Hamburger Elegies The following article was written during a train ride on 30 April 2008 is about my stay in Germany and more real-time extension for summing up his overall view of ...
I sit on the train from Bremen to Hamburg. The way I've done in the past 2 months almost daily. I am forced to go with the so-called Metronome train (= stroller). Reason: a woman, a "Gutmenschin", by bicycle (yes, there's well up here too, and how! Bicycles and blocked the way, do-gooders) me the way, what I was leaving the ICE in their faces. "Oh, they wanted to ICE! Do you want to Hamburg? Just take the metronome here! "The fact that the latter arrives 40 minutes later in Hamburg, playing in its casual world of course does not matter. But in my! Item, now at least I have time, some experiences and insights, especially my time to write down in northern Germany. Here I will limit myself to those characteristics, which of my existing mainly from Swiss readership should not necessarily be known. From the above mentioned reason could be the whole of a slightly frustrated Attitude carried out.
Let's Stay in the trains. Here in Germany there is unknown to us form the 2-tier society. You can not just a ticket (or subscription) from Bremen to Hamburg solve. The crucial question here is "to ICE or not to ICE?". Of course it is more expensive with ICE, but I have regretted it for a second to be able to drive my subscription more expensive routes in the premier class of the Deutsche Bahn (2nd class here but of course). Although the difference in a single trip only makes up about 3 €, there are worlds between a ride on the ICE or the metronome. Here are the comfortable seats in modern cars, in which one even at peak times will always find a seat with table. There, the metronome-crowded trains with compartments sometimes with food waste, vomit, spilled beer and a lot of garbage come up. The passengers of the metronome: Büetzer, pubescent teens, shouting blasphemous elderly German women, an advocate who to her seat as if there were no tomorrow, young men with immigrant background and an interior turned aggression - much of what sucks, stop. If this heterogeneous passenger stock and unfortunately all the other riders not just the highlights from their crappy little world is the best verbal, it is usually out of eating: Döner, Mac Donald's, Chicken Curry, mainly as penetrating odor and the main thing seems to smack as loud here to be the motto.
Okay, I think that's enough and it should be clear why I preferred the ICE to the metronome ... Another three final comments to the DB: Yes, there are clearly more and more delays than in the SBB, so, the Damocles sword of the strike here hovers constantly over the stations and - in the end but still something nice - the inspectors in the DB are female, according to my experience here in the majority, young and handsome. This is not an ironic attempt at the German Train but to leave in a good hair, but the truth! Really! So, ready to train, now!
What's up here else other than us? Besides the endless flat landscape and the endless rainy, windy, rough, named "North German" weather? If we still have to remain in the landscape, then the Red-Green Schroeder era here hundreds and hundreds of amazing monuments placed great: the wind power plants. They are simply everywhere you look in the landscape outside the towns. Everywhere ...
to the people, according to Wikipedia, it should still be more than 3 million who speak Low German. I is not one of them met - I'm probably failed once again to my urbanity. I have only read the dialect in each case in the morning jogging: "Kok times wedder s" (! Look back over) stood, exited the allotment system Westerwald ... Still, funny linguistic features found above. Saturday is called here Saturday for example. Okay, maybe we knew already, but we also knew that not even on the front pages of daily newspapers on Saturday, but on Saturday the speech? I did not. Also interesting: "Moin" just say up here each and everyone, not just down to earth cliché Friesen from Hauke-sharks-Koog! Also in that respect I was wound wrong, I did think "Moin!" hot translated something like "good morning". No way, people greet each other in the evening so and although young and old, cool and uncool, etc ... How likely everywhere in Germany appears in young people here is the official salutation "Hey, old age ..." being, whether male or female, and a common saying is: "Old Swede", which will be called something like "My goodness" ...
interesting of the road traffic. At Hamburg's incredible density of Porsche Carreras, Z4S BMW, Mercedes SL convertibles and the like can be seen not in any case that to be paid in this country significantly lower wages than in Switzerland. The Germans travel a lot and fast, the threshold for the horn is substantially lower than ours (okay, still significantly higher than in southern Italy!). More dangerous than the cars but the bikes, of which there are lots in town. The trails are extremely numerous and run in the rule directly on the sidewalks, which made me soon come to the conclusion that here the probability of being hit by a bicycle, much higher than that of a car to fall victim to. The bikes persist in fact incredibly aggressive and sometimes arrogant in their ways, which all other deferred as easily from ordinary sidewalks are. Discipline prevails at the traffic lights: the rare pedestrians scurrying for the red light more quickly on the road. It seems as if these were the remains of the Prussian authorities faith shine through here.
My metronome has happened just the agglomeration of Hamburg-Harburg railway station, which means that I will arrive in a few minutes in Hamburg. There would be much, much more to tell, but it will have my schedule that I have for this little story (which, the world does not need them) do not spend more than this one train ride.
I close with another parody that I've learned above:
Tschüssikowsky!