Day Tripper

I am not, by nature, a day tripper. But I am poor enough and picky enough to have a vested interest in not spending $30 on a lumpy bed in a loud hostel dorm five minutes from the central train station, so I only spent one day in Hamburg. And, in the interest of making the most of my time there, I only spent a few hours of that traipsing down memory lane (who knew that was situated along the Elbe river?). For reference, I actually lived just outside of Hamburg proper, for most of my exchange year in a village called Hittfeld (which belonged, technically, to Hamburg's older but more obscure neighbor Harburg), and later in the town of Jesteburg. But of all those dots on a map, the only one to offer German as a second language at the continuing education school (Volkshochschule) was Hamburg, so I spent quite a bit of time in the city.
It's hard to believe it was nearly seven years ago that I arrived in Hamburg. Not much has changed there. Of course, I didn't spend most of my free city time in dynamic parts of town. I mostly hung out in the central shopping/pedestrian area between the central train station and the harbor. I was happy to discover that even after all this time, the old fish stand where I used to eat lunch at least once a week is still selling paper cones full of heart attack. Their prices have gone up (fish and chips with remoulade used to cost 5 marks), but it tastes about the same (greasy, salty, tinged with guilt).
Hamburg seems to have gotten wealthier since I lived there. At least, the bums and junkies are fewer and farther between around the train station, and the trash cans are all new (shinier and emptier than the ones in Berlin). The subways are still old enough to just about be stylishly retro, but they're all outfitted with hi-tech, graffiti-free TVs which are cute miniatures of the billboard sized TVs on the actual station walls. Of course, they still haven't installed elevators or escalators in half the train stations, but maybe Hamburg's disabled have also gotten wealthier, wealthy enough to not have to use public transportation.
I spent the afternoon with my friend Annika (a teacher in Berlin) who was spending a weekend at home and wanted to show me where she grew up. Her father is a pastor (which you'd never know from hanging out with her), so she did most of her growing up in and around his church. Her mother made us asparagus and after stopping by her mom's housekeeper's place to see some puppies (and getting roped into cake, champagne, and coffee - the housekeeper is a very determined woman), Annika and I went to a different part of town so I could meet her childhood friend Nina. Nina has a little shop where she sells high-end baby accessories. She makes Annika doubt the wisdom of becoming a teacher, because Nina never takes work home with her and only rarely has to deal with disobedient children, and, since Heidi Klum bought two of her highest-end strollers (one for Berlin and one for L.A.) and then talked about them in some interview, Nina has had plenty of money.
At the end of the day, I barely made my train. Again, I'm just not designed for day trips. But this is the difficulty with moving around (especially between countries): no matter where you live, you'll want to visit your old city, although you'll also want to go see new places, which you might like enough to consider living in someday, spreading yourself (and your time, and your resources) thinner and thinner all the time. Sometimes I think it's probably better to just stay home.