DEAR STRANGER DIARY: HAMBURG

A CITY OF INVITATIONS

Somebody said I brought the sun to Hamburg. “The city is like a cat.” They told me, “Unaffectionate most of the time. Rain. Rain. Rain. And when you reach the point when you are ready to abandon it for somewhere warmer, the sun comes out and you can’t help but adore the city all over again and you never want to leave.” I would say this leg of my tour has been very wholesome. People have been extremely kind to me and the letters went down very very well. I feel very lucky to have had the sun the entire time.

While I was here I stayed with my German friend I knew from Brussels. David. He let me sleep in his living room. A beautiful one at that. Wooden floor. Large open windows. Paintings of beautiful girls on the wall. He’s a cartel lawyer. Something about stopping monopolies, I’m not entirely sure. He’s very structured though. He wakes up at exactly 7:30am every morning, goes for a 7km run, heads to work at 9am and gets home at 9pm. I was in awe at his ability to follow such a strict routine for so long, he said he’d been doing it for months, the same way somebody tells you the sky is blue when it is. He didn’t think it was impressive. I’m often craving a routine because the road’s constant unreliability makes you crave just that. David is a kind man. Before I came he dragged a mattress into the living room so I didn’t have to sleep on the sofa. “It’s not comfortable enough.” He told me.

The first night I arrived in Hamburg I headed to the Reeperbahn where all the brothels and strip clubs are. I posted my letters all around that area hoping to reach the girls of the neon night. To try and make them feel slightly better after dealing with all the drunk sex tourists. Albania was playing a match that day at the football stadium so Albanians were going wild and crazy in their Mercedes and Audi’s honking their horns, waving their flags, showing their Albanian pride. I cheered for some as they rolled past and accidentally stumbled into a police inspection of one of these cars. Five officers were surrounding a jet black Audi R8, one of them was crouched down writing the engine serial number into a notebook while two officers talked to the driver and a group of guys wearing Albanian flags on their shoulders. I had an idea what was going on since I spent time in Albania. Over there you will see more Mercedes than anywhere else on planet earth. One reason there are so many Mercedes is because apparently the dictator banned people to own personal cars. He was the only one allowed to have a car. A Mercedes gifted by Stalin. So nowadays Albanians see Mercedes as a sign of wealth and power. The other reason, the Albanian mafia are notorious for stealing cars and driving them to Albania so they can wipe the serial numbers. When a stolen car arrives in Albania it becomes practically untraceable. That must have been why the police were checking the engine number, to see if the car was legitimate or stolen. Regardless of all this, I love Albania and it’s people. Poverty pushes you into desperate measures and that country has some of the kindest people around. 

I spent four hours posting my letters that night. In parks. Streets I can’t pronounce. Places I can’t remember. I managed to post around 80 letters on trash cans, electric boxes, and subway signs. I took it slow so I could inhale the sweet and sour scent of the city. On my way back to my friends place I ate the worst Asian food of my life. It was so bad I found it funny. Undercooked crispy chicken covered with sweet and sour sauce that tasted like liquid plastic. The girl at the counter looked so sad, so I didn’t want to say anything. While I was eating the food, she just stared at the wall, as if she was questioning why she left her home country in the first place if she would end up being this sad anyway. I was the only person in the restaurant. Most likely because the people who lived here knew what the food tasted like. 

I didn’t sleep very well that first night. I was too intoxicated from the drug of arrival.  Arriving to a new place makes me high hence why I’m addicted to travelling. Also my phone was going wild. Messages from strangers in Hamburg were zooming into my inbox as if a postman high on amphetamines was throwing letters at me. I kept trying to reply but they kept coming and coming and coming and didn’t want to stop. I’d never had that many responses to my letters so fast before. One girl who messaged, saw me stick a letter to a wall earlier that night. Apparently I rushed off before she could ask me what I was doing. She invited me to meet her the following day, to help me see the city through local eyes. Since I had nothing to do but post letters, I agreed. 

Day 2. I left the house when David left. 9am. We were supposed to meet at a smash burger joint at 8:15, so I had a lot of time to kill. I also had a lot of letters to post. 300. The sun was scorching that day. It burned through you like a motherfucker. I was wearing dress trousers and a dress shirt, the thinnest clothes I packed. I looked more like a banker or business man than what a so called street artist is supposed to look like. I like it that way because police never bother me when I look like this. That’s another thing I love about meeting street artists. A lot of them, who have been doing it a long time, are just ordinary people doing unordinary things. Grounded. Mostly because they are both lonesome creatures and are used to receiving abuse from strangers on the street. Your ego is constantly getting punched into the concrete on the street.

One of my friends told me he was obsessed with a street artist in Paris who drew on road signs, making them comedic. Apparently he was notorious among the Parisian art scene. Everybody respected him, few people knew who he was. My friend said he met the guy once and couldn’t believe what he saw. He caught him in the act and said he was a just normal looking middle aged guy. It turned out he worked as a primary school teacher and did street art to break up the monotony of his life, to feel young and free in a structured world. He didn’t care about being part of any art scene. The reason why I love street art so much is because there are no boundaries. You don’t have to pretend to be anything you’re not around people you don’t like that much, just to get a chance to show your art and make it seen. The street is an open gallery for all. It cuts out all the boring bullshit. Obviously your work is at high risk for destruction, and believe me, people will destroy your work, regardless of how authentic you are, but that’s what makes it so fun. It grounds you and makes you realise how you’re just a grain of sand in the vast desert of souls. No matter what you do, your legacy will eventually be wiped, but while you’re here why not try make it fun. 

