Headbanging in Hamburg: A Night on the Reeperbahn

Editor’s Note: I haven’t talked to these people in many years, so for the sake of their privacy, names have been changed.

In 1993, we had a couple of exchange students in our High School and one of them was from Poland. We didn’t hang out much but I remember her as being fun. It was through her that I would meet a “pen-pal” back when such a thing actually existed. One day in our cafeteria I saw a cute girl talking with the exchange students so I sauntered over like the smooth customer I thought I was back then.

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t impressed, but I did end up making a new friend from Gdansk, let’s call her Anna. She was so sweet and little, with an adorable Polish accent. But I quickly learned she was sharp as a tack and had firm opinions. It was no surprise to me that being Polish, she was into hard headbanging music, most of it I never heard of. She was also a huge fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica. Although Polish, her family left the country for West Germany as the Iron Curtain began to fall. We had some really good discussions over the week she was in the States and we continued our conversions through letters.

In the fall of 1995 I teamed up with my friend Vera to plan a 3 month backpacking trip through Europe. When I told Anna we would be heading to Europe in January, she invited us to stay with her family in Germany during her winter school break.

A Night at the Loudest Youth Hostel Ever

We made it to the Hamburg “Auf dem Stintfang” Youth Hostel, which I recall looked very large and institutional looking. The place looks much nicer in reality than in my memory, after checking out their website. It is on a hill overlooking the port and across from the famous Otto van Bismark monument. It must be nice in the summer, just a short walk to the fun spots by Hamburg’s waterfront. Here in February it was wet, dark, windy and cold. We were allowed to leave our packs at the front desk and then I found a phone and called Anna. It was nice to talk to her after over a year of just writing letters, we made plans to meet up the next day.

We spend a few hours wandering aimlessly around the port area, bought some snacks and tried to stay warm until it was time to check into the hostel. It was a pretty dreary experience, Hamburg in the middle of winter was dark and gray, with half the city covered in scaffolding.

Once we got there we were in for a shock. Now that is was around dinner time the place was packed and by the sound of it, full of 12 year old girls. There was a gang of them that roamed the common areas and hallways screaming, which echoed throughout the place. It was agony.

We sat in the loud, crowded dining hall, eating our Milka bars as the roving band of pre-teens screeched and ran down the tiled hallways. It was a shame because the place was in an amazing location, it was clean like all the German youth hostels, and the dorms were mixed gender. But it was fully booked, and it was mostly Germans staying there, who were very friendly but kept to their own groups. I don’t recall seeing too many foreigners or backpackers, with one exception. We met a nice guy originally from Iran who now worked in Germany and he invited us outside to smoke a joint. This was the first Iranian either of us young Americans ever met and got our first taste of a sad reality: Iranians are wonderful people ruled by a horrible theocracy.

We didn’t sleep much that night and the next morning we brushed our teeth, changed our clothes and got the hell out, leaving our packs at the desk. We took a tram to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof and found where Anna would meet us. I remember there was a large stall selling all sorts of delicious looking pastries and hot coffee and grog. I always pictured grog as something only English sailors drank, but I noticed it advertised a lot in Germany as a winter beverage. I was not brave enough to try hot rum and lemon for breakfast so we got some amazing cinnamon buns and strong coffee.

I was worried that we wouldn’t recognize each other, but with a few minutes, there she was, just as I remembered her. I introduced her to Vera and we quickly made a plan for the day. She said we could stay with her mother and brother over in the town of Wedel for as long as we wanted and she would show us around until she had to go back to school. We didn’t get that far before we realized it was not a good day to walk around Hamburg, it was cold and was starting to rain. We decided to go get our packs at the hostel and then head to Anna’s house to get settled.

When we arrived back at the hostel we were greeted by the same group of pre-teen girls screaming and running down the halls.

Anna said “This is crazy. How did you sleep last night.” 

In unison, Vera and I answered “We didn’t.”

