Hamburg Diaries

By Alice Thorvaldsen

This little notepad is going to be my paper-based blog for now . . . for all of the tech savvies out there one day, all of these thoughts will come in a digital format as well. But you may understand that when the thought comes I just cant wait for windows to boot especially when I only have 7 minutes before I reach my destination. Fountain pen and paper will still be the preferred writing mode. Who knows maybe in a couple of years well be able to just think and transfer thoughts on a microchip implanted in our left temple.
Ok I admit I am being slightly far fetched here . . .
Just so that you know moleskine version and word version may be slightly different but this is because I cant just stop my head adding thoughts to the original.
Beware this blog is unfiltered.
Today (25/09/2010) the town hall here in Hamburg is open to the public. I went it but it was all too baroque for my taste so I came out and started staining my brand new notepad with blue ink. Theres nothing better than a carefully chosen fountain pen to write, fountain pens just write, ball pens force your hand to stop and reflect and thats what I dont want.
Being the end of September in the northern hemisphere, the weather is slightly crap but nevertheless interesting and pleasant is some weird sort of way. Since I moved to the free and hanseatic city of Hamburg, Ive observed the people, the landscapes, the cityscapes and the culture. I thought Id start writing about Hamburg and my life here because one day maybe I wont be able to remember any longer or I wont care, or maybe I will just want to read my thoughts again who knows. The other reason is that I was supposed to stay here for a short time but here I am 3 years later in the same city and just as I start to be a Hamburger, Ive been told I may need to move again at the end of next year.
Its funny how the minute I found out I may need to leave again, I had the feeling I was already too attached to the place. Many of the streets I walked on have a story, sometimes a funny one, sometimes a neutral one and sometimes a sad one. Ive even noticed that I do tend to avoid the sad streets or the lunch break streets but I love to get lost into new street and find my way in a street that I know. I guess sometimes I have to walk the sad streets again and just like Marcel Proust described how he could remember things from the freshly baked scent of the little madeleines, I can remember some of the details of a street that I walked on with a particular feeling inside of me.
Id like to point out that the city of Hamburg just happens to find itself on the map of Germany, but this was quite possibly due to a few twisted historical events. Hamburg has its own life and character sometimes rude and gentle at the same time. Hamburg will remain a little hanseatic island of . . . Hamburgers . . .
Today I feel like looking back and give you my own written painting of this city. Im curious to know if you also see it this way and if not how do you see it but of course I cant just stop people and ask. Or can I? Seems like yesterday when I first landed here and took the S-Bahn (fast public transportation train) for the first time to go to Harburg Rathaus (town hall). Back then I was staring at the golden tree leaves fluttering in the wind and now here I am, my own golden hair fluttering in the wind as I look at the clouds.
I hope I wont keep being this cheesy in the remaining chapters but again there is no guarantee. Stopping thoughts is something that I have already done too many times and now its time to stop it and let them flow in a sort of Virginia Woolf sort of way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jul 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462865574

Book preview

1

Trip down memory lane ¹st day in Hamburg

After sitting on a plane for 25 hours I finally land at the Hamburg airport. Here I am in a different continent and they have autumn here. I should know this but somehow my chameleonic nature is preventing me from fully comprehending what is happening. After leaving Europe for Australia, I left Australia for Europe again and when I left Australia I had already become a Sydneysider so it wasn’t easy getting used to birch trees instead of red gums again.

It’s the 17th of September and I left Sydney on the 16th. It was sunny there, it’s cloudy here but otherwise the temperature is quite similar so no big change for me really. A colleague from work, Ulli picks me up. I have the feeling that we’ll become friends one day… anyway he’s completely different from the person I originally imagined. I imagined a shortish brown haired square-headed guy in a motorbike leather jacket but what I saw this morning was a really tall ginger haired oval-faced man in a wind jacket.

Yes he did send me a picture of himself and his daughter but sometimes you still imagine people in a different way until you actually see them.

I also instantly knew he would not be a predictable individual like so many in this world are but at the same time I felt this odd sense of security walking next to him.

It must be the tallness. He had already got a daily ticket for me as well and he would show me my temporary accommodation in Lindenallee. The stop was Christuskirche on the red subway line.

What’s striking in this city is that people in public transport don’t speak much, whether on the phone or with each other it’s always done in a soft voice. The amount of people in public transport and the noise sort of do not match.

I will only have the apartment for less than 2 weeks which is a shame because it’s lovely. I unpack my luggage. It still smells of Sydney and back then I just thought: well, well, I am going to live here now. Am I really going to go back in 1 year? Am I going to like it here?

Let’s just go back a couple of weeks; I was still in Sydney, in Elizabeth Bay to be precise, where I had just built a life for myself but was I really happy? Who knows, the truth is that when the company asked me if I wanted to go to Hamburg I grabbed the opportunity without hesitation.

Sometimes I have the impression that I don’t have strong feelings, just soft ones. Hard to explain but if you’ve read Albert Camus L’Étranger (The Stranger) then I would be a few notches down from that. Where this attitude comes from I have no idea and I do not go as far as Mersault, I wouldn’t even think of that. Just sometimes I have the feeling I can shake off most emotions and let them flow in a river of pain and pleasure as if they did not even belong to me. Maybe I simply shut them off and end up forgetting them.

That’s anyway what I felt when I arrived: almost indifferent. Here or there was not the issue. The issue was and still is: what do I want and more importantly who am I? I should probably ask a caterpillar. How do we make decisions and why? How do we rationally or irrationally choose one path instead of another and most importantly which path leads to self accomplishment?

Thank you for reading a snippet of my arrival notes. It’s funny but today 1st October 2010 I can say that it happened to me more than once to fuse the two cities in a funny way: I dreamt that Hamburg Straßen became Sydney lanes and avenues and so on… I even turned the corner from Maquarie’s Chair and saw the Hamburg Rathaus to my surprise. Even Red Leaf beach turned into the Elbstrand near St.Pauli. That was confusing especially when Macleay’s Street became Lokstedter Weg and the bus timetable showed both buses: the 311 as well as the 34.

Am I just going mad or is there a mad hatter’s tea-party in my head? I call it a national identity issue. Well if I have to be sincere I’ve always ad it. I was born in Northern Italy, never felt at home there (but I can tell by the smell of it if a wedge of Parmesan cheese is counterfeit or not), so I found other places to call home, I tried Grenoble, Ludwigsburg, Fort Worth, Sydney and now Hamburg. The only thing I miss from the place I was born is erbazzone (savoury square-shaped spinach tart). The two places that I consider to be my adopted homes are Sydney and now only recently Hamburg. That’s why I can never fully and confidently reply to the question where do you come from in an honest way… Well just now, I am coming from home or from the grocery shop or from training… to which people ask me where I was born, and I say to their disappointment that that bastard of a stork dropped me in the wrong place… Who I am is not my passports or my visas, who I am is me in