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Hamburg/Helgoland/Cuxhaven August/September 2024

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Primary purpose: annual meeting of AIACE Deutschland and an opportunity to perhaps connect with old friends and definitey with friends made last year in Dortmund.

Afterwards quick visits to Helgoland and Cuxhaven which have both been on my bucket list for a long time. And to see the sea! The North Sea Wattenmeer is my favourite region in the whole world. And of course an opportunity to reconnect with friends made last year in Dortmund.

I also can’t wait to get away from the neighbours from hell – Cresco Real Estate’s inifinity project with the pompous and ridiculous name of “Victoria zu Berlin” – the world’s ugliest building and longest-lasting renovation project which has basically rendered my balcony unusable for the last seven summers.

Day one: Arrival in Hamburg, welcome reception and dinner

On the ICE on the way there: What the train driver sees. Something I have never seen before: A (lockable) glass door to the driver’s cabin, and my seat was right behind. That must be incredibly annoying for the drivers.

Day two: Bus tour of Hamburg, lunch in a restaurant in the fish market, more bus tour. Evening free.

Great bus tour with an amazing guide. Lunch in Restaurant Elbspeicher on the harbour front.

The first photo is of a converted bunker. Later the oldest semi-detached housing in the world. There is also a bit of experimenting black and white vs colour, and two cases of double exposure.

We also visited the plaza of the Elbphilharmonie. This time, I had more time and opportunity to walk all the way around and take photos (rather than being there for a concert). I tried my hand at some panoramas for a polyptych. I still have a lot to learn in terms of aspect ratio etc., or I could be less ambitious with the number of panels, but I like that format.

And an attempt at a multipanel panorama of Hamburg as seen from a walk around the Plaza of the Elbphilharmonie. I still have a lot to learn in terms of aspect ratio etc., and I guess I could be a litte less ambitious with the number of panels, but I like this format.

Already tired of bland German/northern European food morning, noon and night (less than 48 hours away from my spice rack at home and my local Indian and Vietnamese restaurants :-)), I found two viable alternatives within a very short walk from our hotel in Altona – one Indian and one Vietnamese (Vina Haus, Mendelssohnstraße – don’t seem to have a website), so one for tonight and one for tomorrow night. Mood considerably improved :-).

Day three: AIACE-DE meeting, lunch, and a programme which I shall skip and go to the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition in Bucerius Kunstforum instead.

The meeting went according to plan until it did not. I had been wondering how we were supposed to elect people for several posts on the board, a.o. a new chair, without knowing who the candidates were. It turned out that if you belong to “the inner circle”, you know such things, but I do not, and I did not, so the beautiful weather started to draw me outside like a magnet and I figured a long walk for the rest of the day would be a healthier way to spend my time.

I started by walking to the Bucerius Kunstforum to see this amazing exhibition of works by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

I then proceeded to the area by the Elbphilharmonie and along the harbour front to Dockland and from there up some stairs and through a very nice area of Altona with lots of little cafés and restaurants and back to the hotel.

Bonus tip: Near Dockland, on the left side of the street when walking back towards the centre and JUST before the stairs leading to the upper level and Altonaer Balkon ist Café Schmidt with good coffee and delicious-looking cakes. Also, if you need a reward after the treck up the stairs, go left in the direction of the Altonaer Balkon and find a small beer garden called Hafenmeisterei in a very idyllic location.

Day four: Bus tour, lunch, bus tour, and farewell dinner

Guided tour of Hamburg City Hall (in four groups in two buses – very well organised). I skipped that. The weather was too nice and I cannot imagine that it is much less ugly inside than outside.

Afterwards a lovely two-hour harbour cruise. Always nice to be on water. I love Hamburg’s maritime flair, which my overdose of photos illustrate (but oddly enough, Berlin still feels more like home). The two megayachts in the drydock are the Ali Baba and the Luna.

And finally, a buffet dinner and the end of another very well organised annual meeting.

Day five: Moving on to Helgoland …. continued in this post.

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Oh, what a Beautiful Morning ….

