Travels With My Shoes

Hamburg.

My lack of German caused me to get off at the wrong station in Hamburg (but I was on the right train and had all bags) and so miss my pick-up connection with Martin Lahnstein, the brother of my Baltimore friend Barbara Lahnstein, who owns Neopol Smokery in the Belvedere Square Marketplace.
After that was sorted, we went to the Hamburg Work Museum Museum der Arbeit where Martin works as a printer. He printed up some simple but mysterious cards for De Paso, that I distribute to a select group.

The following day we road bicycles and due to my balance having deteriorated from 2 years ago, I fell off not once -but twice!!! In spite of that, we had a great ride all over Hamburg and to the Strand, the city beach on the Elbe river, which, like all city beaches, has a great variety of people and children, no body-fashion parade. At a restaurant called Strand Perle I did some scribbling–sketches and Martin took a picture of the subject and the sketch.

We cycled about 20 kilometres, got a bit lost going through a graveyard and I almost tumbled off for the third time right before the end, but we ended up back at Walburgstrasse 22 (Martin’s flat) where I asked for some Schnapps -Thank you very much.
Next day we took a road trip to the Nolde Museum in Seebull, close to Denmark. The museum building was a retrofit of Nolde’s house and the paintings were crowded into a few rooms. In the basement was the famous “Crucifixion” that the Nazi’s included in the Entartete Kunst, the exhibit that condemned radical art in Germany show of 1937 in Munich, in spite of the fact that Nolde was a card carrying Nazi and a diehard racist. Anyway the painting was ghastly. Most of the work, except some luminous gouache landscapes, was unappealing to me -plus there was no ventilation, and loads of people were crushing through due to a grey day. The garden looked bedraggled, none of the purple irises that inspired his beautiful floral water colours, or masses of poppies.

We went to the North Sea coast at Niebull, it was high tide, meaning the water was over the cement walkway, almost upto the grass on which small rentable bathing ‘cabinets’ were dotted (these looked very 19th century to me). As we walked to get a fresh sea food sandwich I was stung by a big wasp, still had my shoes off from the sea…YOUCH. The sandwich people cut some fresh onion for my foot and it DID work to stop the swelling and soreness.

Later we stopped and walked up a bank to see to a system of wetland management, how the sea is kept off the flat grazing land. It was a lovely day by then and over the bank there were suddenly tons of sheep with the sea held in check by lines of wood going out into the distance. It was a beautiful sight.

The next day I asked Martin if we could walk not cycle! He agreed. We went to an exhibit at the Bucerius Kunst Forum called “Edward Hopper and his Times.” Included were the usual suspects but it was a good exhibition and space -and a relief after the claustrophobia of the Nolde Museum!
Martin invited me to Hamburg 2 years ago. I had discovered that Brahms had been born there, in a slum, and wanted to investigate. We had a great time then cycling Hamburg, looking for old shoes, and I enjoyed his old quiet flat and balcony overlooking a serene garden with huge old trees and empty chairs. This visit, except for my shameful bicycle performance, was just as interesting and pleasant. Mostly when we stopped out came my small notebook for sketch ‘n scribblin,

Martin, who is very unobtrusive, waited patiently. I have a lot of Hamburgers in my book. Finally, I have not mentioned how good the food was, home –cooked or out, mmm…pickled herring!!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 6:50 pm