09.04.2013

One of the most thrilling moments of my school career happend at the field excursion Hamburg in 2011. Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany with almost 2 million inhabitants. It's definitely worth visiting it as it has a great harbour and lots of sightseeings e.g. the 'Reeperbahn'. So it's no wonder that many rich and famous decide to make their home in Hamburg. Even though that city is more than 600 km off the most wonderful federal state in the world (of course I think of Bavaria  ) no one of my classmates wanted to join the trip to the alternative cities Strasbourg and Dresden. So there was quite a fight to be one of the lucky ones to get a ticket to Hamburg and fortunately I was one of the winners. Thank God, in Germany there is this comfortable high-tech train ICE so that we got some relaxed hours while the train ride.


Well, not everyone had such a fun at the ride... One guy (I won't bespeak his name ) tried to empty a barrel of beer on his own. Actually he was not that successful, so he ended up at that high tech toilets in the train and spent here some hours. Our teacher who was responsible for our behaviour and safty didn't notice a thing even though he sat right next to that guy in the train, as he spent the duration of the ride sleeping. So my shit-faced classmate was lucky all the same since he was not caught by the teacher. Of course to us this happening was enormously entertaining and the first highlight of the trip. By the way, this nice guy at the picture is not the booze fighter I've mentioned.


Arrived at the central railway station of Hamburg we experienced the first dangerous situation of the trip. First of all I have to mention that my classmates and me wore special shirts that I had designed for that trip. It shows one skull and crossbones which is the the most typical symbol of the cult soccer club and district St. Pauli. Well, I have to admit that it was probably kind of provoking to some inhabitants of Hamburg as I painted the originally white skull to a blue and wihite colored lozenge-shaped decorated one and added the text "St Gaudi - gscheid fayern kinna nur mia Bayern" (it means translated that people coming from Bavaria are superior to those ones from Hamburg especially in terms of partying) which slightly teases the inhabitants of Hamburg. 
Back to the story: At the station one badass saw our shirts and approached us quickly shouting things like what the fuck we think we are. However luckily we were faster than this guy and disappeared in the crowd. The consequence was that on the following days almost nobody wore that nice shirt again but for sure it was the better desicion to stop provocative such badasses who probably get violent.


The following days were quite recreational and nice. Our teacher did not want to do so much activities with us so we got enough time to experience the city. One evening there was another remarkable incident. We were just walking along the shopping street when two Chinese people stopped us in order to take a photo of us. Myself, I took a photo of the astonishing event (you can see it on the left). We do not know why that guys insisted on taking that picture... either they took us for famous people or they just wanted to confirm the cliché that Chinese people take photos of anything...  


On Wednesday we got into a predicament for the second time. In the evening we wanted to get to know the nightlife of Hamburg though we were not very successful at finding a place to party as most of us were just 17 years old and did not have a chance to enter the clubs. So we were walking desperately around not knowing what to do when we heard a noicy bang behind us. We turned over and what we saw was kind of unbelievable... About 10 masked hooligans were standing 15 meters away from us who had just damaged one display window. Blessedly, that hooligans did not care about us and ran away as the the sirens of a cop car were ringing. We were kind of glad that nobody of our group wore that provocative shirt this day, othervise that evening could have had another ending... The picture on the left shows the damaged window.

Of course there were so much more experiences, incidents and stories I could write about, but true to the motto 'what happens in Hamburg stays in Hamburg' I better draw a veil of silence over some very funny moments...