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07.30 on a Saturday morning. Settling in to spend a QUIET weekend AT HOME, in and out of the balcony, pure bliss, no need to go out in order to escape the ear-splitting noise from the neighbours from hell.

When suddenly: Same-old-same-old. Just half an hour later than during the week. Like from drilling into a rock or a wall or something, I can’t actually see it but other neighbours can and are trying to ask them how long this will last. Which they are of course ignoring. Their arrogance never stops reaching new heights.

I feel like crying.

It is a good thing guns are not readily available in this country. If I had access to one right now, there would be dead people.

Cresco Capital Group @CrescoRealEstate

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Here we go again …

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If I want to enjoy my balcony on weekdays, it has to be before 06.30 – that is the time they start shouting and laughing (standing and sitting right next to each other – are they deaf since they need to be so loud)?

Seven AM sharp – engines on and running and more noise, this morning giant cobble-stones being shifted from one pile to another. I have asked the neighbours from hell several times whether I and my neighbours will have at least ONE week this year where we can stay at home, with balcony doors open, and not have to leave our homes evey day to escape the noise. One week on my balcony, in my own home, for the first time since 2017? I am so tired and feel I am losing my mind. But they don’t even read their e-mails, let alone reply to them.

I am seriously thinking of cancelling the bridge evening at my place tonight. I have had a form of sciatica for months which my orthopedist says is most likely caused by stress, and am taking stronger and stronger painkillers which do not really take the pain away but cause severe brainfog (finally starting physiotherapy later this month). Somebody suggested another four weeks of “Reha”, but I really need to be in my own home, and also, much as I enjoyed my four weeks in Sankt-Peder Ording in November/December 2022, the food was not healthy (despite being a clinic specialising in post-cancer-recovery, and I am told that was one of the better places in that regard.

I JUST NEED TO BE ABLE TO SPEND TIME IN AND OUT OF MY BALCONY, CHILLING, AND GOING OUT TO PLACES BECAUSE I WANT TO AND NOT IN ORDER TO GET AWAY FROM HERE.

Cresco Capital Group

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Only in Berlin …

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does it take a spring and a summer, and by the looks of it also an autumn, and so much noise, to landscape such a small piece of land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3k7t5ApDEQ.

Of course there would be no fun in preparing the tiles BEFORE transporting them here, because then you would miss a golden opportunity to continue, in year eight, to make life a living hell for a large area around you, and rendering our balconies unusable for at least as long, and that would be no fun, would it?

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out

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This week, they are cutting tiles to make sure nothing green can grow and provide shade there. I guess trees and bushes are too environment-friendly and healthy for the air and the soil and for people’s mental health. A tiled wasteland is much better, and more importantly, it makes an earsplitting noise to construct it. Why am I not surprised? Cresco Capital Group Cresco Real Estate

It reminds me of the relatively recently landscaped space in front of Kulturforum – barely a tree in sight, and crossing it feels like being in hell during summer. How is that sort of thing even allowed nowadays? What planet have people just dropped down from?

Berlin

Lies, lies, lies

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Best advice to people who have just moved to Berlin? Trust nobody. Or at least keep your bullshit detector on high alert. Lying is a favourite Berlin sport.

What is it about Berlin that people here lie, more or less blatantly, more often than they tell the truth, and that lying is apparently considered completely acceptable?

I started to notice that the minute I moved here, and it is only getting worse. People in all walks of life, for whatever purpose or reason. From Hausverwaltung (in one instance that nearly landed me in real trouble) to Cresco Real Estate who when starting their what would turn out to be a typical Berlin infinity project next door promised me my balcony would not be affected, to an HNO doctor I consulted recently (who tried to perpetuate a minor issue rather than solve it immediately), to so-called friends (even those you thought were different). And many other examples in between which I have chosed to forget so as not to clog up my already limited brain space.

The problem is, that when you start to not find any reason to believe anything anybody says, you end up not wanting to communicate with anybody about anything, because – why bother? – once you know a person has lied about one thing, you know they have most likely been lying about more things, or even everything, especially in emails and on social media.