Avoiding Homesickness in Wedel

We took the local tram line back to her family’s apartment and talked about school, our families, the trip and lots of other things. Vera and Anna seemed to have a lot in common as well. We hadn’t been on the road for all that long yet, but staying a few nights in a warm apartment with a real family was like a touch of home we both needed.

The two of us were exhausted cold to the bone, from no sleep and our attempts at sightseeing. We made our way through the charming streets of Wedel and made it to Anna’s home in a modern apartment block. After meeting her mother and brother, we put out packs away and came back to the kitchen. A wonderful smell filled the air as we were greeted by two steaming bowls of Polish meatball soup. This was the first Polish dish I ever had and yet it brought me back to Grandma Demetri’s table, and her Sicilian version. It is still one of the fondest and warmest memories I have from my first European adventure.

Meeting all sorts of interesting people from all over the world was definitely fun, but a bit of homesickness was creeping in. This was the longest journey away for me, and even Vera, who traveled quite a bit as a kid and had a semester of college away from home felt it too.  It must have been because this was different, we were not just a few towns over, or up in the mountains just a couple hours away. We were now an ocean away on another continent, and seeing Anna’s family going about daily life while we roamed Europe like vagabonds really brought it home to us.

Over the next few days we did some sightseeing in Hamburg, had a fun dinner with locals and a giant sheep dog in a Wedel pub, caught up on laundry and got to know our hosts a little better. When the weekend arrived it was time to party. We had already seen some of the St. Pauli/Reeperbahn area during our sightseeing, but now we were ready for some nightlife. When it came to Anna and her younger brother, that meant heavy metal, but that was many hours and many drinks away.

My gang of friends back when I was 19, were a hard drinking hard partying group, and those of us who survived (no joke) can still turn it on when needed. I was in my element in a country where a beer was usually cheaper than a Coke and you could get one pretty much anywhere. In 1996, not only was I underage back home, but Massachusetts still had a Blue Law in place that banned alcohol sales on Sunday. I remember writing a postcard to my friends about how much partying we would have done if they joined us.

A Night on the Reeperbahn

It was late afternoon when we decided to get our partying started. We headed down to the train station and had a few beers at the train station bar. As we sat at the bar we talked to the bartender and some of the other patrons. We drinking fast because the next train was on its way but I almost stopped drinking when I saw the huge, delicious-looking hot-fudge sundae the girl next to me ordered. This train station sundae stopped me in my tracks (sorry I couldn’t help myself).

I remember getting up to leave and seeing all that ice cream, and letting out a Keanu Reeves like “whoa.” But it was too late for that, we had some drinking to do and then off to a heavy metal nightclub that Anna and her brother liked. It was going to be a long night of drinking and headbanging. I should have done some neck rolls on the train.

Klingons at the Kaiserkeller

We hit the Reeperbahn area and had a quick snack of pizza and beer at a Pizza Hut express before crossing the street to a bar they knew. After a few rounds we ventured off a side street to a club that was once known as the Kaiserkeller. The club is called Gross Freiheit 36, which is also the address, the Kaiserkeller is a separate venue in the basement.

In the history of rock and roll this was hallowed ground, where the early incarnations of The Beatles played in 1960. We went down the stairs, expecting a bunch of Beatles memorabilia but instead there was a Star Trek convention going on. The place was packed and everyone I could see was in costume. This was decades before cosplay went mainstream so seeing these German Star Trek fans decked out like Comic-Con was impressively nerdy. We stuck around for a little while, mainly because I love both the Beatles and Star Trek. We met a few Klingons and pounded a few shots with these noble warriors – Qapla’!

Vera and I were hoping to absorb some of that Beatles nostalgia, but the place was too crowded and noisy. It was also really hot, those Klingons must have been sweating like pigs with all that makeup and armor. We went outside and got a blast of cold air to remind us that is was February in Hamburg. The prostitutes along the strip had the right idea: They dressed like “snow bunnies” at the ski resort with 90’s style full length snow suits and moon boots. We shivered as the wind blew down the street, the warm red glow of the numerous strip clubs and peep-shows provided no warmth, but provided a sort of smutty ambiance.

