors. We've arranged for our
friend Florentine, the head of the German Society of Film Editors, to come
and join us and offer the students feedback before we make the Fine
(final)Cut. Florentine has been a huge help with the whole thing, ever
since we told her about the project she's been most supportive, and now we
can give the students a chance to meet with a "real" editor and hear her
opinions. And it should help the film, too!

OK, that's all for now. Write to me!

***********

Zwei Monaten! Yikes!
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:32:59 -0800
Greetings all!

Sorry for the mass mail but itäs the first time Iäve been near a
computer in nearly 2 weeks, so you'll have to forgive my horrible
typing and too many umlauts. Many ups and downs, but now seems to
be on an "Up" and the sun is shining in Hamburg over the Fishmarkt
this morning. I even managed to find fuyu persimmons amongst the
fruitstalls - further proof of the truly international scope of
Hamburg's port.

So the film is moving along great, we've finished editing the rough
cut and now are about 20% of the way through a final edit. It#s
been a crazy path - after many meetings with editors who I couldnÄt
afford to employ, and my savings dwindling to nothing, I was
beginning to despair. Then, one day as I was on the S-Bahn to teach
a class, I noticed a poster for a digital film school, SAE, near my
flat. A few days later I decided Iäd go and find this place. After
a few wrong turns and asking various people, I ended up in a giant
concrete building which I'd always thought was a prison. It turns
out it's an old Nazi bunker which, unable to destoy it since it was
so solidly built, they decided to turn it into an arts complex.
Wild.

So wandered in and asked if I might post a notice for an editor. I
ended up talking to the head instructor for Final Cut Pro (the
digital editing program we're working with), who discussed the
project and eventually worked with me to do the entire rough cut
himself over the course of two weeks. Now he's decided he hasn't
the time to continue, but has set me up with 2 teams of students to
work on the final cut. Hooray! The students are all great, eager
to learn and enthusiastic to be working on an actual film. Bonus,
they're all extremely fluent in English. So it looks like Iäm going
to get the film edited - for next to nothing. Also, the school has
a sound production department, so if I work it right, ´perhaps we
can do a sound edit there too! This has all been a huge relief for
me to finally get moving again on the edit. And the finished
product looks FANTASTIC!

The past few weeks IÄve been teaching like mad -I got a single
student for an Intensivkurs, 40 hours over 2 weeks before he gets
shipped off to Sweden. Thank god he was a nice fellow, since 40
hours to sit one-on-one in a small room is a long time! He left
last Friday, and brought me a bottle of champagne, so I guess he
liked me. It was great for me, too, since I got to do my own
Intensivkurs of the English language - "Hey, look, I need to teach
Modals to my intermediate class on Thursday... What's a Modal? OK,
first I'd better try this out on my single student tomorrow..." Iäm
finding my rhythm as a teacher, but sometimes itäs touch and go.
I'll be glad next week when i only have to teach 15 hours - after 32
hours last week, I was starting to lose my voice!

The positve of being overworked is that I think Iäll actually have
enough cash to get somewhere new to live in November when my sublet
ends at the end of the month .Iäm frantically searching, but so long
as it's somewhere between the 2 schools where Iäm teaching, it
should be fine. IÄm trying to find a place as close to the editing
school ("the bunker") as possible. Itäs nearly as hard here to find
a flat as in New York - whenever there's an open house 20 people are
tromping through, all filling out applications and the rest.
Fortunately the rents aren't NYC rents.

And I got my work permit - finally - HOORAY. Even though Iäve been
working for a month, I couldn't get PAID until I got the permit, so
no I'll finally see the fruits of my labors. And I'm good for 5
years now, to live and work unrestricted. This is great - I don't
know if IÄll stay 5 years, but itäs nice to have the option!

Anyway, I want to go play in the sunshine while it lasts. Write
more - I love hearing from all of you!

