Random moments from a stag weekend in Hamburg
As you’d expect from spending two nights in the biggest non-capital city in the European Union, traipsing up and down the area where the Beatles honed their gig-playing craft while the city celebrates its’ Harbour birthday, there were one or two interesting moments and observations to be had. To wit:
- The unforgettable sight of a woman. In a wheelchair. Vomiting. If she wasn’t sitting on her arse, I’d say she was drunk off it. At least before dodging the projectile vomit she emitted on the side of the road while slumped over.
- Having a gorgeous two-course Portuguese seafood lunch for just six euros. This is before the drinking started in earnest and I couldn’t taste anything.
- The smell of German sausages. Love it.
- Watching football team St. Pauli playing a key match, and observing that sitting on a wooden bench in the outdoors watching a team you’ve never heard or seen of before, is somehow more atmospheric than sitting with 70,000 Welsh football fans at the Millennium Stadium watching Wales beat Italy. Although both times I missed the instant replay that you at least get on television.
- At one moment, there was a adapted Mexican crowd wave involving some kind of hand gesture. In trying to mimic said hand gesture for practise reasons, I got rather odd looks from the crowd around me before my compatriots told me to sit down. Quite possibly because my hand gesture was somehow being mistaken for a Hitler salute - or maybe they were being all “Don’t Mention the War!” at me.
- Watching The Noisettes playing in a crowded, hot, steamy basement rock club. While I’m sitting on a comfortable bar stool sweating away and wishing I was fifteen years younger and my legs weren’t hurting so much. At this point in the evening, I am well off the taste of beer.
- Ending up in a Filipino karaoke bar at 5am, where the resident German singer knows enough tagalog to sing a few songs. Watching the stag murder a song or two. Video footage on request!
- Walking home with some old school friends, and standing at 5.30am on a street corner having a good-humoured argument on what constitutes a blog, and whether any old diary content could be repurposed into a blog. I say it can.
- The final day, and my body has just given up on me. My entire lower body is screaming. My upper body and head is fine, oddly. At least until we wonder down to the harbour and watch people hanging upside down on a fairground ride.
And yes, Eddie Izzard fans, people from Hamburg are apparently called Hamburgers. And a doughnut does seem to be called a Berliner.
Originally published at almost witty. You can comment here or there.