Hamburg & Gdansk, or rather, "Prostitutes and Day-Drinkers"

After a 5:40am sleepless arrival in Hamburg, I stumbled into the metro station, crossed my fingers, and hoped I was heading in the right direction. YUP. Big win. I finally reached my hostel approximately nine hours ahead of the official 3pm check in time (totally casual), so I stored my backpack, and headed toward the center of the city to find a source of caffeine. To my absolute horror, the Starbucks didn't open until 8am — how un-American. So with no other options, I decided to take a nap next to the homeless man in the square (just kidding, I was so delirious that I actually don't remember what I did). Next thing I knew, it was 8am and I strolled in to get my latte and breakfast sandwich. All for much cheaper than a simple coffee in Copenhagen; it makes spending eight bucks on breakfast much less painful.

One of the many artificial "beach" bars
down near the Hamburg port

One of the great things about Hamburg is that it feels like three completely different cities all rolled up into one. There's the section down by the port (Hamburg is one of the most important ports in Europe), the Reeperbahn (dubbed the "most sinful mile in the world"), and the old town.

Hmmm...

Hamburg is probably most famous for two things: being absolutely bombed to bits in World War II and being one of the most "sinful" places in the world. I think the latter is much more interesting (especially since quite a few of the places I've gone to thus have were destroyed during the War and it's really getting to be quite depressing...woe is me, right??). So this so-called "sinful mile" —Reeperbahn Street— is actually quite intense. I don't consider myself a religious person, but even I couldn't help walking down the street and thinking to myself, "damn, there be some sinful people up in Hamburg."

Basically, the whole place is clubs, casinos, and prostitutes. You may be thinking, "well, we have Vegas...." but no, no, Vegas has nothing on Hamburg. Nothing. This place is out of control. Every storefront is either a strip club, a sex shop, a brothel, or a McDonald's. A couple of particularly classy streets are gated and blocked off to women and men under eighteen. Wonder what's goin on back there...

Normally, this sort of thing would irk my inner raging feminist (and to some extent it does), but I do take heart in the fact that —for the most part— women have the option to work as prostitutes safely and legally. Germany legalized prostitution ten years ago to try to quell the rather rampant problem of trafficking women from Eastern Europe. For the most part, the law has been largely ineffective with very few women feeling compelled to willingly pay taxes on a job that they could also very easily keep under-wraps (I don't blame them...I mean they'd basically be paying taxes back to a large portion of their customer base). Also, it's still not the classiest thing in the world to write "prostitute" on your tax returns. Either way, there is some sort of shift toward moving these activities above-ground, taxing them, keeping women safe, controlling the spread of STIs, etc. That sounds pretty Danish to me, and after visiting Copenhagen, I'm pretty intent on being as liberal and happy as they are (my bleeding-blue self is thoroughly and blindly convinced that the two go hand-in-hand).

Capitalism at it's finest: 

Now, I'm no expert on prostitution — my sole exposure was Pretty Woman, and while I took that to be a fairly comprehensive and realistic picture of the world's oldest profession, I thought I might do a little more research beyond just googling Julia Roberts and Richard Gere outtakes. What I found was a little crazy. A 2009 estimate pegged the number of prostitutes working in Germany at FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND, with 93% being female, 3% transgender, and 4% male. Wanna know how many people live in Germany? 82 million. I'm not going to go into the math because a) I'm on vacation and numbers aren't welcome here, and b) the results are gross. But let's just say, pimps are very well paid in Germany.

Anyway, let's switch topics, shall we?  On to Poland. Because it sometimes takes me more than once to learn a lesson, I took another overnight bus from Hamburg to Poland. Once again I didn't sleep, but this time was at least a bit more eventful and culturally hilarious. At this point in my bus and train travel, I've ventured far enough east and stumbled long enough beyond the "high season" for tourism that most of the people travelling with me are locals, which is incredibly entertaining and awkward (a lot less people are speaking English in these areas).

Four Quarters Fountain, Gdansk
The city spent the equivalent of almost
$700,000 on this fountain....

So, first of all, I roll up to the Hamburg bus station neurotically early and have to wait for the bus to even arrive. At that point, I start the line to get on the bus. Twenty minutes later, I'm somehow at the back of the line. I really have no idea how this happened, but since then I've learned that Poland has notoriously awful queuing manners. Literally, at one point some girl leaned over my shoulder and started a conversation with the elderly woman in front of me, and thinking that they were mother and daughter, I let her step in front of me. Turns out they didn't know each-other at all. Apparently this is an actual tactic used to cut lines. Yes, the Polish are professional line-cutters. The queuing etiquette is so poor that they actual talk about it in tourist books. I'm not making this stuff up. Google it.

They offer some ridiculous explanation that this poor form is a relic of the communist days when people had to stand in line for food and that their place in line could determine whether or not their kids ate that day. Umm, I'm sorry, but communism fell in Poland over twenty years ago, so people need to calm down and not cut me in line. Anyway, the point is that after arriving at the bus station ridiculously early, I almost missed my bus because I apparently had lined up for the WRONG BUS to the same destination. So I sprinted through the bus station to catch the right one. After my mild panic was over and I had assured my seat, I settled in a little thankful that I didn't have to sit next to the girl who tricked me into letting her pass me in line. She didn't know it, but we were fighting and that could have been incredibly awkward.

Gdansk, Poland
Spatially efficient hostel...

All turned out just cheeky, however, because 10 minutes into the bus ride, the sound system turned on and they began to play a Polish Christmas movie. In August. Seriously, what's up with these darn Europeans insisting that Christmas starts in summer? **further references can be found in the "Venezia" post** By the time the movie was over, it was approaching midnight, and as I began to doze off, the bus driver played another movie. This time it was the Polish-dubbed version of Shawshank Redemption — you know, the one with beatings, multiple instances of male prison rape (now, that's one that you can't actually get pregnant from, Mr. Akin), and loads of cursing. Half the people on this bus had children with them so it wasn't a particularly tasteful choice (...but what do I know? I'm just a childless young adult).

Old town Gdansk

Additionally, they played the movie out-loud — no headphones necessary. So, basically, you had to watch the movie in all of it's gloriously violent depression. It was like they were saying, "we are quickly approaching Poland and we want to make sure that you're sufficiently depressed by the time we get there so that you can join in on the 10am shots of vodka with breakfast." I'm on to them.

Neptune Fountain, Gdansk

Hilariously enough, when I arrived at 6am in the Gdansk bus station, I did actually pass various bars and cafes that were still open (or perhaps just opening??) that were filled with customers eating omelettes and drinking beer."Beer for breakfast" has never felt so right.