8 Things I Hate about Hamburg

There is a saying in Germany pointing out that there is no one who could say from the bottom of his heart he likes Berlin and Hamburg likewise. To my mind this is wrong. A lot better would be: The people who like Hamburg never got to know Berlin. Seriously, from all million-inhabitants-metropolises in Germany; Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne (from time to time), Hamburg definitely is the most disappointing travel destination. And I’ll give you 8 reasons why is that.

1. Is this beer or lemonade?

There are about 5000 sorts of beer in Germany. Two of them come from Hamburg: Holsten and Astra. Let´s say they aren’t amongst the top 1000. And there is this thing to mix up beer with lemonade, called  “Alster”, like the artificial lake in the city center. To my mind the same way you shouldn’t swim in the Alster you shouldn’t mix lemonade with beer.

2. Sightsearching

Let’s see what Hamburg’s tourism incoming points out as highlights:

Beatlemania

- the harbor quarters (well, it’s a habour in the end…)

- the hamburg philharmonic hall (not built yet)

- Reeperbahn (Hamburg’s red-light district. There is lots of party going on, but Amsterdam is a lot cooler though)

- Michel (a church, that is just a church in the end. It’s the same with the town hall by the way.)

So nothing special over there. Of course, there are a few exceptions, like for the Kaiserkeller (where the Beatles started their carrer), the Unilever building in the harbour and some locations at Reeperbahn. In comparison to the other big cities in Germany quiet nothing indeed.

3. The clouds are hamburg's sun

Very expensive flats in hamburg and clouds

The northern part of Germany isn’t known for it's good weather. A friend of mine summarized it quiet well when she woke up in the morning, watched out of the window, saw the cloudy sky and said: I think, we already reached today’s grey maximum (Ich denke, wir haben den Tagesgrauwert erreicht).

4. Where is the party again?

When you look into the party reviews in Berlin journal’s the pages are crowded with what you can do for having fun at night. In Hamburg it’s not about pages, it’s about lines. Although there are some cool places to be (Uebel und Gefährlich, China Lounge f.e.) you would've problems in doing some serious club-hopping.

5. Wanted: Championship

The hamburgs (or even more funny: hamburger as they are called in Germany*g) love their football teams HSV and St. Pauli. But St. Pauli never won the championship, and the last time HSV got the trophy was centuries ago. So what’s the excitement all about?

6. No Kebab at night

Hamburg-the city that sleeps at night. The metro closes at 11.30 pm during the week and as already mentioned the party scene is not that developed. If you’re not too drunk you would not want to go to Reeperbahn after 3 am. But where to head then? And even more serious: Where to get something to eat then? After my last party in hamburg I needed hours to get to my hotel. And doesn’t matter where I changed the tram, I couldn’t find any open restaurant at all.

7. Come on, grow up

Hamurg-musical city. Funny to promote the city like that with a zero-variety of musicals. There are three Disney-related movie/musical adaptions going on at the moment: Lion king, Tarzan and Sister Act. Nice, but definitely not classy. Another two facts were kind of interesting to me:

A Hamburg-inhabitant-stereotype

Hamburg’s “cathedral” (Dom) is a funfair in the end. And smoking is officially prohibited but neither the people nor the establishments care.  I mean, it isn’t  difficult to install proper aircon, is it? Why do all cities can do it, but Hamburg not?

8. People from Hamburg

They say that people from the northern part of Germany are very reserved. But my stay in hamburg taught me, that hamburgs are really nice guys. We were helped without asking and got to know some really cool people. So this is my 8^th hate fact: I can’t write anything bad about people from hamburg!

**8 Dinge, die ich an Hamburg hasse: das Bier, die fehlenden Sehenswürdigkeiten, das Wetter, die nicht wirklich große Partyszene und somit auch ein Nicht-Angebot an Nach-Feier-Fast-Food, der Trouble um die Hamburger Fußballvereine, die magere Auswahl an guten Musicals trotz der Bezeichnung "Musical City" und dass ich nichts über die reservierten Hamburger schreiben kann. Die sind nämlich cool und können ja nun nix für ihre Stadt;)**

**Mehr Szene-Infos aus Hamburg von mir gibt es überigens auf ThreeWords**