"Where are you going?" - a friend who is far from football, having caught a suitcase note in my words, asks a "stupid" question. Where where? To Hamburg, for the last football match in the Russian season. On business. An alternative could be Lisbon, where the penultimate one was played the day before. But the question was asked, of course, not in the sense of Portugal or Germany. So, keep up the conversation.
And after the answer again in the same vein: "Ah, to Hamburg! Well, say hello to Reperban." Like a friend there two days later on the third "freezes." And this is all right. His personal characteristic. But here's another message - "as if nothing else is in Hamburg" - a little annoying. This is a characteristic of the city. Heavily distorted, I must say.
The strategic port, until the beginning of the last century, the Hanseatic city - in other words, free in its right to determine trade policy and lifestyle - Hamburg today remains independent and in many ways unlike other German cities. The quarters of debauchery spreading along the side streets leaving the wide and rampant Reperban street are one of the differences. This good enough in Munich, and in Cologne, where, they say, in general is the largest brothel in the world. Only there, in the rest of Germany, it is just a part of everyday life, and in Hamburg there is also folklore.
But the whole thing is that even Reperban is not a banal, vicious place. Here, for example, the Beatles first performed, which is remembered in Hamburg at the museum level. And in general - everyone perceives the Reeperbahn to the extent of his depravity, as we liked to say in our youth. Plus, and plus a lot - the rest of Hamburg. With its special cuisine, the main feature of which is its abundance. A friend (not the other one, who also has a lot of flaws, but just not a penchant for "stupid" questions) was once talking about a restaurant in the port of Hamburg, where he was served a fatal dose of salad, after which the steaming second brought him backward, as from a hot blade. With architecture in which to notice the “remake” is a task for a particularly sharp-sighted Indian. The first, almost ten years ago, impression of Hamburg was the weathered, sparkling-black walls, the sea roofs, salted copper roofs and spiers, and absolutely modern buildings with the same main color attributes inscribed by the restorer’s hand: the new walls are painted in the color of weathered brick, and the roofs are in color of oxidized copper sheet. Such concern for the unity of style can be felt in many German cities that were destroyed by the war, from Munich to Bremen, but the local architect, perhaps, showed special trepidation in the face of history.
Hamburg does not at all look like Rotterdam, which had been destroyed almost to its foundations (that’s where the Bolsheviks should be launched on time, huh!), Whose modern architecture was stupid to adjust to the former due to the complete absence of the latter. But Hamburg is not the focal point of burgher attributes, it does not much resemble 19th-century Germany, except for the sharp tips of the town hall and a dozen kirchs pecking at the gray but warm December sky. The average city is probably able to remind of the pre-war order (we know it thanks to Stirlitz, isn’t it?), But, in fact, only trees that feel like masters of square blocks remained from that comfort, and the houses themselves, of course, were built after the war , although the palette remains unchanged: the main colors are dark brick and sour-copper.
It is cozy here, despite the attempts of the Baltic wind. There is almost Scandinavia, with its toy characters, even serious characters. This is the time to come on the eve of winter, while not everything is dank, but already and for a long time there has been no hot weather so not going to the city. In summer, the dignity of Hamburg - warm taverns with huge dishes and a peasant taste schnapps, which in any case is better than the local pale anti-Bavarian beer - seems to be a drawback. But we didn’t come in the summer.
The road to the first meal will not be quite smooth: the taxi driver will knowingly listen to the request to be taken to a typical Hamburg restaurant "to your taste," will reach you in five minutes, but this long-awaited place will be closed "for special services" (is it not for CSKA fans?). “Well, we’re going to another place,” the taxi driver summarizes, adding that the further journey will cost the rider free of charge. Actually, you need to put an end to this. The goal of any journey is a cultural shock, and more is no longer needed. In other cities, as Khlestakov would say, they did not offer me a free taxi.
There is also a football theme, of course: suddenly someone does not remember what the fuss is. Let me remind you that CSKA arrived in Hamburg from Marbella, where the team purposefully prepared for the week for the final group match of the Champions League. He came to win - a necessary, but not sufficient condition for reaching the 1/8 finals. It will be difficult for the Russian champion to earn his three points, because Hamburg does not have a single one, and this is an occasion for the team of the young coach Thomas Doll to fight on Wednesday to preserve his honor. A native of East Germany, Doll, as it turned out when Hamburg arrived in Moscow, speaks good Russian: when Valery Gazzayev, meeting the Hamburg coach under the stands in Cherkizovo, wished him good luck in the Bundesliga in Russian, Doll clearly answered: "Thank you." True, the wish did not help: the third team of Germany last season came up to today's match, having on their account one victory in all tournaments and taking the penultimate place in the championship. By the way, a credit of confidence, measured out by Doll, seems prohibitive: any other young coach (or even the patriarch) with such results would have been fired already in September. However, I repeat, preparing for the match for the army team is not easier from this. Rather, the opposite. To aggravate the situation, the incident with the leader of Hamburg Rafael Van der Wart (or the Airborne Forces, as fans who are unaware of the significance of this abbreviation for us) is also capable of aggravating the situation. The Dutchman deliberately hit an opponent in a match with Bochum, for which he received a four-match suspension from the disciplinary committee of the German Football Union. The match with CSKA for Rafael is the only chance to prove himself and prove something to the Hamburg public this winter ...
And without Reperban, meanwhile, it will not do. In the evening, after an army training, to disobey the trip there would be blasphemous for a journalist. CSKA fans on Reperbah will surely have a quorum, and not observing them, not comparing their behavior and manners with the behavior of the Ukrainian public, which you and I remember, enjoyed after the World Cup match between Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, means missing a detail. Of course, it will be even more interesting to watch them on Thursday night, feeling the all-consuming significance of the football result: if CSKA beat Hamburg, and rivals in the Porto and Arsenal group didn’t sign a completely logical draw, the Reperbana would have such an enchanting evening that the Beatles did not even dream ... So we are just here for a football case and came here.
ALEXANDER SHMURNOV / HAMBURG