Photos from September 2005:

So I thought I was shooting a roll of black and white film, but when I got these photos back, they were in color. No, I can't blame the language problem for that one, since I bought the film in Hollywood before I left... Most of these were taken on the same morning, when I thought I'd get up early and take advantage of one of the last sunny mornings of summer. The photos of the Elbe Tunnel (the tunnel under the river, which is entered and exited via a giant elevator for both pedestrians and cars) didn't come out since it was too dark inside. But at least you get to see both sides of the river.

<-- Sex shop window on the Reeperbahn, sunrise.

 

 

Davidstrasse, St. Pauli - a few of Hamburg's 5000+ bars --->

<---- Seilorstrasse in St. Pauli, sunrise

 

Sunrise above Landungsbruecken, near the entrance to the Elbe Tunnel --->

<----- Grosse Freiheit, the morning after (7am, after the streetcleaners have been through). This is a weekday, so by now they've all gone home - which is not necessarily the case on Sunday morning at this time.

My purple bicycle, with the Davidstrasse, St. Pauli. At night this street is one of the main hangouts for the "St. Pauli Girls." Note that the port (Landungsbruecken) is at the top of the street, making it convenient for the sailors ----->

<---Not a very good photo of the view from my bedroom window in Altona. The building I live in is the same style as what you see across the street.

The other side of the Elbe, 8am (the sun rises really late here, usually about 7am - in September! Winter's gonna be a trip...) ----->
 
View of Landungsbruecken and the Fischmarkt from across the Elbe. On the side of the Elbe where I am standing is the port itself, with miles of big boats and huge cranes ----->
Return to OGGI LAND main page
Me and my purple bicycle, my first day in Hamburg standing by the Kennedybrueck (yes, that Kennedy) by the Alster. ----->

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

******

September 2005

Hey all -

Sorry for the mass email, but I'm trying to save my euros at the internet cafe
today... As some of you rightly surmised from certain omissions in my previous
emails, the job was not exactly a success. Something about a certain
misrepresentation of my German language skills. Which is stupid, because the
work itself was all in English - but some of my coworkers seemed to resent
having to speak English to greet me in the mornings before they'd finished their
first cup of coffee. My supervisor was sympathetic, but was concerned about the
morale of the "team." Which I suppose would be those ones muttering "die
Auslanderin" ("the foreign girl") under their breaths...
Hey guys, I do at least speak °that much° German to know who you're talking
about... Oh well.

So I've been trotting around to English language schools trying to scare up a
job as an instructor. Apparently the 6 months I worked at Berlitz in NYC was
one of the best things that I've ever done, as I already have offers from both
Berlitz and another school. Unfortunately, I now need to obtain a new work
permit as a freelancer, and the next available appointment for work permits is
October 27th...

So I can hold out, my rent is paid through the end of October, but I am getting
nervous as I am spending the money I brought which was allocated to edit the
feature film of "Rockin' Romeo & Juliet." That and changing my money the week
after the so called "Bush Disaster" - as the German media has dubbed Hurricane
Katrina - gave me about a 20% hit on the exchange rate. (I suppose I should
bring over the rest of my cash now, while the German economy is reeling from the
elections - I still don't quite understand what's going on with that one...) I
really really really really want to stay here, I love it, but I have some
decisions coming my way and it's all gonna take a little time to sort out.

I did retrieve my 2.15 cubic meters of Stuff from the boat, the place where I'd
ridden my bike was only the shipping office - I had to find my way out to the
dock in the middle of nowhere to meet the van I had hired to meet me there.
Thank goodness for a friendly Polizei who saw me obviously looking lost, and
headed out on his bicycle to make sure I could follow the pedestrian path under
the U-Bahn to get to the dock. Then it was pretty crazy with me and two
non-English-speaking van drivers trying to get our way through customs in
German. But they were on my side as soon as I told them that everything we were
moving had come from California - this seemed to set off a genuine amazement.
As we careened through the narrow streets on the way back to my apartment, we
passed the Cap San Diego, a large boat which is here in Hamburg in drydock for
repairs for another month. When the guys saw the map of the world on my wall,
they made me point out San Diego and Los Angeles ("Ist hier, ja?" asked Lukas,
pointing somewhere about Kansas on the map). So now at least when I need to
move at the end of October, I know some good van drivers to call!

