Visits to Liverpool and Hamburg | Page 4 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Gah I can’t find a suitable Hamburg thread (if there is one, if so, mods please move, I don’t want to hijack Joe’s thread). 

I’m finally doing the Beatle sites in Hamburg (after being in Hamburg about 15 times over the past year) on Friday morning. Would you guys like me to upload photos of the state the buildings are in, in 2019? 

Unfortunately, I’ll be alone so I won’t be able to get that Rock ‘N’ Roll doorway photo but so ist das Leben.

I still have photos on my phone of the Newbridge collection, should probably post those as well.

I went to St. Pauli today and I’d say I was there for about 70-80 minutes in total (I did end up walking in a loop at one point adding like 8 unnecessary minutes onto my visit but oh well). I was there from approx 12:15-13:30 and it was a nice, sunny day. The Reeperbahn as a whole is as you can imagine very sleazy (my favourite moment that I couldn’t take a photo of because there were too many people around was a ‘gay sex cinema’ opposite a ‘Jesus lives, Christian centre’. Like Amsterdam there is also a church in the red light district.

The ambiance of the Reeperbahn as a solo woman was ok, St. Pauli is the hip area for students and young families to live in, so there’s nothing more ‘interesting’ than seeing a 2 year old out for a walk in front of a strip club with their grandmother. I wouldn’t like to go there at night (if the place reeks of piss in the morning then I can only imagine what it’s like at 11pm). Particularly along the Elbe (the river), I noticed a lot of syringe safety covers (thankfully no syringes) so….yeah. There are plenty of police walking around though so during the day I’d have no problem with going around it myself.

Outside of the raunchy area, ‘der Kiez’, St. Pauli is your typical German city quarter- a few Altbauten, mixed with disgusting ’50’s and ’60’s cement buildings that litter every European city that was bombing in WW2.

Now to the most important thing- Beatles!

The first Beatles’ site on ‘my unofficial Beatles’ tour’, I’ve actually walked past a load of times, as it’s right next to the main train station. You turn right and walk to the end of the road, look across, and there it is (57 Kirchenallee)! On the fifth floor, 15th October 1960, Lou Williams, John, Paul, George, and Ringo recorded together. The first time the four recorded together.

I took the S1 to the Reeperbahn stop and if you take the right exit, you exit at Beatles Platz- which is a circular display on the ground (designed like a record) with cookie cutter metal Beatle figures, J, P, G, an ambiguous drummer (could be Ringo or Pete), and way off in the corner by himself, Stu. When I first got here there were 2 guys sitting on the bench behind it and I didn’t want to be like a creep taking photos of them, so I decided I’d get it when I was coming back to the S-Bahn stop. Unfortunately, coming back, there were like 4 Bayern cyclists there just chatting next to the freaking displays and I didn’t want to tell them to move so I don’t have a photo of the 4. However, I snapped a pic of Stu because he’s by himself. If you look at the ground as well at Beatles Platz, you’ll see there’s titles of all of their best-known songs all along the edge of the ‘record’.

A minute’s walk after Beatles Platz, you reach ‘Gretel & Alfons’ which proudly advertises itself as ‘Formerly the Beatles’ local’. Unfortunately, they were getting a delivery of beer kegs when I was walking past, and I didn’t want the delivery guy to think I was taking a photo of him, so I continued on. I didn’t pop in for a bevvy but the reviews for it are pretty good, and there were people inside so pop in for a drink if you’re passing through.

Continuing straight you tick off all the clubs as they are literally across from one another. The Star- Club burned down in 1987, so there is only a memorial to it. You have to go down a little lane to your left but it’s pretty easy to spot. Looking at my own photo, I realised you can see me pretty clearly, and I like you all very much, but I don’t particularly want my face on the forum so apologies for using someone else’s photo.

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Both the Indra and the Kaiserkeller were closed because it was early afternoon. The Kaiserkeller is on the right of the street on a corner, it’s big and bold so you can’t miss it. It has the names of different artists who have performed there over the years on its sign (I love how tiny ‘The Beatles’ is written; it took me a few seconds to find them. In contrast Robbie Williams is huge!). Nothing too interesting about it. (Also, I apologise for the little black thing in the corner of the photo, the cover on my phone is slowly dying and I hadn’t noticed it was dipping when the photo was taken, be prepared to see it in other photos, along with my finger from time to time, can you tell I’m an excellent photographer?).

Slightly down the road, the Indra is a bit more fun. It has a plaque outside which reads in German, “On the 17^th of August 1960, the Beatles stepped onto the Indra stage. It was their first German booking, and the beginning of a great career”. Very sweet. Some arse had carved “Elvis, Lennon, George”, on the plaque though because we just can’t have nice things, can we? Looking through the barred doors, there were different photos of people who had played at the Indra (mostly amusing Hendrix pics), and a giant Beatles poster of their 1966 ‘Lightning Tour’ in Germany (the bars prevented me from getting anyway good of a picture but I’ll put up a proper version of it).