I started my day towards the lake and found it extremely beautiful. I went into a post office and they tried to charge me €2.50 for a little strip of tape so I told them to stop taking LSD and stumbled into a fish shop and bought a fish sandwich instead. A Hamburg speciality. When I carried on around the lake I couldn’t stop admiring the houses. Somebody told me they cost around 5 million. I imagined walking into an estate agents with a suitcase full of cash to buy one of those houses so my girlfriend and I could live in a nice house and be happy and secure for the rest of our lives. Eventually the sun beat the shit out of my forehead so I stopped dreaming and found a cafe to escape the sun and do some actual writing. I hadn’t sat down to properly write since I arrived in Berlin. Just notes. So it was about time I actually did some writing if I want to be a successful writer. The cafe was called Copenhagen coffee lab. Minimal, not too expensive, and the seats were extremely comfortable. I ended up writing so much that I forgot about my appointment with the girl from Hamburg, so I ran to the Ubahn (subway) and arrived 30 minutes late. Not very German of me. It turned out she invited me to a super fancy bar/restaurant in the centre of town and took me up to a private balcony alongside her friend. When I walked into the bar the owner greeted us and gave us VIP service, everyone was speaking German, I had no idea what was going on. Eventually the owner told me his name was Mustafa and he was pleased to meet me. I smiled and said the same thing. When we sat down at the balcony, her friend, a flamenco singer living in Hamburg, lit a joint and passed it around. A beer arrived to my table shortly after and the waiter apologised for the delay in service. We had only just sat down. The guy was so sweet, his name was Ricardo and he had kind eyes, and the girl who invited me was just as sweet too. I was just confused the whole time where I was and how I got there. It felt like this girl was the queen of Hamburg and I was just a random who she found on the street. I loved it.

The musician girl got talking and we hit it off instantly. She was originally from Spain, both her parents were deaf so she spoke Spanish, German, both spoken and hand sign languages, and English. I didn’t know that there were different hand sign languages. I could tell she had been through shit because she started crying when I read her one of my recent notes. About a veteran marine I met in my Berlin hostel, “Men cry in other ways. They throw shit around, talk down to people, drink their tears away. You won’t believe how much violence it took to be this gentle.” She then went on a long rant about men and why they are so shit. I nodded and agreed with most of the things she said. “Men can be awful creatures.” I said, “But not all men are shit. Women can be just as evil in different ways” Thankfully she agreed. The girl who invited me was from Tajikistan. Lily. She came to Hamburg seven years ago to follow her European dream. She spoke six languages. The two of them met because they both worked as translators for the German government. Lily said she’s a part time influencer, part time translator. I hate the word influencer, but Lily was so sweet, I didn’t want to say anything about the word. Our conversation got deeper and deeper as the clock went by and the joint got shorter. We eventually stumbled on the topic of ego. I said I struggle to be friends with people who call themselves artists. I just get annoyed when they talk to me like they were born special. She replied with, “I can understand why artists have inflated egos. Especially when you are a performer. On stage you have to put on a mask that enlarges your ego to pretend you know what you’re doing. Some people forget to take this mask off in their every day life.” I never thought of it like that and I loved the way she saw life as an artist. It helped calm my dormant rage still lingering after meeting so many pretentious “artists” in Berlin.

By the time we finished the joint somebody else came to the bar. Mike. He found a letter that morning and asked if he could take me on a guided tour around the city. I gratefully agreed. When he arrived the mood shifted instantly. It turned awkward and the girls left to go talk to the bar owner. Mike said he wasn’t interested in sitting at a bar. He wanted to show me the city and all its history. “I’m the best person in Hamburg you could have met.” He said. “There’s very few people who know this city better than me.” I smiled and said my goodbyes to the girls. I went to pay for my beer but Lily refused to let me pay. 

When we left the bar, Mike got talking. An endless voice that went on and on through infinite layers of Hamburg history. He spoke so much that I struggled to focus. Zoning in and out. Luckily he didn’t notice my absence, he was just too happy and too focused on flexing his knowledge to somebody who was willing to listen. It was lovely. Truth was, I wasn’t interested in the cities history, I was more interested in him and the way he spat words like he was shooting bullets. All gas no breaks, he went on and on to tell me when this building was built and why that building was rebuilt, and the age of that bridge and what material was used to build it. The sheer excitement in his face was so intense, I didn’t know how to tell him to slow down. The most interested thing that stuck to my sun-stroked-brain was about the swans in the lake. He said it’s illegal to curse at a swan because it’s the equivalent to cursing at the city.

When I told him I’d prefer to sit by the swans and chat, his face dropped and asked why? “Are you not enjoying the knowledge?” “Am I boring you?” I said I was enjoying the tour but I had to leave in twenty minutes and I didn’t want to walk too far from the centre. He said, “Ok. Let me take you to a secret place first.” He took me into a random building that had a never ending elevator. There was no door, you just jumped on and rode it up or down then jumped off while you had the chance. It looked like a death trap. It felt like a death trap. I loved it. We rode it up and down like two kids in a toy shop before Christmas. Mike finally stopped spewing facts in the elevator so I found it the perfect time to tell him I’m more interested in him rather than the city. He agreed to sit by the lake and tell me about his life. 

At 8:15 I eventually made it to the burger joint, ate a burger, drank two beers, watched England play boring football, then headed back to David’s and fell straight to sleep. My social battery was officially empty.