This blog post relates a series of unconnected events (well, connected only by my presence) that occurred in the north German city of Hamburg between 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4, and 4:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, 2010.

In that 24-hour period, I joined a group of singing Salvation Army enthusiasts as they paraded with a wooden cross past bemused hookers in the Reeperbahn red light/entertainment district; met a British rock star on the street; watched from the sidelines as a police identification/immigration check turned into a drug bust; and got yelled at by a bunch of harpie prostitutes from their salesroom windows.

Other things happened before and after that 24-hour period — mostly to do with rain, interesting people, the Hamburg Freezers hockey team and accidently disrupting the security system at the offices of Bild newspaper — but those are other stories for other times.

I may be posting this a few days after the events happened because I have difficulty uploading photos at the moment and the story really works best with accompanying visuals.

(It now looks like it will be a week later: “Internet cafe” in many places around here seems to mean a place with one ancient terminal hardwired into the web and no wi-fi; useless if you are trying to work on a laptop; and then there are all the bizarre cookies that choke off everything when one does occassionally find a wireless connection. Don´t get me started … by the way, there is no apostrophe on a German keyboard … what looks like an apostrophe about 15 words ago is actually an accent mark … dashes are a problem too, especially when an important e-address has a dash in it and what looks sort of like the same dash on a German keyboard does not read as the same dash in the address, thus making it impossible to EVER get on to that particular website whilst using a German keyboard. Just ignore me:  I´m <fake apostrophe> frustrated and tired of spending hours and days trying to do something that should take five minutes. Deep breath. Calm, calm. Back to the blog post.)

Here we go.

There´s a Hamburg singer I like very much named Stefan Gwildis who specializes in putting Deutsch lyrics — usually with a Hamburg flavour — to American pop, rock, and soul standards.

For example, Bill Withers´Ain´t No Sunshine becomes Stefan Gwildis´Allem Anschein Nach Bis Du,  Joni Mitchell´s Big Yellow Taxi  becomes Wenn Es Weg Ist (Joni gave Stefan a very hard time before she approved the German lyrics), and Brook Benton´s Rainy Night in Georgia becomes Regennacht In Hamburg (Rainy Night In Hamburg). I never remember most of the original lyrics anyway, so I just hum along to familiar melodies and sing choruses in my version of the German language.

All of which is beside the point, except I wanted to add a little mood music and let you know that it rains a lot in Hamburg. A lot. Especially in the fall and winter.

So, of course, it was pouring buckets when I left my hotel in the Altona district about 4:30 p.m. Thursday. I had semi-dried some of my clothes soaked earlier in the day but my only pair of shoes were still soggy leather boats. I had forgotten to bring a hat so I had a scarf wrapped around my head like some weird cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and a hijab-wearing infidel.

The clocks go back a couple of weeks earlier in Europe than in North America, so it was already dark as I headed out. Did I mention it was raining? Pouring? A deluge. In other words, a normal November night in Hamburg.

Since humans, like moths, are drawn to light in the night, I headed for the neon-drenched ersatz glitz of the Reeperbahn, Hamburg´s former red light district, incubator of the Beatles, and current home to musical theatre, bars and bistros, transvestite cabarets and, of course, a multitude of sex shops and strip joints.

The real sex trade still flourishes on the periphery of the Reeperbahn — with younger prostitutes loitering just down the street from the local Polizei station and older (in some cases we´re talking senior-discount old, but more about that later) ladies sitting in sidestreet showrooms in their bustiers and corsets, knitting or reading (romance novels? philosophy tracts? I couldn´t really tell) or chatting to prospective clients through their open display windows.

(In fairness, I should point out that the Reeperbahn is a very small part of Hansestadt Hamburg, both physically and culturally, and the city is a large, multi-faceted, stimulating and prosperous metropolis. It is no longer the gritty, grotty seaport town of the Beatles’ day. It is still the second-busiest port in Europe — after Rotterdam — but 2010 Hamburg is a sparkling, effervescent place and one of the richest cities in Europe, right up there with Brussels and London. So much for fairness. Let’s get back to the dark side of town.)

The Reeperbahn is a fun place, great for people watching, full of surprises  and not too dangerous — as long as you avoid arguments with drunks or stay out too, too late.

So I´m wandering around the Reeperbahm in the rain (by this time I´ve added a cheap hat from a discount shop to replace my bedraggled and bedrizzled head scarf), clickity-clicking with the camera, talking to people (most Hamburgers speak pretty good English and I bumped into a few Americans and Brits, but no Canadians) and generally having a grand old time.

And then the music started. Not the honky-tonk grinder music or pseudo early-Beatles rock you would expect to hear on the Reeperbahn, but a bouncy, sugary, Carpenters-style pop ditty sung by young, enthusiastic voices accompanied by a three-chord acoustic guitar player.

