One Weekend, Two Port Cities – Port 1

I was sent to Hamburg for work and, due to labour strife and confusion with my Hamburger friends, I couldn’t stay for the weekend. Instead I returned to the Dorf and boarded another bus to a second port city. In this the first of two blog posts, I write and ramble about Hamburg, the first port.

The Ad Party in the Fish Market with
a really big Disco Ball

Hamburg

Hamburg and I have never had the luck to get to know each other. The first time I was there was for four or five hours. Enough time for a job interview and a few quick beers with a friend at a bar near the train station before hopping onto express back to Berlin. Oh, it was rainy and grey the whole time too.

This recent, second trip was less brief, but there wasn't enough time for everything other than the trip's intended purpose.

Ad Party!!!!!!!!

Hamburg was the venue for this year’s Art Directors' Club of Germany's annual awards, so my agency sent a contingent of its ad folk, including me, from the Dorf to Hamburg to take part in the event.

The event includes an exhibition of the winners and a pretty big after party. Everyone was excited about the after party, while the exhibition was an afterthought. Me? I am an non-German-speaking ad nerd, so I was excited about the work and was nervous about the party.

But the trip was not so easy. A rail strike (it's Europe, it happens often) forced the agency to rent a bus. The rail strike also made it impossible to stick around in the city for the weekend to visit Hamburger friends, which I had planned.

Upon arrival and after a quick traditional lunch, which for a producer and I meant eating a pink mess of mashed potatoes and pork with two sunny-side-up eggs on top, we hit the exhibition.

Mixed reactions to Labskaus, a traditional Hamburger dish
of mashed potatoes and meat with eggs on top.

How do I describe German advertising? I can't. It's a nation of 80 million people, not counting Austria and Switzerland, and without a command of the German language, my generalizations would barely generalize properly.

But they're working hard over here. The design is fantastic and, even in our little global village, it feels distinctively German in some strange, indescribable way. They're also into visual ideas, which cheered me up when I went through the ad poster category with my limited command of German.

Just because I said I was excited about the exhibit, doesn't mean I was also a little excited about the ad party. It did not disappoint. They threw the party in the Fish Market building, with free drinks and a gigantic disco ball. 

I went to bed at 3am, which was late for me but early for many of my colleagues – some of whom lasted until 8am. I am only 32 years old, but I guess that is truly old in advertising years.

Hamburger Friends

In the months leading up to, and right after, the shuttering of my old ad agency in Budapest, colleagues were blown to the wind. Some returned home, some drifted to other places, and others found work in Hamburg.

Usually a free ride to a strange right before the weekend would mean that I would stick around for a said weekend. But with the rail strike, some Hamburger friends moving apartments, and other Hamburger friends flying away for the weekend, it didn't seem like a possibility.

Instead, we met for a great, but quick, catch-up lunch. The agency's bus had a departure time for 1pm. At 12:55, still partway through the lunch, I received frantic instant messages asking where I was. It turns out a 1pm departure time means arriving before 1pm – what an amateur move by the Canadian.

Once again a visit to Hamburg and Hamburger friends is cut short. There's always the third time, though.

An ad for a newspaper. "In Berlin it could be a bum or a CEO."

In the illustration category...

I've posted this before, but some of my
favourite work was the student work.