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.

Patio Season, I mean Spring, is here

You know its spring has come to Canada when the first warm day arrives. People peel off their winter layers, ditch their toques – some even don shorts, just to make a point. And they all head for the patios, where they drink beer merrily until the sun sets. 

Of course, it's not summer so as the sun sets people migrate to tables remaining in the sun. until there are no sun kissed table left on the patio. Then everyone peels on their warmer layers or head for central heating in the bar or at home.

Germans are not unlike Canadians in this regard. Sure, we have our differences: a loopy doopy language barrier, Immanuel Kant, and really dark children's tales. But when it comes to drinking beer out of doors, we share some common ground.

Granted, it's a bit different. Many pubs in the Dorf have high tables, so you have to stand to enjoy your outdoor beer. This is good if you want to avoid those I-just-stood-up-to-pee-then-fall-back-into-my-chair moments. This is a bad thing if you're like me and like to lean when you drink.

The standing likely has a purpose. When I arrived to the Dorf in November, Canada's patio season was long over. That was when you sat inside the cozy pub with your frosty pint and cursed the grey sky and the coming snows. In the Dorf, those hearty Germans were drinking outdoors, standing mind you, so there's no frost-bitten toes. 

But there are people who prefer to wait for fairer days to sip their outdoor beers. And the wait, with us Canadians in the cozy beer halls, cursing their grey skies.

Now, as my social media fills with patio shots and outdoor beer pitcher pictures, I am reminded that there are two seasons in Canada: winter and patio season. It's no different in Germany. The Germans come running out to the parks and patios for outdoor drinks and snacks and drinks. The crazy ones who lingered outside all winter, puffing their smokes and shivering over their cold beers, also join us, if they survived. 

We all linger in the sun, drinks in hand. Some of us shuffle chair to chair to follow the setting sun while others remain on their feet, working on their tan until the end. 

That's probably how its meant to be. Beer, whiskey, wine, whatever, all tastes better in the outdoors. No one sits in a basement and uploads photos of their beers. Well, no one on my social feeds, anyway.

Germans will perch at their high tables in the sun after work. Canadians will stretch out on their patios. We all do it differently, but we all have the right idea.

Beer Countries

It’s common for many Canadians to point out that Europe does things better than us. 

I don’t agree with these views because Europe gets plenty of things wrong, like militant ultra-right-wing politics, loving soccer a bit too much, creating treaties that are supposed to prevent world wars but end up causing them, and burritos – it’s impossible to get a decent burrito over here.

I will admit that Europe gets a few things right, like the welfare state, public transit systems, and alcohol laws. I mention the latter because my home province of Ontario is loosening its current liquor laws. The old law allowed the sale of alcohol only in government-owned stores and Beer Stores, which are owned by a bunch of foreign brewers.

The new law will break the monopoly on the sale of beer and allow grocery stores to start selling it. No, wait, only some grocery stores after the required forms are completed. Oh, wait, the government is still fixing prices, so it’s still a monopoly. Oh, yeah, and it's going to take two years.

Okay, so Ontario is not really liberalising their beer sales, but in two years my fellow Ontarians will be free to buy beer in a store that the government chooses at a price that doesn't threaten the foreign/government stranglehold on the system.

While Ontario is making progress in baby steps, Europe is doing a better job. Even Germany does not have the bureaucratic red tape that Nanny State Ontario has when it comes to beer sales. And Hungary, oh, Hungary. That place is great for alcohol enjoyment.

Let’s take a closer look at three jurisdictions, because there is nothing more fun than comparing and rating countries with militant ultra-right-wingers to see if I will end up getting a molotov cocktail thrown through my window.

Germany

On a Sunday beer walk through a Berlin public park, I saw a man pushing a baby carriage with a beer. If I saw this back home, I would have also been able to watch a mob stone him for enjoying a beer in the presence of his child in a public space. On a Sunday afternoon anywhere, it should be cool for anyone to take their kid for a walk in the park and enjoy a frosty cold beer.

Cold beer is available is convenience stores (they call them kiosks). You can buy it in grocery stores, along with liquor and wine. There are no government monopolies. 

To say Germany is a beer country is an understatement, but to call it a drunken country is an overstatement. While beer is made widely available, drunken-ness is limited to the times and places you would expect drunken-ness. That's why the Dorf's Altstadt fills up with beer drinkers but other districts do not,

In Berlin's parks, along the Dorf's riverfront, and occasionally in the streets, people drink beer without going into Destructor Drunk Mode (but Germany might not be allowed to have a Destructor Mode anymore). 

The point I'm making is that in Germany it's social thing as much as it is a legal one. It makes bureaucratic-loving Germany freer than Canada.

RATING: 3 out of 4 Happy Drunk Marshalls

Hungary

When it comes to booze – and this is will be one of the few times you will see this written – the Hungarian government has got it right. They simply let it be. You can buy beer, wine, and liquor in the grocery stores and the kiosks.

Is it a pretty day out? Do you want to sit in the park and drink a beer? Go ahead! You can drink in the parks, on the streets, here, there, almost anywhere. You can buy beer as early as you like and – save for a few Budapest districts – as late as you like.

Again, this is a social thing. You're welcomed into someone's home with a shot of palinka. You have wine with dinner and sometimes a beer on a patio after work. You can stay out almost all night in the ruin pubs.

All of this makes Hungary a great party place, but it's still a great place to enjoy a few drinks – which is what the true enjoyment of wine or beer, or even palinka, is all about.

RATING: 4 out of 4 Happy Drunk Marshalls

Canada

I'm going to begin this section with a history reference* because it's my blog and I can do whatever I want.

Canada sent almost 10 percent of its male population to war between 1914 and 1918, so the women were left running things. At the time the suffrage movement also advocated for prohibition, so while the war raged women got the vote and then passed prohibition. When the soldiers returned to a dry country, they were like, "Hey, this isn't what we were fighting for." So the Ontario government relented and said, "Alright, you can have your booze back, but it's going to be controlled by us."

That current system is almost 100 years old. The government stores, the foreign brewery-controlled monopoly, and the old timey social attitudes towards alcohol have changed very little. 

The one change since then is that you can touch the merchandise. Before that, you had to walk to the counter and ask for what you wanted, which was fetched from the back and briskly put into a paper bag before anyone could see. No wonder so many East Blockers settled in Ontario: it's central planning in all its un-debaucherous glory.

Ontario still has a long way to go, hopefully people tell the government that right now they are not going far enough.

RATING: 3 out of 4 Angry Drunk Marshalls

*Special thanks to Prof. George Warecki for sharing that gem during a lecture in his Canadian History class at Brescia College. Isn't kind of freaky that I remember that?