This was always going to be a relatively complicated day, with three scheduled trains to Hamburg with two changes. However, I woke up to a message that my first train would no longer be stopping in Luxembourg. It was suggested that I go to Metz instead, where I’d be able to pick up my original train. Waiting on the platform, however, I saw that this train was very delayed to the point where if I got it I’d miss my connection anyway. A quick post on the excellent Interrailing for the Older Crowd Facebook group produced some excellent suggestions and I soon found myself on a different route to Koblenz and Koln. In fact, I even managed to get a connection at Koln that the app said was impossible, jumping on board with 30 seconds to spare!
Otherwise, this was a beautiful journey, the train to Hamburg especially so. The green fields, the sheer amount of forestation compared the UK, the variety of housing and the styles of farming all adding to the panorama outside the window.
In Hamburg I was meeting up with my very special friend (and PinPoint collaborator) Jane. Jane and I were first Beatles pen pals back in our teenage years and are still very close friends indeed. We planned to visit Beatles-related locations as well as explore the city and generally hang out.
By the time I reached the north German port and took the bus to our accommodation, Jane was already there, having flown in from Stansted. We were both tired from our journeys so we popped out for a quick stroll, a couple of beers and went to sleep.
We also had a late start the next day, before taking the bus to the Reeperban in the St Pauli district. This was to be a highlight of my whole trip and perhaps the main reason why Hamburg was on my schedule. We found a letterbox cache that took us on a route around all the main Beatles related locations– the Kaiserkeller, the Star Club, the police station where they were locked up for setting fire to a condom and the doorway featured on the cover of Lennon’s Rock and Roll album.
We were surprised that so little seemed to be made of these locations, or of the Beatles story itself, but this also meant that the area retained some authenticity. It was grubby, seedy and dirty. The strip clubs, bars and sex shops would have been here back in 1960, and it brought home to me just what an eye-opening culture shock this place must have been for those young men from Liverpool. For huge Beatles fans like us, it was unbelievably exciting to be walking these streets, stepping in their footsteps, even after 65 long years. It was also a reminder that despite their later polished, squeaky clean image, they began as a fast-living, hard-edged rock and roll band and soon returned to type after Brian Epstein’s death.
After a good wander around these streets, picking up a few Adventure Labs and other caches along the way, we grabbed a drink which led to our finding an unexpectedly good Italian restaurant where we stayed for a meal. Still in St Pauli, we explored the now busy streets after dark, getting a taste of the local ‘nightlife’ but somehow managing to miss the darker parts of the area. Eventually we’d had enough, and jumped on another bus back to the apartment by 1am.
We chose a lighter itinerary the next day, starting later, before heading to the centre and the City Hall, just avoiding another downpour while completing a complicated Virtual.
After that we headed for the remains of St Nicholas church, mostly destroyed in the allied bombings of 1943. The tower remains intact, and I took the lift up to the viewing area for another fabulous panoramic view in another city. Back down at the ground, I then entered the exhibition area in the former crypt. This was an extremely challenging and thought-provoking exhibition largely focused on the lives of ordinary Hamburg citizens and the effects that the bombing had on them.
In the UK we rightly focus on the allied efforts to free Europe from Nazi tyranny, and remember those who gave their lives in service. What we don’t often think of is the effect of war on the everyday people in ‘enemy’ countries. Like Coventry and the East end, Hamburg was devastated. Over 40,000 civilians were killed, half the city’s housing was destroyed and a million residents were left homeless. These people were not our enemy.
As we walked away, the heavens opened and out came the umbrellas again, although that didn’t stop me from finding one last cache in the rain while others stayed sheltered, watching me like an idiot! We took the bus back to the apartment again and discussed our plans for the morning.
We’d spotted something a bit different to do on our last day in Hamburg- a graffiti and street art tour! We met our guide at the pre-arranged location and she started by giving us an overview of the differences between tagging and street art, throw-ups and paste-ups. She showed us examples of particular local artists, their messages and techniques, and about the culture of that art. We even saw an artist at work in the Flora Garten.
I always enjoy learning about different sub-cultires, especially when they challenge my norms, and this certainly did that. I’m sure that for the rest of this trip I’ll be looking differently at cities because of this tour. Simply fabulous!
In the afternoon, I headed off on my own on in search of an increasingly rare Webcam cache in the Wedel area. Two buses and a train later and I was in the delightfully bright port area, eating ice cream and even walking on a river beach!
The main webcam was down but there were others on the same site and so I took a selfie at GZ then walked round until I was in sight of another cam and grabbed the image. This was the first one for me since Helsinki last year.
There were a couple of other caches in the area, including a Virtual, so I mopped those up to before grabbing an ice cream and heading for the bus back into the city again. Mission accomplished! I met Jane back in St Pauli for another wander round, before heading home for an early night. We had an early start on the morning with a train to catch to Berlin.
So that was Hamburg. As Beatles fans it has been something of a pilgrimage, a place of only ever read about and it was a moving experience finally to have been there, and I can’t think of finer company to do it with than my oldest and best friend Jane.
A Wright
June 2026
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