Rachel's in Germany!: Exploring the good and bad sides of Hamburg

Today I woke up late (after the party next door last night, it was quiet, but my room was too hot and the light came in too early, so I had too little sleep and what I had was not very good). Slept through my alarm, but the kids playing outside in the backyard between apartments thankfully woke me up at 10:30.

Indra and I decided to go to some of the churches around Hamburg and try to record ourselves singing duets of a couple of songs she has taught me. We left around noon with an itinerary of four or five churches to visit. The first, St. Nikolai (this is the newer one; the old one was destroyed in WWII and is now a memorial with only the damaged tower still standing), was open, but there were people going in and out and the afternoon service was about to start. So we heard some nice music from the organist's warm-up, but we weren't able to record ourselves. The next two, St. Markus Hoheluft (where I saw Messiah performed) and Christuskirche, were closed. Bummer!

Since we were near it, we went to the tutoring institute (Lernwerk) where Indra works a couple of days a week. We had Popsicles and met Indra's boss Katrin. She was there doing the taxes, and so she was more than happy to take a break from that to chat with us! It turns out she lived in California and had a house in Brea for about two years, so she was very familiar with my home turf. She has even been to Seal Beach! We talked for quite a while, but finally our conversation turned over to Mexican food and my growling stomach told me it was time to get something to eat. So Indra and I left (to the disappointment of Katrin, who reluctantly went back to her dull tax paperwork) and took the train to the Russian Orthodox church at Messehallen. There was something going on there too, maybe a Saturday service, so we went to Restaurant Variable, the place I had gone with Ninni back at Easter, and split a plate of grilled kebab chicken, salad, and fries. It was the perfect amount of food for a lunch.

The church was really pretty inside!

After that, our plans for all the previous churches having been thwarted, we walked down towards St. Pauli to the last church on our list, St. Josefus, which we were really hoping would be more successful than the others. Ironically, this church was basically right at the edge of the Reeperbahn, the sleazy street with all the nightclubs and red-light places. It is an old Catholic Baroque-style church, and I'm pretty sure it was there long before the unsavory neighborhood that has grown up around it. Right outside was a karaoke club, a Spielhalle (which is a place where people gamble), some sketchy-looking food and alcoholic-beverage shops, and a not-very-clean street with lots of graffiti. But inside, the church was very nice, and it had good acoustics! We sang "Evening Rise" and tried to sing "Oh du Liebe Meiner Liebe," the other one Indra taught me (the second one was tougher because I didn't have the harmony completely down), and then a man came out and told us we had to stop because the evening service was about to start. So we had to go after that.

It was funny--just down the street was a beat-up old place called Indra, which had a plaque on the wall outside. It said that this club was the first place the Beatles played when they came to Hamburg in 1960, so it marked the start of their rise to fame! (In case any of you were unaware, Hamburg was kind of the place where the band got its start with playing gigs. John Lennon once said that although he was born in Liverpool, he grew up when he was in Hamburg.) Indra said there was absolutely no connotation between the name of the club and her own name, but we took a picture outside of it anyway, of course. We also walked to one other church nearby, but it was closed too, so we walked to the Reeperbahn station and took the train back towards downtown. We were both VERY glad to leave that area. I've never felt a need to be overly vigilant or careful the whole time I've been in Hamburg--generally most areas I've been to are pretty safe, clean, and friendly--but this section is definitely not a good area of town. Not only is it run down, dirty, and extensively marked up by stickers and graffiti, but all kinds of unsavory characters are hanging around, even in broad daylight. We passed Beatleplatz on the way to the station. It has life-size silhouettes of all four of the Beatles with their instruments. I didn't take a photo, because it was not a very picturesque spot. Although maybe I should have . . . it would have been a very adequate picture of the other side of Hamburg . . . Anyway, we went down into the station and there were people begging and smoking and yelling, and the tiles inside were a very unpleasant and oppressive pattern of red and blue. And there was a sign on the platform informing all would-be passengers that no weapons are allowed on the train, nor is it permissible to bring glass bottles onto the train with you between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am.

"Waffen verboten" means "Weapons forbidden"

I almost made it through my entire stay in Hamburg without visiting the bad side of town, and then when I do visit it, I visit it with Indra, of all people! Obviously we are baaad influences on each other. (Ha-ha, I'm kidding, of course--we could be the poster kids for "least likely to visit a nightclub or bar," which was what made the whole thing so funny.)

We tried going to one more Catholic church downtown, but there was a wedding going on there, so we just headed home. We stopped at Aldi on the way and got groceries, then went back to Georgi-Haus and made dinner. Ahhhh, a nice, safe neighborhood whose only graffiti is colorful and seems very friendly, and where the people you walk by on the street are carrying groceries and pushing baby strollers! We agreed that it hadn't been the most successful recording day, but it was fun to spend time together for sure, and the recordings of "Evening Rise" at least sounded really pretty. Indra's cathedral voice effect on her audio editing program is pretty good, but it can't quite match the echo sound that comes from singing in a real church.

AND . . .
Tomorrow is the final game of the Weltmeisterschaft (aka World Cup)!!! As crazy as it will be, I'm planning to go to the public viewing at St. Pauli with the Ropers, Marni, and yes, even Indra, tomorrow night! (An event like this is so historic that even non-sports people like Indra feel a need to go experience it. ) I can't imagine the chaos that will erupt down there tomorrow night after the game is over, especially if Germany wins! But it should be an absolutely unforgettable experience. I'm all ready with my flag cape!!!