Hamburg

After two weeks in the lovely city of Hamburg it is high time that we put aside some preconceptions. For example that Germans are not friendly or that Germans work with clockwork precision or that Germans have time for nothing but their work. It’s all untrue.

In this city I have been met, wherever I have gone, with nothing but friendliness. Whether in the underground and suburban trains or the city busses, in bakeries on the main streets or in the little cafés on cobbled lanes – the people of Hamburg always do everything they can to make me, as a guest, feel welcome here. They immediately speak English with me, they invite me places, they help me find my way around.

I also discovered very soon that there is more to life in Hamburg than just jobs and work. After work, people meet in cafés, bars, and restaurants and talk for hours. The Hamburgers are pretty stubborn about that. Yesterday, for example, we sat for three hours in a tavern: starter, main course, dessert. The friendly waiter repeatedly asked us if everything was okay, whether we needed anything else. In my home city of Hyderabad, after one hour at the latest the waiter would have had us understand that it was time for us to leave and make room for the horde of waiting guests who would have been casting unfriendly glances our way.

As for the clockwork: four days after the clocks were changed, the clock in my hotel and the one on the street in front of it were still running on winter time. Hence, the preconception about precision is also simply untrue.