Hye-jae: Book 2 - New Loves

Happy Days Part 28

It was hard to believe but they had swapped strolling the historic streets of Torun - re-visiting its quaint, past glories - for the bustle and swagger of Hamburger Hafen - Hamburg Port - where every possible language could be heard from the cosmopolitan crowds.  Dieter had told them on the metro from the airport that Hamburg's nickname - Gateway to the World - stemmed mainly from its port, on the river Elbe, being one of the busiest in the world.  

He had brought them to a riverside restaurant that was a favourite of his - 'the best seafood dishes you can imagine, bar none,' but they could have easily strolled a few metres left or right and had a choice of any number of other restaurants, cafes and bars, including quite a few on board the multitude of permanently docked boats and ships.  The group were seated upstairs by a large window in an elegantly renovated warehouse which gave clear views across the Elbe river, dotted with cranes that looked like children's toys from this aspect.  After an admittedly delicious, sea-flavoured lunch, the company sat back to relax over coffees and teas.  Seon-jae placed his arm around the back of Hye-won's chair, his hand lightly resting on her shoulder, his thumb stroking her clavicle slowly and rhythmically.  She raised her eyes to meet his and a side smile passed between them.  Hey Lover Boy.  Hey Lover Girl. 

Dieter and In-seo were reminiscing about great nights they had had as graduate students in the well-known jazz bars and music clubs and Ciara wondered: 'how come you two know Hamburg so well?' 

In-seo answered first: 'well, you know about The Beatles and Hamburg, right?' but Ciara laughed: 'I'm a bit young to be a Beatles fan, you know,' and In-seo had to ruefully admit she had a point.

'Ok, but it's a fairly well-known story that lots of bands came to Hamburg in the sixties to play in all the pretty awful clubs at the time that were in the Reeperbahn - Red Light District - and The Beatles were one of those.  Seemingly, John Lennon said years later that he had been born in Liverpool but grew up in Hamburg and there were many stories of crazy parties, arrests, getting beaten up.  But anyway, when we were grad students together, Hamburg had this reputation - partly because of those stories, I suppose - as the coolest town for music in Germany.'

'Not classical music, surely?'  Ciara asked.

'No, but I'm sure you know, it's rare to find a group of classically-trained musicians who don't also have interests in other types of music.'

Ciara nodded and looked thoughtful when he said this but didn't respond, her eyes musing in the middle-distance.

'Like Billy Joel,' filled in Hye-won and she looked to Seon-jae, as they both remembered their stolen night, when they had listened to The Piano Man and she had recounted the incongruous role it had played during her time as a grad student in New York.  His look showed that he realised the deep significance of that memory for them both, as his hand squeezed her shoulder.

'Yes, exactly, and lots of others.  Anyway, we were all trying to be cool in those days,' In-seo huffed a laugh at his younger self and Dieter smiled ruefully too: 'so we got this idea that if we came to Hamburg, some of its northern urban cool  - in contrast to what we thought of as Freiburg's southern provincial uncoolness - would rub off on us so one summer, a group of 5 or 6 of us music students all piled in an ancient camper van and took to the autobahn - motorway.  Back then, the autobahns had no speed limit - our German friends told us they thought it was something to do with Germans wanting to be free from diktat - after what had happened with the Nazis, I suppose.  I don't know if that was true but BMWs and Mercedes zoomed past us all day long - doing crazy speeds - while we ambled along in the slow lane.'

Dieter chipped in: 'it should have taken us about 8 hours but it seemed like it took double that.'

'In-seo resumed: 'so, once we got here, we weren't going back any time soon and we just...fooled around, I suppose, not doing much during the day but at night, going to all the music clubs and venues  - well, the free ones anyway.  So we got to know a lot of other musicians and we would sometimes even play a bit.  It was...fun.'