I looked down the sidestreet where the music was coming from to see a glowing cross bobbing toward me. The cross wasn´t burning or anything, just shimmering from the reflection of neon lights on rain-soaked wood.

Carrying the cross was a young woman, girl maybe, looking almost as uncynical and innocent as the young hookers across the street. Beside her was a uniformed, earnest Salvation Army officer (also quite young) and following were about 20 other young people in their late teens and early 20s, all singing their little hearts out. And bringing up the rear were some bristled, shifty-eyed older guys who looked like they had either found salvation in the bottom of a bottle very recently or were singing for their supper, as it were.

So, as  just another bristled, shifty-eyed older guy, I joined the parade (I didn´t know the lyrics, but I hummed along a la Stefan Gwildis), waited at the light to cross the Reeperbahn (Germans really do frown on jaywalking, even in a neighbourhood where sexual procurement and alcohol consumption are legal street activities).

On the other side, we marched past an equal-sized contingent of hookers loitering artfully around Hans-Albers-platz. The young band of Salvationists looked straight ahead as they marched past (although I noticed a couple of the young male singers checking out the other team) while the hookers either ignored them completely or, if they were bored and unoccupied, watched the heavenly choir pass with bemused indifference.

I left the parade at this point (too much Carpenters-style music gives me a diabetic reaction) to stay with the creatures of the night a while longer before making my own solitary parade through the rain and darkness back to my hotel, a Carpenters song gnawing at my brain. (In Deutschland an annoying song you can´t get out of your head is known as an Ohrwurm — an ear worm. How apt.)

The next afternoon I was back in the St. Pauli-Reeperbahn area, partly because it was on my route to the harbour, partly to check out Gommorah in the daylight, and partly to make a pilgrimage to the remnants of the various seedy clubs where the Beatles got their battle scars as an hour-on, hour-off Hamburg bar band in the early ´60s.

I was surprised to find one of the Beatles clubs — the first one they were played in Hamburg, as a matter of fact – was right beside another club where I had had some dealings the previous night. There seemed to be quite a bit of activity in front of the clubs — a band tour bus, an equipment truck,  a limo, people milling about — so, as Nosey Parker, I butted in to find out what was going on.

It turned out that the lead singer from a big British alt-rock band  (if you can be big and alt at the same time) was on a small-venue European tour to promote his new solo album and was playing that night at the Indra Club — site of the Beatles´first Hamburg gig (Aug. 18, 1960) and also a regular venue for the likes of Jimi Hendrix through the  ´60s.

The rock star and his entourage had just arrived in Hamburg from their gig in Amsterdam the night before and were checking out the famed Indra.

Who, I asked a roadie, was the rock star?

The roadie looked at me like I was a lunatic or very old (guilty to both counts) and replied: “That´s Xerzynk Ogleblup. He´s the lead singer for Glubpudfyz Nzurk.” A pause and then, as if addressing a small, ignorant child: “They´re very big, you know.”

So I started talking to Xerzynk Ogleblup, got him to pose for a few photos at the entrance to the club and got his autograph, just in case one of my kids actually knew who the hell he was.

Turns out the guy was (and still is, as far as I know) Paul Smith, lead singer for the British band Maximo Park and they are, in fact, very big  – a headline act with several platinum records and quite a few hit songs. For the record, Paul Smith was a  nice guy, friendly, gracious, funny and really excited to be doing a gig in a dank bar where the Beatles had been regulars almost 50 years earlier.

The Indra Club, like most of the Beatles´ Hamburg haunts, is on a sidestreet called Grosse Freiheit (Great Freedom, more or less — the Freedom referred to being religious half a millenium ago, not the current sex, drugs and rock´n´roll variety). Several of those old clubs such as the Kaiserkeller at Grosse Freiheit 36 are still there – sucking in and regurgitating Beatle-brained tourists like flat, overpriced beer — but the most famous of the Beatles´ Hamburg  homes, the Star-club at Grosse Freiheit 39 is long gone. The Star-club closed in 1969 and the building burned in 1987. If you go to Grosse Freiheit 39 now, you will find a few bronze plaques commemorating the club and a Thai restaurant.

I don´t think there is any irony there. None that I can see, anyway. It is what it is.

As I continued meadering along Grosse Freiheit, I noticed an unlikely quartet talking in the middle of the street. There was a tall, striking dyed-blonde woman in jeans, a black jacket and a backpack; a short, weather-beaten, older man in similar attire; and two scruffy guys in droopy pants with far-away eyes.

I started watching them and slumped into a doorway to take some photos. It was soon apparent the tall woman and short man were polizei of some kind (they really were  Central Casting’s dream team for an odd-couple cop TV series) and the two scruffy guys were objects of their interest.

I have no idea where the scruffy guys were from, but it also soon became apparent that they did not have identification papers that satisfied the cops. And it was also apparent that the document check had turned into a full-scale drug search.

