Police operation - case 1 -Hamburg

"Hören Sie damit auf und kommen Sie mit uns aufs Revier!"

 ""Stop that and come with us to the station!"

The order rang out sharply—in German, of course.

I translated it to my new friend Mario, a U.S. Navy man, who at that moment was helping me dig through a public trash can in Hamburg's harbor district.

We obediently followed the two city police officers to the precinct in the center of Hamburg's port, where we were supposed to explain why we were doing what we were doing.
I had just passed my final German exam a few months earlier, so I managed to defend us quite eloquently.

Luckily, it ended with just a warning. We got a few useful tips on where to be careful in that part of town—and a reminder that this district is home to more than just late-night romance.

You're probably wondering what exactly happened.

It was September 27th, 1978, the third day of a three-week trip across Western Europe with my loyal friend Mary.
And where else to start but in Reeperbahn, the famously (and infamously) wild red-light district of Hamburg—known for its prostitutes, neon signs, and shady characters?

We were searching for my lost "smart diary"—basically, the primitive iPhone of that time. A little notebook with all the addresses of people we were supposed to stay with during our trip through Germany, the Netherlands, and France.

Why Mary wasn't helping me look, I honestly don't know. It was very much in her interest, too.
But at that moment, she was probably sitting in a local cinema—watching some kind of porn film. Well… that's Reeperbahn for you.

Anyway, she had been there when I lost the diary.
I had just made a call to some friends we were supposed to stay with that night. I used a phone booth, and after the call, I simply forgot the little case with the diary inside.
I only realized it was gone a few hours later—Mary was already enjoying her movie, and Mario and I were walking along Reeperbahn, hoping I'd somehow find it again.

I rushed back to the phone booth—but of course, it was gone.
I started thinking out loud: someone must have gone in to make a call, found the little pouch, opened it, saw the diary inside…
And if it was a proper, orderly German citizen? He probably just threw it into a Papierkorb—a city trash bin.

So we started searching.
Digging through trash cans—Mario in his U.S. Army uniform, and me looking like just about anything but a typical female Reeperbahn worker.

The police caught us at the third bin.

The diary, with several addresses in the Netherlands, West Germany and France, was of course gone for good—and with it, our entire travel plan.

That loss shaped the rest of our trip across Western Europe.

In every country, it took at least a full day to track down even one working address or phone number for someone we knew.
Until then, we had no choice but to improvise.
And it was exactly that improvisation that brought us a whole series of unexpected—and quite adventurous—experiences.

So what did that look like?

In the Netherlands, we spent our first night with a young truck driver who gave us a ride to The Hague. That evening—instead of dinner—he offered us our first joint.

While in Normandy, we spent the night in an abandoned house facing Mont Saint Michel. 

On our last night in France, in Strasbourg, we ended up with a strange little punk sect that invited us into their huge apartment on the fifth floor of a grey building on the outskirts of the city.

Everyone wore black, covered in tattoos, pale, and whispering—maybe from spirituality, maybe from too much weed.

The interior looked like a manifesto of darkness:
the living room was all in deep purple, the bedrooms in dark blue and green.

But the real showstopper was the toilet—a long, narrow room entirely painted black, and at the far end, like a glowing shrine, stood a perfectly white toilet bowl.  

And finally—just before heading back home—we wrapped it all up in Nuremberg.

We were looking for the cheapest hotel in town because we had completely run out of money.
A kind hotel clerk at a Jugendherberge (youth hostel) told us they were full, but picked up the phone and called a friend.

Thanks to him, we got a room for 25 Deutsche Marks. For the whole night.
In a love hotel. Yes, a brothel.

We slept in the same bed, locked the door with a double lock, and prayed no one would try the handle.

You can read about the final part of our journey — how we travelled by train from Nuremberg to Brno — at the link below.

Next time: Police Operation, Case Two – Paris.

Footnote:

* The Reeperbahn is a street in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, famous for its nightlife and adult entertainment. Actually it is a  Red light district. The name comes from rope-makers (Reeper) who used to work there. Over time, it attracted all kinds of colorful—and shady—characters. In the 20th century, it became known as the "sinful mile," filled with bars, nightclubs, and sex shops. 

It's also the place where The Beatles kicked off their career in the 1960s.

**  our West Europe trip - you can read about it on this link