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º July 5th - July 10th 2001

NB: standard reverse chronological order re-reversed for sanity
Friday Hamburg - day one
Saturday Hamburg - day two
Sunday Hamburg - day three
Monday Hamburg - day four
Tuesday Hamburg - day five

To compare and contrast (plus links) see also: David at Swish Cottage

º Thursday 5th July 2001

My first flight with a discount airline went smoothly enough, despite the predictable half hour delay: at 11am I was woken by David, phoning to ask if I'd packed yet, at 1pm I was meeting him and Andy at Liverpool Street, by 4pm we'd booked in at Stansted and at 6pm we were circling over Hamburg.

Well, not Hamburg actually, but fairly close: Ryanair flies into Lübeck, which is an hour or so's coach ride from the city centre. In London, that would mean a depressing trek through inner city suburbs but here the ride started amongst forests, lakes and farmland and stayed that way for most of the trip: Hamburg is not London.

The coach deposited us behind the Hauptbahnhof and we walked the short distance to the hotel, trundling Andy's wheely suitcase behind us past sex-shops, street-walkers and guest-workers to Pulverteich and the Hotel Königshof - it was already clear that the St. Georg was not Hamburg's Mayfair, which suited us just fine.

Rainbow flags were everywhere, not least in Pulverteich itself; the hotel turned out to have not one but three gay bars immediately opposite it, a gay sauna further up the street, and a tranny bar next door (where a delicate row of seated orientals yodelled a welcoming 'herro!' as we passed.)

The Königshof is lovely, with welcoming but far from intrusive staff, and décor that treads a fine line between stylish and camp (they must spend a fortune at the florists.)

My single room had a huge bed, a small television and a shower/toilet just across the corridor - very good value at around £30 a night. It also looked straight down onto the entrance to the gay-clubs opposite, of which more later.

After a quick shower, we set out to explore the local gay scene equipped with a variety of free maps. Several things became clear in fairly short order:

- We were spoilt by coming from London, arguably the gay capital of Europe: the bars we first ventured into had a distinctly provincial feel with just a handful of middle-aged men chatting at the bar.

- Despite the German reputation for industriousness, night-life starts late: the bars we popped our heads into were almost empty even at ten o'clock.

- The maps only advertised the location of their advertisers: we never did find the comprehensive coverage that we get in London from magazines like Boyz.

- Beer is cheap: in London we pay about £2.50, here we rarely paid more than 5 marks (at roughly 3 marks to the pound.)

The low-point of this early bar-crawl was a cramped camp bier-keller whose clientele consisted entirely of toupée wearers and underage boys, each of whom turned to give us an overt once-over as we walked in. That much we could cope with, but when a drunk started shouting at us halfway through our first beer we decided not to linger to find out if he was just being friendly.

Things perked up considerably when we found Black, a big leather-bar with a pool table, a dance-floor and high-quality porn playing on multiple monitors. Further investigation revealed an extensive dark-room complex upstairs, complete with a rope-net and a St Andrew's Cross. (If you're as unfamiliar with these items as I am, you'll just have to use your imagination: I had the advantage of seeing them in use...)

The bar was still far from crowded however so, muttering about it only being Thursday, we marked it down for further investigation at a later date and decided, somewhat drunkenly, to find something to eat.

Simply by walking the streets, it was clear that St Georg has a large Turkish guest-worker population and we'd already been warned that Andy and David's skinhead-stylee haircuts might cause some alarm: my policy was to mitigate this by bursting into Abba's greatest hits every time we passed somebody and it seemed to work quite well.

Nonetheless it was with some trepidation that we decided to eat at the kebab shop on the corner, more so as we noticed that we were the only Europeans there.

But our paranoia was misplaced and, after a nice, cheap meal, we decided to move on to the clubs opposite our hotel.

Of the three clubs advertised, P.I.T. (we never did find out what it stood for) was later pointed out to us as the place to go if we wanted young Chinese boys: we never did get round to venturing inside. Upstairs was Male, which seemed to open only for special events, and we never got there either.

The basement bar, however, was called Tom's Saloon: we spent a lot of time there. A lot.

