Hamburg photos: street art, graffiti, night scenes, the docks and The Monochrome Set

I’m still working through the photos from my recent German tour, and here’s a selection of  over 80 pictures taken around Hamburg, a city I liked very much.

Arriving by train.

Hamburg is the 8th biggest city in the EU (and the second biggest in Germany).

By the subway.

Street art for the Angel Klub by the fish market.

Night view.

I don’t recall what this dive bar was called – it was near Clockers on Paul-Roosen-Straße 27. The beer was great.

We were staying in the shockingly awful Hotel Stadt Altona, which was run by Germany’s answer to Basil Fawlty.

The hotel rooms were filthy and Herr Fawlty would loudly tap his watch and shout at  patrons to finish their breakfast by 10am.

Here’s some views near the hotel.

‘Crazy Night! I can feel it in the air’ says the graffiti.

This shiny new on-trend apartment block has something of a Bladerunner air about it, with video adverts playing over its facade.

Costing €180 million and standing 85 and 75 metres tall, the Dancing Towers are two high-rise office blocks at the eastern end of Reeperbahn, in St. Pauli, Hamburg,

Designed by BRT Architects of Hadi Teherani and completed in 2012, the two towers symbolise a couple dancing the Tango.

Designed by architect Fritz Trautwein, the Heinrich-Hertz-Turm radio telecommunication tower was built between 1965–1968 and with an overall height of 279.2 m (916 ft) it is Hamburg’s tallest structure.

Wikipedia has more detail:

There are eight concentric platforms stacked one above the other: starting at 128 m (420 ft) with the two-story observation (lower floor) and restaurant (upper floor) platform, served by two high-speed elevators. Above that at 150 m (492 ft) is the operations platform housing the workforce and equipment, and further up six differentially sized, smaller open platforms in same distances, populated with high-gain directional microwave radio relay antennas (“parabolic mirrors”). Number nine was added at 25 m height in July 2005.

After both the observation platform and restaurant were closed due to asbestos decontamination, former stuntman Jochen Schweitzer set up a bungee jumping platform. This closed in 2001.

The fabulously brutalist Hamburg Flak towers stand within site of St. Pauli’s stadium.

Now home to a music school, shops and a nightclub, they were built in WW2 as near-indestructible fortresses designed to mount a long-term defence against attacking armies.

Street scenes and graffiti art around St Pauli:

Delightful architecture of Carolinen Passage.

A rather deflated peacock.

Loved this old Mercedes hearse which looks like it had driven straight out of the Ipcress File movie.

City centre view.

Tourist tack.

Men in leather jackets gather outside a gun shop.

Eek!

Night time scenes around the docks.

That boat is definitely British.

The striking modern architecture of the Dockland office building, on Edgar-Engelhard-Kai, a quay located between the Norderelbe, the northern arm of the Elbe River, and the Fischereihafen fishing harbour.

Loved this sticker inside the Hafenklang club, where I was performing with the Monochrome Set.

Support band in action.

The venue was brilliant, hosting a live music space & nightclub in a former recording studio. Everywhere around has gentrified into new-urban-loft-dwelling-lifestyle-living-hell, so I do worry how long this place can continue before the yuppie complaints roll in.

My drum kit for the night.

[Gig pics by Vanessa Musson]

Cobbled street and rain, in a scene reminiscent of one of my favourite painters, Atkinson Grimshaw.

Heading home in the rain with my pals, Jack and Nisha.

‘Yip’ went the annoying little dog.

Next day we were off to far flung Weikersham.

Related posts:

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