Thoughts from Hamburg, Germany: 30.10.18

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable. 

- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain. 

If you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, see my web page here. Garish but informative.

Matters Hamburg/German

• I went to the City Museum yesterday and passed a happy 2-3 hours wandering through its impressive – but eclectic – displays. Including one on the post-1492 role in its success of the city's entrepreneurial Jews.
• Hamburg's maritime and shipbuilding past is legendary. As it its present. What struck me yesterday – while marvelling at the large models of the city as it developed over the centuries – is that this happened despite the fact the city is 70km(44miles) from the sea. I guess the river Elbe has always acted for Hamburg as the (man-made) ship canal does for Manchester. Or did back when cotton was king.
• Both Hamburg and Liverpool were badly bombed during WW2. In Hamburg's case, 60% of the buildings were destroyed. In Liverpool's case, I suspect the figure was bad enough but rather lower. I couldn't help pondering on the rather different trajectories of the 2 cities since then. But, then, Liverpool didn't benefit from the USA's Marshall Plan. And it's finally on the up again. But is way, way behind Hamburg and will never catch up. The fortunes of war.
• I tried to put my belongings in a locker at the museum but - 16 years after the intro of the euro - the coin demanded was a Deutschmark. Which apparently isn't the same as a 50 cents coin. And I didn't have a euro to test that coin.
• I did some supermarket shopping last night. There were, of course, plenty of sausages and meats but it took me 30 minutes to find the tiny stand of tinned tuna. In Galicia, there are whole rows of these. The compensation was all the Asian stuff on the shelves.
• I've mentioned Hamburg's down-and-outs and beggars. Going downstairs to the toilets in a café yesterday, I was rather taken aback to have to pass, in a bend of the stairs, a blanket-shrouded crone, sitting in a chair with a hand-written card on a tiny table in front of her on which was scrawled a request for 50 cents.
• On this theme, it does seem to be the custom for large numbers of tramps-with-trolleys to congregate around the city's railway stations, all looking rather disreputable. But harmless. And sad.
• I find it hard to understand how a language which has become a lingua franca can also be exotic. I mean, did the early Ancient Brits have front door mats which read Welcome or Better Late than Ugly in Latin? Maybe they did.

Matters Spanish

• I'm in 2 minds about citing this. 'Spanish' Halloween traditions go back to at least 2005.
• Just so you know . . . I'm one of several people who've turned down the chance to take over as manager of Real Madrid.

Matters EU/Brexit

• Richard North – an ardent Brexiteer who has long been dismayed by the British government's ignorance and incompetence – warns here that it's time to start panic-buying, ahead of the UK crashing out of the EU next March without a deal - if and when Mr's May assurance that no deal would be better than a bad deal will be shown to be as fatuous as it was the day it was made. No one voted for this, of course. And it surely wasn't inevitable.

Matters EU

• Attitudes to the continuation of arms sales to Saudi Arabia differ between the governments of the UK, France and Spain, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other. I find it hard to imagine the government of the envisaged supra-state – the United States of Europe? - being able to take a consensus decision on matters like this. Can you imagine the consequences if Mrs Merkel's government drove EU policy on this, as it does on so many other issues? Right now, of course, there are vetoes and majority votes. And 'subsidiarity'. But in a unified, even federal, state? Maybe in a hundred years.

Matters USA

• Here's an article on Czechoslovakian spying on Fart more than 30 yers ago. It's reported that, in the mid-1980s, the Russian KGB chief demanded the cultivation of 'top-level', upwardly-mobile Americans. And that the qualities he sought in potential assets included corruption, vanity, narcissism, marital infidelity and poor analytical skills. They clearly found one such individual. Someone, in fact, who combined all the desired traits. And more.

Matters Galician

• The region's fishermen are worried – very worried – about the consequences for them of a Brexit and a return to exclusively British fishing grounds. Can't imagine this is terribly high on the agenda of either Madrid or Brussels. If you'll forgive me, they have bigger fish to fry.

Spanish

• Word of the day: Ojala.   I'm a bit unsure about the alleged origin as Ma sha allah, or 'God willed it'. I thought it was Alhamdulillah, or 'Thanks/Praise be to Allah'. Either way, it's Arabic. And Islamic. On second thoughts, The Local is probably right on this. But . . . Ma sha allah is past tense, whereas Inshallah is future/conditional and probably the true source. So maybe not totally right. Anyway, not many Spaniards know any of this.

Nutters Corner

• As you might have noticed, I don't cite US religious nutters any more. There's just too many of them and their pronouncements would be viewed as insane under any other president. Oh, hang on . . . they are even under this one. If you want to track them – and both laugh and cry - this is the chap you need to follow.

Finally . . .

1. The last German air raid on Liverpool took place on 10 January 1942, destroying several houses on Upper Stanhope Street. By a quirk of fate one of the houses destroyed was number 102, which had been the home of Alois Hitler, Jr, half brother of Adolf Hitler and the birthplace of Hitler's nephew, William Patrick Hitler.
2. They say the Germans have no sense of humour but when yesterday I walked into a restaurant that specialises in the local delicacy and said “Do your wurst!”, they laughed fit to cry . . .

© David Colin Davies, Hamburg: 30.10.18