Walking straight on (the lads literally had the easiest walk to work it’s about 2 minutes away from all of the clubs), you get to the Bambi Kino. It’s now used as a garage but some kind soul paints a Bambi deer on it so you can recognise it, they also paint over any graffiti scumbags draw on the door). To the right of the garage they have a very worn and faded photo of the lads, that was so hard to get a decent photograph of (I didn’t manage to get one, if you will believe me John and George are also in the photo). The front door (which the lads used the back door not the front, but I didn’t bother trying to find the back) has a little sign saying “The Beatles lived here, 1960” with the photo of them holding Prellies. The house connected to the Bambi Kino (No. 34 Paul-Roosen Strasse) had their washing hanging out on the balcony so people do live in those buildings. I could see no activity in the Kino for the brief minute or two I was there, but someone owns it, whether they live in it or not. The pretty hedge that grows around the top of the garage and No. 33 door is maintained so whoever owns it, cares about it.

Moving onto John’s Rock ‘n’ Roll music door, this is a bit awkward. There are 2 Jaeger-Passage and you take the one on the right not the left. It’s technically private property so you’re trespassing when you go in it. You have to open a set of wooden gates (the latch is getting pretty rusty and I thought for a second whoever owned it got fed up with Beatle fans and put a chain around it, but it’s actually just stiff). After a few seconds of pulling, it finally opened, and I was in. This place was eerie, and I didn’t like being there. The owner had their washing out to the far left of the door and I could hear like distant radio noise. I got very paranoid that someone was watching me, so I just snapped my photo and practically ran out of the place. I didn’t even get to do my sad pose of pretending to be John Lennon , when I had no one to take a photo of me :’(

I then went to the police station at Davidwache to take a photo of where Paul and Pete got locked up. Where I took the photo is the best spot btw, if you try to get closer, to the right hand side all of the Polizei cars are there, and they are walking in and out of the building and you don’t want really want to be seen taking photos of a police station, even though the design is actually very beautiful for a police station. If I had the balls, I would have gone in and asked do they know which cell P&P were in but alas…no.

Finally, I went to the only site that I was surprised was gone when I arrived. Possibly the most important site in all of Hamburg……..

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Spielbudenplatz 9! The former location of Paul Hundertmark’s where the Fabs bought their leather gear. It’s a 2-minute walk from the station. All of the buildings in that row were demolished, sadly including the tailor shop- an iconic landmark gone forever. Spielbudenplatz is actually quite cool though, there were food stalls, and someone was playing AC/DC. Seems like a nice place to chill with your friends.

As I mentioned on the ‘In My Life ’ thread, I’ve had little sleep for the past 2 nights, so I decided that was it and got the S-Bahn back to the central station. There were a few sites I didn’t get to (mostly hotels that they graduated to as they got more successful- Hotel Germania and Hotel Pacific). Hotel Germania is closed but Hotel Pacific is still running so if for whatever mental reason you want to stay near the Reeperbahn, you could always stay in a ‘Beatles hotel’, (it’s a budget hotel, so you’ll probably be able to hear somebody on the 4^th floor coughing while you’re on the 2^nd but hey, The Beatles stayed there. I wonder if you ask them would they know which room each Beatle stayed in and you could stay in that room, hmmmm).

I also didn’t go to Astrid’s house because it’s a 30-minute walk, I would then have had to walk back 15 minutes to get to an S-Bahn station and my body said “no”. The only other ‘real place’ to go is Friedrich-Ebert-Halle where they recorded My Bonnie . That’s in Hamburg-Harburg so it’s 30 minutes away, and while Harburg is a stop on my first train home, I couldn’t be bothered getting off the train to take a photo of an indoor arena, and then waiting an hour for my next train to come.

I hope you enjoyed my wanderings around St. Pauli, it was fun. It’s a shame the Beatlemania museum closed down in 2012 because people weren’t going to it. Hamburg has no proper Beatles fixture and with the amount of money Liverpool makes in tourism from the Beatles, I have no idea why Hamburg hasn’t made it a pilgrimage site like Liverpool has. You can’t buy any Beatles merchandise in tourist shops for example. Such a waste.

This post was absolute hell to upload (took about 20 minutes to put in all the photos, so I hope you appreciated it).

^ Aww thanks, just an extra lil note. I forgot to add the photo of the building they recorded in so that’s there now. It’s now a Bureau de Change (rip off rates don’t use it, indeed never change money at the airport, near the main tourist square, or main train station in general) and the floors overhead are a hostel. I was looking for a place to get food one early morning in Hamburg and I was walking around for a café where I could get hot food not just croissants. I walked behind this building and saw HELTER SKELTER written in a large graffiti style on the window. I went “oooh that’s cute”, then looked closer and there’s an entire Beatles/general rock themed breakfast room/bar in that hostel! I sneaked in to see it and it’s quite nicely decorated, there was Anthology wallpaper wrapped around the columns in the room. 

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They serve typical hostel food, cold meats, cereals and bread, so I continued on. The workers didn’t seem to notice me so I’m pretty sure I could have just stolen food but my conscience said “eh, no”.