I had been roaming the streets of Hamburg for a few hours and was heading back to my rented room to nap for a few hours before taking the city by night. Of the two people I knew in Hamburg, one was at a music festival and the other working in a bar, so my plan consisted of heading to said bar and hoping to meet some people there.
But life happens while you go from here to there. As I was walking to the metro platform to head home, I heard someone say the word “American” in American English.
Going on my theory of stranger-meeting almost always turning out in a positive way, I asked, “You guys from the States?”
They were a guy and a girl, both in their early 20s. I would include some literary description of their appearances, but we have this amazing word-saving thing called the photograph.
Kim and Mike in their Hamburg apartment.
“I’m German,” the girl said to me, “but my husband is from California.”
They asked me what I was up to, and I told them I’d been sightseeing and was going to rest for a bit before Saturday night in Hamburg.
“Are you by yourself?” the girl asked.
“You’re never by yourself when you travel,” I told her, “but … kinda.”
He followed up. “Do you have any plans?”
“Well … no … not really.”
“Ok,” she said, “you’re coming out with us tonight.”
They accompanied me to where I was staying so I could drop off my backpack and change into evening attire, and then we went to their apartment to relax and have a couple drinks before going out. All of a sudden, my night had transformed.
It pays to say hi to people.
Now, about Mike and Kim: He’s from San Diego, and she’s from Hamburg. They met in California when she was an au pair. She actually met his parents before she met him — the way she tells it, his mom met her and said, “Uh oh. I can already see my little German grandkids running around.”
“You have boys?” Kim had asked her.
“Three.”
The first time she saw Mike, she had a crush on him, and when he met her, the feeling was mutual. At a certain point, things became serious, and they had to deal with the very real obstacle of how to maintain a relationship that would have to span two continents if it were to survive. They went through stretches of months at a time without seeing each other, but they found a way to keep the fire burning.
“You have Skype,” Kim said. “You have camera sex!”
We all laughed, and I reflected on how vital technology has become in maintaining long-distance relationships.
Possibly what solidified their future as much as anything else was a snowboarding accident that left Mike in a coma for three days. The doctors told Kim that he might not remember her when he awoke.
But he did, and he found her by his side.
“I thought about how selfish I had been,” Mike told me, “asking her to move to my country, when I was done school and she still had to go to school, and she knew my language and culture and I didn’t know hers.” The accident made him realize that he would have to give as much as she was if the relationship was going to work. “Marriage is all about 50-50,” he said to me later.
“You see people getting together like this, but it’s only in movies,” Kim said. For both of them, living the storybook has been a very cool thing.
In their home, we discussed differences between the two cultures. Mike said that he thinks the schools in Germany are much better than in America and has been impressed by how Germany rebuilt itself after World War II. He said that some people take advantage of the welfare system, but that the universal healthcare system is phenomenal.
Mike and I out in Hamburg.
He also talked about something that I have been noticing more and more during my travels: “A lot of people see America as a country that’s more free of mind, but in a lot of ways we are much more repressed than they are here.”
Some of the things we discussed were the drinking age of 18 and the difference in how bars in Europe often close at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., as opposed to the norm of 2:00 back home. We both agreed that the Europeans learn to party more responsibly in part because they have more hours to do so. This results in much less of a binge drinking culture, and therefore their judgment is less impaired when it comes time to find a way home. And because of the lowered drinking age and less severe drug laws, people experiment in a culture that fosters doing so in a way that allows the individuals to learn life lessons sooner.
“Over here,” Mike said, “people think that Americans are free to do what they want, but actually (Europeans) are more free to do what they want when they’re young, and because of that they’re more mature.”
I have seen both sides of this coin, and I have met plenty of immature Europeans. These views only apply to the sections of Europe that Mike and I have visited, and I hesitate to over-generalize. Overall, though, I do feel that the nightlife here is done in a much safer and more responsible way than it is back home. Thinking back to high school and college, there were so many occasions when people made incredibly stupid decisions that the youth in Europe do not seem to make nearly as much.
So it is interesting when my parents and everyone else send me messages to be careful.
“I’m like, ‘I feel safer here,’” I told Mike and Kim. “Nobody has guns!”
Anyway, they introduced me to some Hamburg rap — Hamburg hip-hop is a local point of pride, and rightly so. I can’t understand the words, but there are some serious beats.
Then they told me that the Beatles got started in Hamburg, and that we could go to bars where they used to play. Mike showed me a quote by John Lennon: “I might have born in Liverpool — but I grew up in Hamburg.”
Kim with a lady who was out in the middle of the Reeperbahn madness, totally in her element.
We went to the Reeperbahn, which is the major Hamburg bar area, which has some elements of Las Vegas and the feel of a cool college town. We hit up Kaiserkeller, which was one of the places the Beatles played the most (the Wikipedia article linked above is worth a read if you’re a Fab Four fan). Downstairs, Kaiserkeller had a room dedicated to the group, which newspaper clippings under the floor.
We Can Work It Out.
Ringo baby.
Later, we visited my friend Caro at her bar, and they played the song “You Never Can Tell” immortalized in the movie Pulp Fiction. We danced, and the song resonated as a description of Mike and Kim’s relationship.
At one point in the night, I scribbled in my notebook: “Just saw Mike and Kim dance together. Some of the best communication between human beings I have ever seen. If they ever have problems understanding each other, all they have to do is dance together. A tremendous blessing.”
As all young married couples do, they will encounter their share of hardships along the way. When Kim wanted to go home at about 4:00 and leave Mike to stay out with me, it was the first time they had ever separated during a Hamburg night. There are many things they will have to figure out during their journey together — how to split time between two continents certainly among them — but they strike me as two people who have enough passion for each other to overcome many difficulties. Put another way: There are some pictures of them that are a bit too … fiery … to post in this space. I hope that fire never leaves them, and that they have a wonderful life together.
Mike and I waited until 6:00, when we headed with some native Hamburgers (was dying to use that all post) to the famous fish market, which was the last Hamburg “Must Do” on my list. Only open Sunday mornings, they serve fresh fish by the shipyards in the harbor. The fish was delicious, as was the Hamburg sunrise.
Parting ways, I wished Mike from San Diego the best as he headed home to his wife from Hamburg. And as I walked back to my place to sleep for two hours before my train to Paris, a familiar tune came to my mind.
It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the madamoiselle
And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell,
“C’est la vie”, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
——”You Never Can Tell” by Chuck Berry
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