Mission: Hamburg

Take one sexy beast…

whose shoes, while definitely a respectable classic, don't exactly blend with his outfit…


and send him to Hamburg to find a pair of casual, yet sleek, rubber-soled, black shoes he can wear with a nice pair of jeans to the club/lounge or with a sweater while he’s out and about.

These are the adventures of Frankfurt Freddie.

A little background is in order. You see the coat I’m wearing in the above photo. Well, I bought it in a vintage shop in Berlin. What’s more, the designer is from Berlin. The goal was to do the same thing in Hamburg. See, my goal is to come back to the States with a distinct garment from each of the German cities I’ve visited…overnight (Heidelberg doesn’t count cause I didn’t stay the night…besides, the town isn’t big enough to have an area for vintage/second-hand shops anyways). Munich and Cologne are next.

Anyways, after checking into Hotel Wedina (lonelyplanet.com is a god sent), the lady at the front desk was nice enough to not only provide me with one of their free maps (which served me quite well the duration of my time in Hamburg), but also direct me towards where the shops are. The good thing about the hotel was that it was not only walking distance from the Hamburg Hauptbanhof (“main train station”…remember?), but also walking distance from the main drag of shops in Hamburg…as they are located on the other side of the station.

Unfortunately, these shops were just like Haupt Strasse in Heidelberg and the Zeil in Frankfurt. In other words, it was a bunch of H&M’s, Zara’s, Puma’s, Addidas’, FootLockers, and other name-brand German retailers that are found all around the country and pretty much sell the same stuff you can find in the States. On a positive note, I did have quite possibly the BEST “carry-while-you’re-shopping/browsing” meal in my life. Unfortunatley, I didn't take a picture of the place, recall the name nor find the name after searching google for the past 15 minutes. All that matters is that they serve fish and chips (fried of course) and basically for 4.70 Euro (it’s now to the point I don’t even do the conversions anymore) you get fries, fried fish, ketchup and remoulade (tartar) sauce thrown in a cone-shaped paper bag, and you use a 3-pronged wooden throat lozenge to clean it out. Its oh soooooooooo…good (shout to London, cause I’m quite sure its of their origin).

Once I reached the end of the shops, I asked a couple people where the river was, because the lady at the front desk also told me that there were shops on both sides of the river—Hamburg was/is a shipping town and the city splits the numerous rivers and bridges found throughout. After a couple “Vasa?”’s, one man then replied “Elba?” That sounded like the German word for river, so I followed his direction. Unfortunately, it was not only the name of a particular river (as in proper noun), but it was also the wrong river. What’s worse, I couldn’t find either of the streets of the intersection I was at on the map. So I walked into the nearest store to attempt to reorient myself from the directions of another. Fifteen minutes later, I was back on track…but hungry for some sort of dessert. I found a place, which I wouldn’t be surprised was French, and got this apple dessert that was real good (I should have been taking pictures of all this stuff, but I was on a mission…and it was night time so I was of the mind-frame that all of my pics would have come out blurry anyways, so what’s the point. Take this for example…


If it was brighter, or I had a better camera, this would look a whole lot better. But it doesn’t, so I was reluctant to take pics.)

The waitress spoke English and had a tattoo on the back of her neck. Using my well-honed spy skills, I figured she was hip and be able to point me in the direction of where the real shops were. And right I was. The area’s called Schanzen Strasse and it’s just north of the St. Pauli area—where all the clubs, including the red light district, are located (which she also told me). By this time, mid you, its around 6:45pm and all the stores close at either 7pm or 8pm. Did I fold, no sir…time to make moves. I tipped her well and was out the door to the Jungfernstieg station to catch the S-bahn (S1), transfer at Landungsbrucken to the U-bahn (U3) and get off at Feldstrasse station.

Once inside the trains and stations, I see people dressed like this...


Once outside, I see this…


It seemed everybody in the immediate vicinity was headed either to or from this fair. Furthermore, when looking down the street I was supposed to walk down (Neuer Kamp Feldstrasse) to get to the street that had the vintage shops (Schanzen Strasse), it looked as if nothing was down there. I was real temped to say forget it, get on the ferris wheel and see if they had funnel cake in Germany…but I stuck with the plan—to walk from Feldstrasse station, north, to Stern-Schanze station (via Schanzen Strasse and all its vintage shops).

Once I got to Schanzen Strasse, I was relieved to see that the area did in fact have small, vintage-like shops that may very well have the shoes I was looking for. But after actually walking on Schanzen Strasse, as well as the branching Schulterblatt and Susannenstrasse, it seemed as if every store that looked promising was closed, and the ones that were open either didn’t sell shoes, only sold sneakers (skateboarding sneakers at that) or told me that the store I was looking for was closed. When it was all said and done, around 7:45, I found myself dejected, disoriented and closer to the station I started at (Feldstrasse) than the one I originally intended to head towards (Stern-Schanze station). Wanting to see this thing to completion, I turned around and headed to Stern-Schanze station.

Out the corner of my eye, I saw what looked like a vintage store across the street, while I was walking and looking down on at my map. It looked open as well, so I figured a gander inside couldn’t hurt. As I neared the store, the storefront window had the exact pair or sleek shoes I was looking for…the only thing was they were in brown. I quickly rushed inside and, sure enough, they had them in black. They asked my size and I told them 10.5, to which I got calculative faces. Why you ask? Cause these shoes didn’t have American or British sizes, only German. My size…44. And they had a pair. The price, 79.95 Euro—which is good considering that most decent pairs of shoes in Europe are 100 Euro and up.

Talk about a buzzer beater. I couldn’t ask for a better ending to the story. Mission Accomplished.


Cheers.