Anyway, Hamburg is still fantastic, went with a friend last night back to the
Färrahd Bar (Färrad is bike in german) so she could get a bike of her own. This
is the place where I got my own bike when I first arrived - a most astounding
place - a corner pub, with a guy in the back room who sells used bikes. Very
groovy, with old local guys at the bar, who've obviously ridden their bikes
there, and neat vintage bikes. My friend got an old 3 speed from Switzerland,
complete with a Swiss license plate and a medal of St. Christopher on the front
handlebars... A beer with the old guys (none of whom, including the owner,
speak much English at all) and then we turned on our headlights and whizzed off
through the moonlight.

 

*****

Zwei Wochen
ate: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 04:46:27 -0700
Hey Alles!

So I guess now it's into week two, which is just crazy...

First piece of business - apparently I was foiled by this keyboard
again, and earlier sent the wrong phone nuber... drat... The REAL
phone number is 011 49 176 502 581 96.s.

I've gotten into a nice little routine, getting up to do my shopping
early in the mornings, actually cooking my own food in my apartment
to try and economize (the woman I'm subletting from actually has
real cookware, though judging by the contents of the cubbard never
made anything more than tea and oatmeal..) It's so lovely to get
fresh food from the market and cycle home daily, as opposed to
filling up the car once a week. One must be careful on the bike
though, since the streets - particularly the cobbled ones - are
always filled with broken glass from people dropping their bottles
of ASTRA (the local Hamburg brew, open bottles of which seem to
accompany most pedestrians).

In the evenings I've been working on my German, I've got a few
people I've met who are willing to help me with German in exchange
for a chance to practice their English. I think I'm getting the far
better end of the deal, since listening to me struggle with German
for half an hour must be torture. And then we get to talk in
English for half an hour, and I can figure out what we were talking
about for the first half hour... And watching German television,
trying to get used to the rhythms of the language, and trying to
figure out what it's all about. Lots of nature shows, news, and
docu-dramas. The other night I found myself watching a documentary
about Bobby Kennedy (?) saying "What the hell is this?" Very
strange.

The weather has been splendid the whole time I've been here,
everyone is thanking me for bringing the California sunshine along
with me. Finally today it's cooled off a bit and clouded over some
- fine by me.

So I'm off now to figure out where my boat is - that is, where my
stuff will be arriving in the port. This involves riding through
the Alt Elbetunnel - crazy, a giant elevator which brings
pedestrians and cars down about 500m, then you ride/walk/drive
through the tunnel, which isn't actaully very long, and then at the
other end you take the elevator back up to street level. Apparently
this was built about 100 years ago so that the dockworkers could get
quickly from St. Pauli to their jobs on the docks, and while other
car tunnels have been built since, this is still the most direct
route if you#re not driving. I got up at dawn the other day to take
some photos, so hopefully I'll get them up on my website sometime
soon (though I haven't figured out how I will upload from the cafe
here).

Anyway, hope all is well. Keep writing!

******

Guten Morgen in Hamburg - September 2005

Guten Morgen!

Heute ist Montag, and I wish I spoke better Deutsche! Seems to be the only
problem I'm encountering - but it's a biggie! I'm on my way to the library
to find out more about night school...

So I've been alousy correspondent because - well, who wants to sit all day
in the internet cafe? Too much out there to explore! I've got a bicycle,
and it#s getting used an awful lot - but the bike paths are wide, the city
is incredibly flat and the cars actually stop for you when thy're supposed
to. heaven!

Well, the first thing to explore was a new place to live, since the sublet
in the room fell through (seems my potential landlord has some kind of
pension, and his neighbor threatened to turn him in if he took in lodgers,
thus jeopardizing his payments. Ooops!) So after a day of desperate
searching and a pending deadline, I went to an agency and got a sublet for
September in Altona. It's actually an amazing flat, 52 square meters (I'll
let you figure out the conversion!) 2 bedrooms beautifully furnished by a
woman who is away on business. Altona is pretty, quiet, cobbled streets and
old buildings, tons of trees (like everywhere in Hamburg) and a 5 minute
bike ride from St. Pauli. A bit more than I wanted to pay, but hopefully by
Oct. 1st I'll find something else here of my own - probably with no
furniture at all...

