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I worked for a while in the London office of a German company. The headquarters were in Hamburg, and a few times I had to go there.
The first time I flew with one of the directors of the London office, which meant business class. This was not a huge privilege. All the seats were the same, but the front few rows were curtained off. Because we were in front of the curtain, we got free drinks. But it was 10 am, so I turned down the champagne. We were staying in the same hotel as a bloke from the Singapore office, but when we arrived there had been some snafu and there were no rooms. Second benefit of travelling with a director: he got us a taxi and said "take us to the Hyatt" which was somewhat up market from the first hotel. I had a huge room. In the bathroom, I couldn't find the sink. Then I realised that the thing I took for a fruit bowl on a glass shelf must be the sink, and the odd sculpture on the wall above must be the taps.
We had meetings, then we went out to eat. We stopped in a bar on the way and ordered a beer. I was next to the Singaporean. He leant towards me and said "Is this normal?" He looked worried. He'd never beem to Europe before.
"Er, is what normal?"
"Drinking before the meal!"
"Oh. Well I think we're just having one before we go to the restaurant."
We went to a fun fair and got turned upside down 5 times on a rollercoaster. We ended up at a Spanish restaurant where they spoke only German and Spanish. None of us could manage either of those, so ordering was dificult, espcially for vegetarians.
On another trip, I had to take a Sun workstation on the plane with me. It was like a fairly big desktop PC. They let me take it on the plane as hand luggage. It was heavy. At Hamburg airport, I noticed that along side the cafes and shops you always get in airports, there was a sex cinema. I got in a cab and showed the driver a piece of paper with the address. The office had moved since previous visits. He took me to a back street. On the other side of the road was another sex cinema. I showed the driver the address again, but no, we were in the right place. The office was at the end of the Reeperbahn, the Hamburg red light district.
A colleague from London arrived the next day. He'd been to this office before. He said that the sex workers along the Reeperbahn would look at you and know to speak English. At the end of they day we went out for a drink. I saw no sex workers along the whole Reeperbahn. Apparently they are allowed to work on one side only. I did meet two very cheerful German blokes in lederhosen. "Come into our club!" Hmm, what kind of club, exactly? We never found out. We walked up a street with brightly coloured animal decorations hung across the road. So, I've seen a pink elephant when I've been out drinking. I think we were near the place where the Beatles played. We went into a bar with a rock music theme. It was fairly empty. We played darts on a self-scoring dartboard. We talked to the barmaid who seemed old enough to be my mother. I think she was glad of something to do because it was a quiet evening. Then we ran out of money. My friend went to find a cash machine. I carried on talking to the barmaid. After a while, I wondered where he'd got to. I called him. He found a cash machine, but he can't find the bar. The barmaid asks what he can see. The coloured animals! I give her the phone and she talks him in.
I have to take the workstation back to London. At the airport security, they are much more suspicious than in London. A security man gestures me to follow him. He takes the machine into a little room and tells me to wait outside. He does something with cloths and a UV light. Threre are some cabin crew waiting nearby. I ask "Do you know what he's doing?"
"Oh, he's looking for explosives."
"Wow. I hope he doen't find any!"
I'm thinking about people found with chemical traces on their hands from playing cards, and they were wrongly convicted of handling explosives. The computer is clean, and I don't spend the next 10 years in a German prison.
Then they closed the London office, and that was my last trip to Hamburg.