Jun 04
26
Hamburg's Night Out - A Flâneurian Experience
Out of boringness and depression state of mind and heart, me and a couple of friends spontaneously went to Hamburg yesterday. We went there with a car (Hamburg is less than an hour by car from Lübeck) and arrived around 8.30pm under drizzling rain.
We went to a Pakistani restaurant somewhere around Hamburg Altona and there we were joined by two other friends and together we enjoyed a very good dinner. It was an awesome dinner, well, it basically just about my taste of culinary, lots of spices and stuff.
We finished dinner around 11pm so we decided to get a taste of the urban’s night life since we’ve been living in Lübeck for a while (Well, Lübeck itself is urban but compare to Hamburg, it’s just different, big different). So we went to Reeperbahn, the place for night life in Hamburg.
It was a crazy experience =). As we walked down the street we’ve seen a lot (I really do mean a lot) of people walking around (it’s already midnight), almost all the store were still open and not to mention a lot of people running and driving around waving Greece’s flag (because Greece just beat France in the Euro 2004 soccer championship). After been a while living in the calm Lübeck, finding myself in the middle of a busy night life really give me some certain energy. I was growing up in a very big city, life is never quiet in Jakarta, so it was fantastic just walking around surrounding by people and feel the vibe, feel the energy flow from the people and feel those energy and vibe recharge every cell inside me.
To my surprise there are a lot of, I really hate to use this word because I found this word really degrading them as human =(, prostitutes standing at the sidewalk and they really offering themself to the people that were walking around, including us. Some of them are really nice, good looking girl and even all of my friends (one German, one Canadian and one Indian) are quite surprise also to find that those girl are, again I hate to say this, selling themselves for money (or else, who am I to judge?). Anyway, it was a quite shocking experience to find out about the people that involve in the transaction of flesh…
So yeah, the visit to Reeperbahn is not complete without visiting the red light area, right? The transaction of pleasure of the flesh, as I always said, is always a part of human civilization since the beginning. Well, it’s not Amsterdam, but still walking down the red light district is always give me some chill. Window shopping have a different meaning in the red light district. As a person that always value people by their mind and intellegence I guess I could never understand why people can just use their body and looks to make other people appreciate them. Not that I am not enjoying looking at good looking girl but still this spectacle really not so easy understandable for me.
After we finished our strolling at the red light district, we stopped by at a bar to get a drink. Just to chill out a little bit and try to catch a second wind. Then we continue our strolling around this city part again. “After one drink, red light disctrict looks quite different, eh” “after just one beer, everything changes!” (Correction was made according to Greg - see comments #2), that was our quote of the night =).
The next stop is a small bar/discotheque at the forgot the name of the street. To be honest, we were just looking for some warm place to stand or sit because the weather was really cold and wet. There we were just watching people dancing around… But the next surprise is quite, well, surprising. As we stand there watching people went by suddenly there were two girls wearing two pieces bikini dancing at the bar table! OK, that was a regular bar, ordinary one, but even in the ordinary bar that kind of show was presented in front of public so I can not imagine what happened inside the-not-so-ordinary place or night life entertainment that put a really obscene signage. Not that I don’t want to find out but I don’t think my brain and sense could digest it right away.
So after around 15 minutes we decided to walk out for fresh air and outside we stop by to eat french fries. We’ve met a couple of cougars(1) there but since they are not threatening us grin, we just leave them alone. After satisfied our hunger we decided it’s time to go back to Lübeck, it’s almost 3am.
We arrived back at Lübeck around 4am then we just went to our home because we are so damn tired… What a night… Being a flâneur is more entertaining than becoming a part of the city life itself. We just watch, enjoy the spectacle and inhale the vibe and energy that were created by other people.
It was an enjoyable experience…
Note: (1) cougar is a nickname for single woman above 40 who are preying on young(er) men.
4 Comments
Actually the line of the night was, “after just one beer, everything changes!”
Great evening!
I also liked r.u.a.(real urban a..), well worth it.
It’s very interesting that your flaneur-link leads to Giles Peaker’s “Reading the ruins”! Giles was my tutor at Derby University :)
iin @ June 26, 2004 10:56 PM
wah..akhirnya sempat jalan2 juga mas avi ke hamburg..tinggal kapan ke selatan nih?