The blonde woman cop waved down the street and a black van soon pulled up. A tall, muscular young cop joined his colleagues and the two sad guys, leaving the van blocking Grosse Freiheit just outside the Kaiserkeller.

An old couple pulled up behind the van and patiently sat there. I went over and told them in my poor German that a “Polizei Aktion” was taking place and they should go back the way they came.

They looked at me blankly and sat there. Quietly. Without getting out their car. For 10 minutes. They were still patiently sitting there  behind the police van when I left.

Back at the drug search, the cops were sorting through their suspects’ jackets, hats, pants pockets, even making them take off their shirts in the middle of the street.

The two guys seemed quite calm and passively obeyed the cops with a smoky-eyed fatalism.

One way or the other, I knew those guys would eventually end up in the police van and would be spending an indefinite amount of time in government custody. So I moved on before that happened. Sometimes there is just no point in watching the end of a movie when you already know what’s coming.

Most of the area’s brothels/bordellos (Bordell in Deutsch, by pure chance) are on the other side of the Reeperbahn from Grosse Freiheit, so I wandered over there to see what was happening in the middle of a rainy Hamburg afternoon.

The bordellos are legal but relatively discreet, so there is really not a lot to distinguish a brothel from a regular apartment building in most of the neighbourhood.

One street, however, is quite different. Herbertstrasse, just down Davidstrasse from the local polizei station, is one block long, sealed off at both ends by two-metre high fences with an opening for pedestrians. Herbertstrasse has been a sex market for more than a century and the discreet view-blocking panels first went up (on Nazi orders) in 1933.

A sign on the fence warns that women and males under 18 are forbidden entry but it is almost obscured by graffiti and advertising stickers, and overwhelmed by a tobacco ad with the tagline “Für mehr Fremdenverkehr” (“For more tourism”).  In an earlier incarnation, the ad´s slogan  was  the less-subtle  “Für mehr Vorspiel” (“For more foreplay”).

As I found out later, the wall should also have had a sign saying  “Fotos verboten” (“Do not take photos or else, dummy”).

Herbertstrasse is basically a shopping mall for sex. Once you walk through the gate, the street is lined with shop windows, each one featuring a woman in erotic costume, usually featuring a bustier or corset  – sometimes a  perky sailor suit or Marlene-style top hat and tails for variety — with fishnet stockings, killer stilettos, big hair and over-the-top makeup completing the cliche.

The shop windows unlatch from the inside , so the women can quickly open them to talk to passing men/potential customers.

But while they’re waiting for Godot, the women sit in comfy chairs and knit or read books and magazines. As I said before, I never did figure out what books they were reading. I should have asked, but in general conversations on Herbertstrasse were short-lived if they weren’t work-related.

Here’s one sample conversation (in English):

“Come inside. Fifty Euros and I will take care of the rest.”

“Sorry, I’m broke, but I’m looking for a backpacker hostel that used to be a brothel. Do you know where it is?”

Raised eyebrow and a sweep of the hand.

“There are many beds to rent around here. But only for short periods of time.”

The window shut. End of conversation.

As I walked on, a door opened and a well-dressed little old man with a Homburg hat and a cane tottered out. Behind him, an attractive 40ish  blonde in the requisite bustier helped him down the stairs and chatted briefly before waving goodbye as the little old man wobbled away.

I decided not to pry but the two seemed well acquainted, so I suppose it was probably his chosen form of regular physiotherapy.

Despite the public nature of the street, its practitoners and their clients seemed to value discretion, which was why I waited  until I was at the end of the street — near the getaway gateway — to start taking photos.

You can’t tell from the one photo I got, but windows beside me were immediately flung open and screeching banshees began howling for my head. At least that was the distinct impression I got, although they may have been threatening some other body parts too. Since I had heard tales of unwanted guests being doused with pots of urine or worse, I decided discretion was definitely the better part of valour and scooted out the gate.

Now the one thing that really surprised me about Herbertstrasse was the age of its inhabitants. Unlike the young street prostitutes out on the Reeperbahn, the women of Herbertstrasse seemed to range in age from late 30s to (perhaps) early 60s. Most of them were definitely closer to retirement than high school.

I am an old man, so far be it for me to say that age should be any kind of barrier to sexual activity. But it seems somehow … undignified, shall we say? … for a person my age to be sitting in a window in a bustier, casting come-hither winks and moues at the passing parade. On the other hand, the women of Herbertstrasse carried themselves with a great deal of personal (perhaps “professional” is a better word) dignity. Who am I to say someone should close up shop at a certain age, especially when there are still eager customers knocking at the door?

So that was 24 hours in Hamburg, 24 hours on the Reeperbahn really. After that I connected with a friend who is the local hockey beat writer for Bild newspaper and went to a Hamburg Freezers hockey game. More about Freezers (the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga) another time.

But our 24 hours are finished and so is this story.