Germany - Part 3 - Hamburg

Our train journey from Berlin to Hamburg took us through the former East Germany or the Russian sector. My first train journey the other way from Hamburg to Berlin back in 1972, had involved stopping at the border between East and West Germany where East German guards boarded the train with ferocious looking German Shepherd dogs to examine our passports and look under the trains with mirrors to ensure there were no stowaways. There was none of that this time and our train left Berlin main station dead on time and sped through the countryside towards Hamburg. Apart from an occasional farm and huge stretches of forest, there was little to see until we got closer to what was originally the border with the West, when villages and towns sprung up wearing their brightest colours. 

As the train pulled into Hamburg main station, I felt very emotional. I had spent the academic year of 1971-1972 there as part of my university course studying German Language and literature and had been assigned to a grammar school in Hamburg to teach English. I had not been back since.  Hamburg had not changed a lot, as it was already back in 1972 enjoying the freedom and successful economics of a Western democratic country. It was also one of the six founder members of the European Union or Common Market as it was known in those days. If anything, today, it has become very international in that it has many of the same shops we have here, which is sad, because I like to go abroad to see something different and not see the same shops I can find in my High Street - MacDonalds, Starbucks, H&M, Pandora, The Body Shop, Levis, Hollister, O2, Vodafone, Sketchers to name but a few. There are shopping malls there too which are new, but then I guess we didn't have many in the UK back then either.

Our first full day there was spent indulging me, because it was my birthday, so I dragged poor Kay and her fiance around in driving snow, hopping on and off underground (U-bahn) and overground (S-bahn) trains to visit all the places I had lived in Hamburg. During the course of that year I had lived in 4 different places. The first room was assigned to me by the school which employed me. It was in a vicarage, but literally on arriving in early September, the vicar showed me to my room and pointed out that the room did not include bedding, so I would need to go out and buy some. At that time Harold Wilson was the prime minister in Britain and had restricted money being taken out of the country to £70. I had taken the full amount with me to Germany, hoping to eke it out until my first pay cheque at the end of the month, but had to blow nearly the whole lot on bedding in the first few hours on German soil. The other thing the vicar told me was that I was not allowed to use the family kitchen or eat in my room and that I must eat out. As a young girl in a strange city famous as a raunchy seaport with a famous red light area, I was terrified to eat out alone, in case a passing sailor took a fancy to me, so used to squirrel rolls and cakes into my room and hope not to drop any crumbs. After a month of putting up with that, the school found me another lodging - this time with free board and use of the kitchen but having to look after two small children every evening while their mother went to evening school to get qualifications she never got at school. After a day teaching, I did not fancy using up my evenings to look after what were two very spoiled precocious brats,  particularly as I was an only-child, only 20 and not experienced in childcare whatsoever.  It meant of course that I had to say goodbye to any social life. I persevered until Christmas when one evening the mother was later coming back from her evening out than we had agreed which meant I had to miss something important I had arranged. After that, as my social life improved and I found the weekday childcare evenings were not helping with the whole German experience my course was meant to give me,  I left with the agreement of the mother and stayed a few weeks in emergency university accommodation during the university holidays, but had to leave when term started again. Finally (fourth time lucky), I found the ideal room with a little old lady who fussed round me and made me very welcome. She more than made up for the bad experience I had had up to that point.

The vicarage - my room was the three windows at the top.

                                       

The church across the road

My room in the old lady's flat was here at the very top

The grammar school where I taught English

The rest of my birthday was spent hunkering in the warm from the snow eating humungous  cakes, that only the Germans can excel in and finished off our day sheltering from the snow in the Christmas market.

Yummy birthday cakes

More to come of our Hamburg trip in the next post.