Although not as baldly S&M-oriented as Black, it's clear right from the outset that Tom's is a cruise bar, with seven well-defined well-designed areas. Moving away from the bar past the small dark-room (with sling) you come to another darker room with a huge round wooden table in the middle. This room acts a feeder area for a long dark maze corridor and a distinctly sordid toilet whose urinals are arranged around a central column so that some are half-lit and some are completely dark. (I think it was John Osborne who first pointed out how Martin Luther was obsessed with excretion and this was certainly bourne out by our weekend in Hamburg.)

It was around this stage of the evening that I began to pick up on another difference between the gay scenes in London and Hamburg. People are much more direct here, typified by the young man who told me that "You are a really great kisser and I hope that, next time we meet, everything down there will be working the way I would like it to..."

For those of us who like to be wooed a little, a well-lit (well, comparatively well-lit) room provides some flirtation space, cleverly split up by screens displaying original Tom of Finland drawings that create a multitude of sight-lines, with a tower of porn-videos at the end of the vista. I've not seen anything like this in England (nor have I ever heard of a bar that has two coin-entry shower cubicles on site, but that's another story.)

And so, ahem, to bed.

º Friday 6th July 2001

Given my necropolitan lifestyle, I'm not big on breakfasts at the best of times, and I find hotel breakfasts especially challenging despite the vital opportunity to infuse caffeine and citrus in quantity.

German hotel breakfasts, with all that pumpernickel and cold sliced meat, should be even more of a trial. But the Königshof has a tranquil terrace and, an important plus for a gay hotel, they serve breakfast right up until noon. So D and A and I quickly got into the habit of meeting there for a hazy post-mortem and planning session during our stay.

Our first full day in Hamburg dawned hot and bright, and we set off to walk across the southern edge of the city to take a look at the other buzzy bit, St Pauli, centred on the infamous Reeperbahn.

Our route (genteely proposed as ever by mapmeister David) took us down to the docks, where we spent a pleasant half hour or so wandering around and about a cluster of elegant brick warehouses, the Speicherstadt. Here, as elsewhere, we were slightly surprised to find very little evidence of civilisation prior to the 20th century. Later we discovered why - seems we bombed the shit out of the city in the Second World War, oops.

From there, the river widens. We thought there should be some sea somewhere, Hamburg being a port and all, but our sense of German geography was hazy at best, none of us having taken the basic precaution of checking an atlas to see quite where in Germany the city sits. ("Denmark's over there somewhere. I think.")

We promenaded the Elbe with the sun beating down on our faces, heading ever eastward with the occasional halt for a beer or two until, quite some time later, we eventually found ourselves at the foot of St Pauli.

Hampered by the lack of any authoratitive gay guide, we failed to find the gay-friendly café terras we'd hoped for and spent most of our time dodging in and out of sex-shops.

I was particularly charmed by the range and variety of dildos on offer. David and Andy on the other hand - especially Andy - had a definite air of been-there done-that about the goods on show.

The Reeperbahn seemed pretty tame by daylight and I was just thinking of Soho, and the gulf between its reputation and actuality, when we stumbled across the partioned-off street of whores with windows ("No entry to women or under 18 year olds.") No offence to the sex-workers on display there but my, what a rough bunch - though, to be fair, and judging by evidence garnered on a subsequent night-time visit, this was probably just the afternoon shift.

Sparing a thought for the impossible dream of a street with windows full of men, we made our excuses and left.

I wonder if the Germans have a word for siesta? MidAfternoonSleepRefreshmentOpportunity? Whatever, what with the heat and all, it became a regular fixture of our stay.

We met on the hotel terrace for dinner, our first experience of the excellent composed salads that seem to feature regularly on the town's menus and a refreshing alternative to the goulasch and dumplings that I'd been half-dreading.

We took the opportunity to interrogate the staff as to their recommendations in re gay nightlife, information that they communicated with a strangely apologetic air, and much of which we'd already worked out for ourselves: bars open late, check, many of the bars are for older men and young boys, check, St Georg is hard-core, St Pauli somewhat trendier, check, check, check.