I am assuming that most people who grew up somewhere else were raised to know that lying is never an option, and therefore it is probably one of the reasons why so many people say Berlin is a hard city to live in.

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Can anyone explain?

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Here is another phenomenon I don’t understand – perhaps someone can explain: If occupants of an apartment building have been plagued by noise and other nuisances from a construction site for years (and in my case the size of my balcony was halved for a couple of years, at the height of the pandemic when it would have been really nice to have the full use of my balcony), then those owners who are renting out their flats while living somewhere else will get compensation, so that they can (choose to) compensate their tenants, but the owners who live in the flats themselves will not be compensated. Is it just me who can’t see the logic in that? Cresco Capital Group

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Where is the sense of proportion in this country?

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As detailed in this category, the building next door has been under renovation for about seven years which has meant an inferno of noise, and for example, I have not been able to use my balcony for as many summers, for one reason or the other, including this summer, which has perhaps so far been the noisiest of all because they are pretending to be doing some landscape gardening downstairs.

During all this time, our Hausverwaltung has been mostly silent and seemingly more on the side of the investors next door than on ours.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this morning I received a letter (yes – as in snailmail – how absurd and laughable is that in itself?) informing me that the fence downstairs between our plot of land and that of the monstrosity next door will be replaced this week. End of.

Now, when I receive an actual letter, as in by Deutsche Post, I assume it is about something important, and which will have consequences for me and/or require some sort of action from my side. So I opened it.

But that is literally all they write. Not a word about why they are telling us this after basically never having warned us about particularly noisy weeks months and years. Not to mention the scaffolding and debris which prevented me from using my balcony for at least two summers, one of which was at the height of the pandemic when it would have been really nice to have the use of that outdoor space. Especially since I was promised at the beginning that my balcony would not be affected. One of, as it has turned out, many lies told to me since I moved to Berlin.

Seriously? Is that all they wanted to tell us – by LETTER, as if we don’t have eyes in our heads and can see what is happening? WHY BOTHER TO SEND A LETTER about something so unimportant, trivial, and non-conseqential after having ignored all the real problems we have been having basically for the last handful of years????? Who cares that an old FENCE is being removed and replaced by a new one?

Beginning again after a surreal six months, The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Hallo neighbour

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Long time no see. You looked a lot better clad in scaffolding. I had forgotten quite how unbelievably ugly you really are.

But I will never forget being deprived of the use of my balcony for two years – in mid pandemic where it would have been really nice to be able to use one’s own balcony. Not to mention the repeated cleaning up each time a load of various types of debris – and cigarette stubs (!) – had been thrown onto the balcony, and each time layers of some kind of dust covered EVERYTHING on it. All documented here: “The balcony that would not be affected”. And the lack of light – again – during the pandemic!! – in my living room because of the scaffolding. After I had been told that my balcony would not be affected. As far as I know the biggest lie ever told to me.

Victoria Berlin

Cresco Real Estate

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

A little bit of progress, and some comments for the post mortem – if there is ever going to be one

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The work on the wall is finished and the mats were finally removed.

I – yet again – spent about half a day trying to clean up after the most recent work. Specks of white pain all over the balcony, including on the furniture, relatively easy to remove, but time consuming.

The glue from the tape with which they fastened the mats can probably be removed, but I don’t know how.

I have also started removing splashes of cement from a while ago now that I know that Cresco never had any intention of removing them. They are harder to remove, but with time, I guess I just have to get it done.

One type of stain will never go away. They are on the wall as well as on the floor and seem to have somehow seeped into the surfaces.

I would like to add that the floor of my balcony, as well and parts of the wall, for example as seen in photo number 3, had been freshly coated just before this whole thing started.

The – for us – most claustrophobic part of the scaffolding is still there, despite the fact that it no longer seems to be needed. It was added independently of the main scaffolding, and could therefore be removed independently of the main scaffolding so as not to ruin more of the summer for us than necessary.

Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten