An open letter to Hamburg summer
Or, how I chose to make it the best summer one could, this far North in the world.
In all my four years in Hamburg, I never managed to stay for the summer. This year I was forced to.
I was forced to taste strawberries freshly picked from bushes. To drink crisp Wiezen beer at the Alsterperle during golden hour.
And I fucking loved every moment of it.
Summer tasted of barbecues in my friend's backyard, and joints on Friday nights with my ex. It tasted like schmalzkuchen on street parties and cool rosè by the lake, like pink lemonade Magnum bought at convention stores, and whatever ice cream was marked down at the supermarket on Mondays.
I can still taste on my tongue the 13kg watermelon hauled from the Turkish market and prepared with feta and mint for the week. The routinely brewed pour-over coffee without a morning rush. A new-found addiction for laugenspitz, and the hunt for kaffee und kuchen with visiting friends. In my brain, the taste of Sommersby’s cider cooled in ice packs equals the warmth of the sunset caressing my closed eyelids.
It was not the summer I finally fell in love, but the season I got a taste of escapades during a lunchtime schedule I didn't need to keep. It was when I finally realized that I didn't need to keep anything I didn't want to. I shaved my beard, cut my hair, lost 28kg, and gleefully archived the memories of a certain someone, together with this year's Eurovision songs, in the back of my mind.
I let go, by letting myself back in.
And that's when summer started to sound like Taylor Swift singing August on stage, and straight men screaming over football matches.
Summer entered my ears like house music in a pitch-black boiler room at Queerpol, as sweaty afro beats inside a sweltering 45-degree BernsteinBar, a Beyoncè mash-up in the baroque hidden halls of Prinzenbar, Brazilian Funk in my headphones strutting down the treadmill, and “Please, Please, Please, Please” by Sabrina Carpenter belted unapologetically under the rain running to catch the ferry in Ovelgönne.
Cutting through the noise, there was always the prevalent sound of the keys of my computer keyboard, pressed harder and continuously, as my brain turned to mush, and my writing sessions turned into a manuscript. And when it was done, I felt a freedom that sounded like the crashing waves at Scharbeutz and the rustling wind of the North Sea.
Summer felt like my trembling legs on top of a stand-up paddle board, and my sore muscles after rowing an inflatable boat against in the wind in the Alster. I felt it in my lungs, at every draw for air, swimming in open pools. I felt it in my fingers, at the turn of every page of the books I kept ransom for many years on my bookshelves.
Summer felt like the slippery muddy shores of St. Peter-Ording squishing between my toes, and the prickly grass of the Alsterpark poking holes through my blanket.
Summer passed like a collective high, not much unlike that time at Minus Bar, when I couldn't feel my feet touch the ground, and we all laughed until the skies turned grey in anticipation of dawn.
I was able to look at Hamburg in a different light. Its neighborhoods opened to me like a kaleidoscope.
I saw the city from its canals, front seat on a wooden canoe. I saw life develop in the long lawn of the Stadpark, stretching from the Naturbad to the Planetary. I watched the sunrise at 4 am, pink and cool, through the spider web that I gave up on taking down on my balcony (and relished every week at the growth of my “pet” spider). And then I watched it down its last rays in warm orange hues, perched on the deck of the Uhlenhorster boat stop, feet dangling into the cool lake waters.
I dove with open eyes under the rippling waves that crashed down on the lunar crescent strip of Sylt sand and watched seagulls pick the Oberhafenkanal low tide banks for food on my afternoon walks.
The fireworks lighting up the sky at Landungsbrücken are ingrained in my brain, just like color sprinkles over Danish soft-serve.
It was the summer of friends, old, new, and renewed. Never has a season cast a brighter light into the people that matter, or better yet, into those to whom I matter. We drank, we partied, we talked, we took long walks, we cried, we face-timed, we laughed hysterically, and we made time for each other over giant-sized sandwiches, all-you-can-eat sushi, Persian dinners, Teenage Mutant Turtle Ninja video game matches, and long train rides to the beach.
It was the summer of Haribo gummies, Alster waters, a single Deutsche pass, FitnessFirst daily check-ins, and Substack writing.
It was a Hamburg summer like no other. Not because I was forced to stay. But because I chose to make it the best summer one could, this far North in the world.