It seems the thing to do at the weekends in Hamburg is drink all the night
through on the Reeperbahn, then go to the Fischmarkt (fish market) at dawn
on Sunday. (I cheated and got up at 4am - I couldn't possibly keep up with
these people.) On my way to the Fishmarkt I rode through the streets of St.
Pauli, where throngs of people were boozing away - and this was at 5:30am,
with no sign of it slowing down! Madness - but a great free show. I then
rode down to the Fischmarkt, which is about 100 ourdoor stalls selling fish,
bread, veggies, clothes, and anything else you could want. In the indoor
hall, it was packed, with 2 live bands on alternating stages, and everyone
from groups of families to bottle-wiedling drunks dancing and singing - all
coexisting most merrily, strong coffee for some and more beer for the rest,
with a brisk trade in all sorts of beer snacks and breakfasts. And smoked
eels - this seems to be a Hamburg passion, the fishmongers putting on a
show, gathering the crowd for free samples and doing comedy routines as they
dish out the eels. (For the record, smoked eel tastes a lot better than it
sounds - but I think I would want to have someone else slice them up for me,
because they're kinda gross looking...)

I can't receive mail at my sublet, and post office boxes are very hard to
get here (the clerk in Altona said the waiting list is 10 months). So, I
pick up my mail at the window - this is my address:

Virginia Wade
POSTLAGERND
Deutsche Poste Retail GmbH
Filiale Hamburg 304
Detlev-Bremer-Strasse 45
20359 Hamburg Germany

And a cell phone now, too: from USA, dial 011-49-176-502-581-96.

Send me news! Please!

 

****

ICH BIN HIER - HAMBURG! (August 30, 2005)

Greetings from Hamburg!

Sorry for the mass email and the bad typing - for some reason Germans switch all
the letters around on the keyboard (yes Jason, that was why I wanted to keep my
old computer keyboard from my old computer, the one that had the "y"
and the "z" in the proper places!)

So here I am in Hamburg. I've been 4 days in my sublet in Barmbek, which is a
pretty but extremely boring place on the east side of Hamburg, in the room of a
Hamburg University student who . My goal has been to get back on the west side
of the Alter, the big beautiful lake which splits Hamburg in half.
Yesterday I found another room for Spetember in St. Pauli. The room (small,
but with a balcony) is just north of the Kleine Freiheit - which translates as
the "Small Freedom" - a block away from the "Große Freiheit", where all the
wildness happens and where the Beatles played in their early days amongst the
sailors and other port-side types. It's beautiful and full of trees and has an
enery of youth that is magnificent. My landlord is a Turkish fellow who I met
through my marvelous new friend RaLPh, who seems to know everyone in the entire
city of Hamburg.

Also I have had a meeting with a woman who is the President of the German Film
Editors Society. Just by chance I had contacted her through the internet from
LA, not realizing that she was the president, and we corresponded about editing
the movie here. I realized I could not possibly afford to use her as the main
editor, but she has read the script and seen the first 4 minutes of edited
footage now, and she is very enthusiastic about the project and wants to help
us. We decided we should find an assistant editor who wants to have an
opportunity to get an editor credit, and Florentine will supervise and make
suggestions on the edit. This way it will be within the budget but have the
best of both worlds.

Ok, this keyobard is driving me mad, but hopefullz in the next few dazs I will
have the issues with mz laptop sorted out (the power converter I brought with me
is not the correct one, and the internet access is a bit
sketchy) and then I can type real English again.

More soon. Write back to me! Schuss!

 

*****

Day one – Hamburg – Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Here I am! Arrived safe and sound from the Flughafen – got in early enough to meet Alain, with whom I am sharing the flat, and Chloe, his girlfriend from Paris, to pick up the keys before Alain left for work.