Chaps, one of the few local bars they mentioned that we hadn't yet been to, was our first port of call. Despite the fact that the distinctly bearish clientele didn't much float our boats, I found it cosy and hospitable. Andy was delighted to find real poppers on sale, and we had our first sighting of free condoms at the bar. No lube, though. (Significantly, as it turned out, given the local's preference for combat trousers with pockets loaded with lubricants and, um, devices.)

A return visit to Black presented certain members of our party with the opportunity to explore the dark-room at greater leisure (though we never did spot the "Magic Wheel" as advertised, thankfully perhaps.) We then moved onto Tom's which, it being Friday, was noticeably busier than before.

It all gets a bit blurry after that, though I do recall David's discussion of arcane sexual practises with some nice German boy being interrupted by Andy yelling "And a fire extinguisher!" which, understandably enough I hope, garnered a puzzled glance or two.

Later, much later, I announced my intention of ending the night in the sauna up the road.

Andy announced he was coming with me and I noted, with pleasure, that I found this idea less daunting than usual: as a general rule, I hate the possibility of meeting friends when I have my metaphorical trousers round my ankles.

It being roughly 4am, I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised to find the place practically deserted, with most of the clientele presumed snoozing in their cabins.

Any worries I had about Andy's company dissipated in very short order as he swiftly latched onto the only half-way cute man available, a mad blond Dutch boy. He was last sighted striding back from his locker crying "Condoms! Lube!" with a wide shit-eating grin on his face. (The last I saw of him, but by no means the last I heard of him, ahem.)

º Saturday 7th July 2001

Much to our mutual surprise, both Andy and I dragged ourselves down to breakfast well before noon, whereafter the three of us set out to explore the huge lake that sits at the centre of the city.

As I now understand it, the Elbe flows southwards into the city and then takes a sharp turn to the west, towards the sea. Some time in the 13th century the Elbe was damned where it turns, resulting in a long wide body of water stretching north.

Faced with three square kilometres of lake, I suspect London would have simply left it, staring at it in a mildly puzzled way from time to time. The Germans, of course, promptly civilised theirs, with a café/landing stage every few hundred yards, a busy ferry shuttle service, a flock of sail-boats, a crowd of swans, a water plume and (my favourite) a blow-up rubber doll in a red cocktail frock sitting at a grand piano on a pontoon.

The lower half of this body of water is called the Binnenalster, and we began our day by walking round this to the ferry station, where we sat over a beer and listened to the band whilst watching the boats arriving and departing. (We especially liked one marvellously modern confection that looked like a stainless steel skyscraper laid on its side.)

The boat-ride turned out to be a rather oppressive experience, like travelling in a slow greenhouse, and we cut our round-trip short at the northern end of the lake where we found ourselves a pleasant-enough lunch before continuing on foot to the Stadtspark.

We'd been told there was outdoor cruising to be had here but if there was we didn't find it, despite following every likely man for several kilometres.

Walking through the park was nice though - especially the huge Planetarium at its centre, which looked as if it would make a good headquarters for Lex Luthor. By late afternoon, as the clouds closed in, we were thoroughly exhausted and headed home for an AfternoonSleepRefreshmentOpportunity.

It being Saturday night, we'd pencilled in a late dinner at the hotel followed by a tour of St Pauli ending, ideally, with a couple of hours at a club called Absolut and an early-hours visit to the Fischmarkt. Ominously though, as our waiter explained that the hotel kitchen was now closed, we felt the first few drops of rain followed, yes, by Donner. And Blitzen. Perhaps the waiter's name was Rudolf?

We emerged from the Reeperbahn S-bahn into pouring rain and took shelter, very much against our better judgement, in the local BurgerKing where, even more against our better judgement, we had our first and last Hamburger experience of the holiday. It was vile.

Dodging rain, umbrellas and predatory (yet startlingly pretty) prostitutes, we made our way to Purgatory - where the doorman explained that the place was pretty empty really, and suggested we come back in a few hours time.

So we went to Rhodzinsky's, several wet streets away, which - whilst busy - seemed not so much mixed as entirely straight. A loud funk soundtrack, people selling baskets of bagels and the humid funk of a hundred rain-soaked bodies did nothing to improve our mood.

For my money, our next stop - Wunderbar - was the best bar of the weekend, the one we'd been looking for as an antidote to the slightly over-earnest bear-sex boites we'd frequented so far. The men were young and cute, the music was disco-light, and the décor was camp as tits, all pin-spots and red swagged curtains.

