I'm here, and almost there. I chose not to fly, and the problems have not been few. I already didn't feel too well when I set off on the night train from Bologna to Munich. Then things went better, and meanwhile, I spent some time with awesome people, like Marieke and Evan from the time I was a European Volunteer, and Hugo and Marie, that I hosted in Reykjavík in September, and who now hosted me; I also took part at a creative writing workshop on climate issues, and I'm going to meet the same people in Malmö in 2 weeks. Yesterday I was planning to visit the Kombinat Gatschow, a rural commune in the middle of nowhere in Mecklemburg, near Demmin. Train ticket was too expensive: 30€ for just 200km, obviously with slow trains, two changes, and the last part of the journey would have been on a bus, because the rail didn't work. So I decided to try to hitch-hike at least as far as Neubrandenburg, and then go on by rail and bus. Unfortunately though, I didn't organize my trip too well, and the place where I was going was just in the middle of nowhere. I stood at the wrong spot, with basically no traffic in my direction, and I was feeling so tired that just after a few hours I came back to Berlin, where I soon decided to try another way. Since I didn't have an accommodation in Rostock, where I was planning to take the ferry to Gedser on Sjælland, I preferred paying a visit to my friend Stefan near Kiel. Today I got a ride to Hamburg and then later joined him in his village called Altengörs. Tomorrow I'm gonna hit the road again, hitch to the ferry place on the island of Fehmarn, probably get a lot of "nos" from Danish drivers whose cars are too full of beer from the shop or early Christmas presents to take extra passengers, embark on the ferry to Rødby, and then get ready for a 4-hours hitch to Copenhagen. I already have a couch in a nice commune in Frederiksberg. If it gets dark, the train from there is not too expensive.So, today's outcome resulted in a somewhat unexpected visit to the Hansa-city Hamburg. I had been there a couple of times before, without getting too impressed by it actually (I don't understand how some people can get so excited by it), but this time it was like a culture shock. I left Berlin, which in spite of its ever-changing facade has an irresistable hippish retro aura, and was thrown into Hamburg's premature Christmas shopping frenzy without being at all psychologically prepared. The city looked like an old ugly lady, who talks but nonsense and has nothing to offer but her money, and thinks that being all covered in glittering jewels and expensive trifles will make her look younger and more beautiful. The streets were full of lit-up wreathed Bavarian-style huts selling all kinds of sweets and sausages, as if the Alps had been moved to the Elbe. The crowd on the street was everything but the melting pot of people that really live there; the voices were those of well-educated and well-positioned Germans, some English speaking exchange students, quite many Norwegians attempting to solve the obnoxious problem of having too much money and not knowing how to spend it. Smoking blondheads walking in chain constantly pestered their golf-playing husbands with the question hva skal vi kjøpe, what shall we buy.I had to spend some hours there and felt helpless, the more I walked into the city centre, the more the situation got worse. Luckily I found a bookstore with big, nice yellow armchairs, that was full enough of people to allow me to sit there reading the newest up-to-date Japan travel companion.
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