The club opened at 10 if I remember, how I remember anything is a miracle. We were getting a little hungry so we stopped at Imbiss Lucullus, a fun snack stall where I discovered one of my favorite German snacks: Currywurst.

Heavy Metal Clubbing

Now we were primed up for some headbanging so we staggered to the club. This was my first experience in any kind of dance club, not usually my scene, and heavy metal isn’t my first choice but I’ll take it over dance music any day. We had a few beers before people really got out there but it was fun banging our heads, air-guitaring, saluting the devil and all that. Cool lighting, laser show, fog machines, strobe lights and I was getting hammered. I would visit the bar often to get a beer and a shot of Jaegermeister and then head back out. That kind of dancing wears you out so we took a lot of breaks and met lots of interesting people. 

In a German heavy metal disco, you meet all sorts. Looking back on that night, the Klingons might not have been the strangest looking people I met. I was a little nervous about running into any skinheads at the club, and there were some there, but not the evil kind, everyone was cool. Lots of drinking, plenty of scary-looking drugs in the bathroom, but no fights and even dudes with spiked mohawks were friendly and eager to talk to me in English. On one of my many trips to the bar for a beer and a Jaeger shot I met up with some guys from Croatia that overheard me speaking English.

“You from America?” A big guy with big black heavy metal curls asked in Slavic-accented English.

“Yeah I’m from Boston” I replied.

“Boston? Really? You like Boston Celtics?”

I said “yeah of course, they ain’t good right now but I still like them.”

“You hear of Dino Raja right? He’s my good friend from school.”

“No shit” (In 1995-96, Dino Raja was the closest thing the Celts had to a star after Reggie Lewis died.)

“You hear of Goran Ivanisivic?” He continued.

“Tennis player right?” I asked.

“Yes, we were friends when we were young. His grandmother lives close to my mother.”

“That’s pretty cool” I said “What do you do?”

“This is my band here, we are KISS cover band called Lovegun” The drunken band grunted and fist pumped in agreement. 

We ended up talking for a while and they ended up being a bunch of pretty fun loving guys trying to escape what was recently a war zone back home. These guys were playing in bars mostly in Hungary and Prague but were now starting to play in Germany. They thought the war was stupid, the older generations were all hard-asses, but guys like them didn’t care as much about the old hate. They were still eager to see what the West was all about after the fall of the Iron Curtain. How soon we forget that the this was all pretty new.

These guys were in high school when the old regime crumbled. With new found freedom right around the corner they just wanted to play music and party, not kill each other over religion or ethnicity. We all drank to that and I even got a band invite to Croatia. They gave me a bunch of addresses of family to stay with and their band info so I could see a show during the trip. Like so many encounters, that’s all it was. But back before Croatia became a hotspot for travelers, it was reeling from the Balkan War and that always makes me think of these guys.

The Price You Pay

The night continued on and somehow we all remained standing, but by closing time, the headbanging was taking its toll. When the lights came on it was 5am and in an instant I felt incredibly drunk, deaf and had the worst stiff neck in my life. The four of us staggered out, saying not much more than grunts until we got the train back to Wedel. We slowly and painfully made our way back to the apartment, with the rosy fingers of dawn coming up over the trees. Like vampires, we got back before true sunlight reached us. Mike hit his room, Vera hit her air mattress and was out in minutes. Anna and I crossed paths out of the bathroom and I remember drunkenly thanking her for everything before crashing hard.

When you are on a backpacking adventure, you really can’t afford wasted days. You only have a finite time to see and do everything you can. It’s a real “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” lifestyle, better off lived while you are young. There is now way I could have done these things as I got older. A night headbanging in Hamburg was too much for Vera and I so that whole next day was a truly wasted. We were all still drunk and it was pouring by the time we woke up around noon.

I attempted to get some laundry done, but I was junk and went back to laying down, my stomach in knots. That is until Anna’s mother insisted that I take some medicine…a half liter of dark beer! Who am I to argue with a Polish mother? I drank it down like a good boy and sure enough I began to feel better.

Hair of the dog indeed.