But the humidity here was even worse than at Rhodzinsky's and, when we discovered that the rain had finally stopped, we moved ourselves along.

By the time we got there again, Purgatory was buzzing nicely. The 'mixed' crowd made good sense when you consider what it must be like to be a single woman in this district, and the room was rammed with a friendly mix of all persuasions.

This looked to be the druggiest it got, all the more startling when you looked around the place, with every square inch of walls and ceiling covered in an intense bricolage of graphics, fairy lights, religious statuettes and lord knows what else.

Had we been in the up-for-it mood we'd planned for ourselves, this would have made a good launch-pad for Absolut, which was just across the road. But, exhausted by our marathon in the park, and demoralised by the rain, we looked at each other and agreed, rather shame-facedly, that we'd cut our losses and go back to St Georg.

Tom's Saloon was good and busy, so the three of us managed to lose each in short order, uniting miraculously each time our beer bottles neared empty. Andy found himself a sweet submissive man called Nils and I got to overhear the most surreally flirtatious remark of the evening: "Come to London, and I'll send you home in an air ambulance!"

Arriving back at the hotel revealed one of the few disadvantages to renting rooms in a red-light district: we had to step over a junkie shooting up in the porch.

º Sunday 8th July 2001

Exhausted by our various pursuits, we rose far too late for breakfast and wandered wearily through the streets, nursing our hangovers, to find Café Gnosa, where we had an appointment to meet Britta in mid-afternoon.

Café Gnosa is wonderful: imagine a gay Patisserie Valerie with twice as much chic and you're half way there. (The magazines-on-sticks included a well-thumbed copy of Wallpaper*.) And if you've never broken your fast with Tagliatelle Carbonara, I recommend it as a great restoratif.

We moved onto coffee and cakes when Britta arrived, and she was kind enough to patiently fill in some of the blanks in our tentative mental map of the city whilst determinedly ignoring my cigarette smoke and doing her best to follow Andy's line of thinking. ("..some of the whores are really pretty. All women though. You don't see many men..." "Oh, I think, you just have to look by the station.")

After we left her, we drank a leisurely beer at another café further down the Lange Reihe. We didn't read it as gay to begin with (though the attitude steaming off the waitron might have alerted us) and it was only after a while, watching the va et vient, that we realised we were sitting on Hamburg's equivalent of Old Compton Street. Excellent.

Andy was meeting Kneeling Nils in a little while, and David was set on exploring the sauna, so I went back to the hotel for a power-nap.

Around eleven, I took myself back to Black, figuring that this might be the night that I found it thronging. Wrong. Seven sad-eyed customers, including one fat man in a leather jump-suit unzipped below the crutch, and his friend, swaddled in leather, complete with gas-mask. Not really my cup of tea.

I stayed just long enough to seem unshocked and met David coming in the door as I left. The walk across to Tom's was taken up with his awe-filled account of let's-call-him Ludo, the guy he'd met in the sauna, and how he'd...and then he'd...at which point he...but then...

Tom's was fairly quiet but enlivened after a while by the arrival of no less than Ludo himself, who claimed to be waiting for his night-bus (hello?). Although David was quite taken by Ludo (or, more accurately, Ludo's abilities) Ludo, it was very clear, was totally smitten.

Given that there was still no sign of Andy, we decided that he was either staying with Nils for the night, or lying dismembered in a drain somewhere. Either way, it meant David had their room to himself for the night, and he and Ludo went off to make good use of it.

Me, I stayed till very late, to not much effect and eventually tottered out into the dawn, across the street and into the hotel.

Still somewhat over-excited, I lay and read, sitting up to peer through a gap in the blinds every time I heard people on the street - which meant I got to see one of my evening's involvements in daylight and not be too disappointed.

Half an hour or so after I got back, I heard the hotel front door open, followed by footsteps on the stairs and the door of the room next to mine slamming shut. I guess I wasn't the only Königshof resident to have been slightly disappointed by Tom's that evening.

Around 5:30am, I heard a whistling on the street and looked out to see a very cute Turkish boy standing opposite the hotel, waving his arms. I assumed he was trying to get the attention of our porch-junkie, but then he moved slightly down the street, sat on a stoop, reached inside the leg of his voluminous shorts, and got his cock out.

Shortly after that, I heard the door of the next room open, followed by the front door. And, I admit, curiousity got the better of me.

The Turkish boy had disappeared by the time I reached the street, but I wandered down to Steindamm just to check things out and, sure enough, all the women had disappeared and been replaced by men. Or, in some cases, boys. Or, at one particular corner, a particularly cute boy. Who smiled at me, tentatively.

My virtue was ensured by the fact that I had precisely 35 marks about my person, which I calculated might be just enough to buy me a blown kiss. But I hung around a while on some kind of off-chance, long enough to see my boy (as much mine as 35 marks would buy) following some elderly clone in a leather waistcoat up the street.

They turned a corner, and I followed them. They turned another corner, and I followed them. And then they crossed the street and went into the Königshof.

Half an hour later, the room next to mine was rent by a chorus of ecstatic cries and groans. I stayed awake for another hour at least and the door never opened once. So I guess the man in the room next to mine had more than 35 marks.

º Monday 9th July 2001

Three of us turned up for breakfast, but none of them were me. (You work it out.)

Much later, David and Andy and I headed, once again, to Café Gnosa - only to discover that it doesn't open till 6 on Mondays, so we ended up with the weirdest meal of the trip so far, a vegetarian brunch in café in a workshop complex: let me tell you that a toasted cheese and tomato open sandwich on pumperknickel is not for the faint-hearted, especially when interlarded with details of your comrades' escapades from the night before ("He...and then he...at which point he...but then...")

We wandered and shopped our way through town to the Rathaus and then slumped beside a canal over a carafe of white wine, whilst David agonised over whether or not he really had the energy to cope with his upcoming appointment with Ludo at the Dragon Sauna that evening. (We were not overly re-assured by a text message that announced, mid-lunch, that he was already there and waiting.)

Much discussion and several carafes later, we decided that our plans for dinner took precedence over Ludo's appetites - only to have the battery on David's phone run out just as he was about to alert Ludo to our change of plans. Gnaaar.

A further complication in all this was that I'd already decided that I wanted to spend the early part of the evening at the sauna, Ludo or not. So guess who got to break the news that David was otherwise engaged?

One way and another, that moment passed (let's say Ludo wasn't happy and leave it at that.) Then I got a chance to explore the Dragon at full capacity. The mazy steam room turned out to be very hot (if rather hot) but the douche cubicle confirmed my worst fears about local anal obsessions. Autre pays, autre moeurs, nuff said.

Courtesy of another random encounter and recommendation, we'd made a booking for dinner at a posh restaurant called Cox (quiet at the back.)

My colleagues had passed their time in my absence by getting uproariously drunk, so I feared the worst, but I have to say it was one of the most mellow and enjoyable experiences of the extended weekend. (A quick note here to point out that the exchange rate seemed very much in our favour throughout our break - three courses plus two bottles of wine came in at about £40 a head, pricey but not scarey.)

And so, finally, to our final visit to Tom's Saloon. And who should be there but Ludo, sulking magnificently in a corner. Oh joy.

But he left soon afterwards, without overt bloodshed, and a good time was had by all (and vice versa.)

º Tuesday 10th July 2001

After breakfast, we checked out and left our bags at the hotel before wandering down to the Hamburger Kunsthalle (that's an art gallery not a McDonalds outreach programme) where we were keen to see their modern collection.

It was, in a word, fantastic. A relatively small collection but beautifully selected and displayed, with a host of mad kinetic and multimedia works which meant that the aisles were full of noises. The contrast between the stern concierge demeanour of the wardresses and the playful, sexy, lunatic humour of the art was an added bonus.

The works on show on the top floor were an especial revelation to me, and restored my faith in painting: Sigmar Polke take a bow.

From here on in, a controlled descent to normality: retrieve bags, coach to airport, delayed flight to Stanstead, delayed train to Liverpool Street, quick shopping trip in Tescos, and home.

 David, as ever, had the final word: "It was the best of times; it was the wurst of times."

And so to bed.

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