Hamburg, Germany, Europe

Today was a strange day. I left my hostel in Berlin, got on my bus and ended up in Hamburg at 1:30pm. I met a nice Swiss girl on the bus named Laura and we were both starving when we got to Hamburg, so we grabbed a bite to eat. It was a good chat with another traveller who has lived in Australia and America too. She was meeting a friend here and I had to find my hostel so we split up and I had a 10 minute walk to my hostel. It was not a nice walk.

For some reason, homeless drunks always hang out at bus and train stations. I don’t know what is there for them, but there are always lots of them around. So walking through this area to my hostel was a bit uncomfortable, but it was fine, nothing happened. I checked into my hostel and I was the first one in my six bed dorm room. This is always good because you have your choice of bed and lockers and whatnot. I put my valuables in my locker, put a padlock on it and went downstairs to the lobby to watch the French Open tennis final. I came back up a couple hours later and there were two guys asleep in the room (at about 6pm), and my locker had been broken into. My broken padlock was sitting in my locker, but all my things were still in there as well. I don’t know why someone would break into a locker and then not take anything, but I was happy to see that my things were all still there.

It was really uncomfortable for me though because I knew it was one of these two guys who were asleep in my room. I didn’t know what to do. There was a pretty good chance they couldn’t speak English, and nothing was actually missing, so there would be nothing to be gained from a confrontation. I went downstairs in the hostel and rented a bigger lock and put that on my locker. I also took my laptop, tablet, and American passport out of the locker and put it in the safe at reception. It’s just a shame that I had to do that because you shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like that.

I left the hostel and found Hard Rock Cafe, of course, and met my friend Stefan there. He is another guy I met in Israel, and he lives here in Hamburg. It was good to catch up with him and enjoy another meal at my 39th HRC. I have been to quite a few of them recently, but I think that could be my last one for a while. I am heading south and I’m not sure there are a lot in my path I haven’t already visited. It was really good to catch up with Stefan. We hung out at the Hard Rock until almost 11pm and then I headed back to the hostel. I wanted to see if my locker was intact this time.

I got back and my room is full, but there is only one guy here and asleep. So far, I’ve not been very impressed with Hamburg. Of course it was nice to see my friend, but all that I’ve seen has just been a very industrial city with a massive port. It’s not as beautiful as I was picturing it to be, but hopefully I can see a bit more tomorrow. I’m going to try to get to bed early, but I have a feeling that these guys who were napping at 6pm will be coming in pretty late. Hopefully they’ll have some common courtesy, but something tells me that won’t be the case.