The Hamburg Fischmarkt: An Instructional Guide

One thing Hamburg is known for is the Sunday morning Fischmarkt. Every Sunday at 5am. The thing to do is to stay out all night on the Reeperbahn and then get breakfast there in the morning. It's one of those things I had to do before I left. So here's your guide to a successful Hamburg Fischmarkt visit.

Let me introduce you to my associates.

Lilianna, 25, Mexico

Sylvia, 18, Catalonia

10PM- Begin the night with a falafel or doener.


11pm- Arrive on the Reeperbahn. Enjoy your freedom to drink on the streets.

12am- Go to a disco. Dance.

2am- Up your alcohol content at Lucky Star. A bar offering shots for less than a euro each.

From left to right: A Mexicaner (Lili), Jaegermeister (Me), Tequilla (Sylvia)

3am- Get pissed at drunken German for not separating American politics from the rest of America.

3:30am- Take drunken pictures of yourself in the street.

3:35am- Go back to Disco. Dance.


4:45am- Take nap in disco.

5:00am- Refuel at a Turkish run restaurant.


5:45am- Walk to the Fischmarkt. Shop at the wide variety of stands outside, including a stand for giant stars. Don't worry, there's fish too.


6:30am- Go inside the Fischmarkt building and enjoy your last drink of the night/morning...


...or fall asleep at the table.


8:30am- Get home. Sleep.


I hope you've found this instructional and useful and that this guide will guide you in all your life endeavors.

Passing Wisdom Through Generations

A small look into my life as an au pair:

Germany will be the death of me

Since being in Germany, my clutziness has skyrocketed. I've fallen down stairs at least 5 times, once hard enough to give myself whiplash. I fell off my bike twice, giving myself a new scar on the palm of my hand. And once, tripped over unevenness in the sidewalk and fell down. This last trip down the stairs finally sent me to the doctor. I managed to land directly on my foot, which twisted and my ankle made a disgusting series of pops. I tried to pretend I could just walk it off, but the next day it was swollen enough to look like I didn't really have an ankle. So after procrastinating a few more days, and looking in my German-English dictionary for the words 'ankle' and 'sprained', I finally went to the doctor. The x-rays said it wasn't broken, and I was kind of disappointed since I've never had a cast before. I did get this nifty red bandage though.


Anyone wanna sign my bandage?

Eine Kleine Hexe

So... Halloween in Hamburg. I won't say that it sucked. But well, look at how excited that I was about Halloween this year.


Since Trick-or-Treating is apparently somewhat new in Germany, they don't know much about costumes. I just ended up being a witch (hexe). Kristina told me its not even normal to be a cat. Whatever.

Kristina was also a witch. In costume and demeanor. I agreed to go Trick-or-Treating with Kristina and her friends for my Halloween celebration. The main disagreement of the night was over what they wanted to do to people without candy. Apparently they find it appropriate to put toothpaste on people's doors, and if they saw a light on they would pound on the doors and windows and yell rude things, thinking this would make people want to come to the door. So I spent most of the night feeling embarrassed and wanted not to be associated with their hooliganism. These are the people that make Halloween everywhere un-fun.

I did think it was interesting though, that we some one came to the door, they normally genuinely tried to give us something. We were going around a little bit later than the younger kids so some of the people were already out of candy. When they were out of the normal Halloween candy, people would give us whatever sweet they had in the house. One guy gave us some ice cream cones out of his freezer. Another guy gave us a big bag of gummy bears and a packet of cashews. Also the rule about not taking unwrapped candy doesn't apply here. As long as its sweet, we'll take it.

I'm so having a Halloween party when I get back to make up for this.