The View from the Jugendherberge Hamburg "Auf dem Stintfang"

A 4-hour train journey from Koln to Hamburg on a Friday is definitely a bit of an ordeal. I was already down for the count. My roomies for my last night in Cologne were a foursome of fairly recent university graduates, who were in various stages of being drunk at 9pm when I returned to my hostel after buying a gelato, then stopping for a large bottle of cold blood orange juice and a liter bottle of spring water at the nearby REWE supermarket. I was feeling poorly. All the ?&(?@&!! second hand smoke I'd inhaled when stopping either for breakfast or a chocolate shake at an outdoor terrace had made my eyes itch, my nose stream and gave me a sore throat. The last thing I need to be on this solo trip is laid up in some crappy backpacker feeling sick. So I was giving myself the overdose on vitamin C and rest treatment.
Each of my dorm mates exhibited a slightly different form of obnoxiousness. The most voluble drunk was a braggart who claimed to be making a career as a ski instructor. Another one was some sort of football journalist, presumably writing about soccer. A third claimed to have a recording for sale on iTunes. The least obnoxious one just grinned like a crazy person as he lay fully clothes on his lower bunk bed, resting his shoes on the duvet cover.
They all went out at 11pm, when it's still light around here, returning in the wee hours even more s**tfaced than before.

So I chose to take the ICE to Hamburg with no changes along the way. It's a bear having to change platforms when you're carrying 2 bags and a folding bike that seems to be getting heavier, I swear.
The snakelike white and red train was about 10 minutes late leaving, and nearly every seat in 2nd class seemed to be reserved. Above each seat was a difficult to read LCD that reported where that seat was going: Koln to Bremen or Koln to Dussledorf, or even Dusseldorf to Hamburg. Seemed to me that the only place I was going was up S**t Creek. And standing all the way to Hamburg to boot.

I finally found an open seat in a 6-booth in the "OK to use cellphone" part of the train. It soon became apparent why. This booth was occupied by a family of 4, including 2 preschool girls who alternated between playing a Mickey Mouse computer game on a loaner tablet courtesy of Deutsche Bahn, and running in and out of the glass soundproof booth door, making faces at me and smearing the glass at child height with nasty fingerprints. Who knew that Mickey Mouse spoke German in a strange high pitched shout?
And as if this booth wasn't already a circle in hell, at the Osnabruck stop the last vacant seat was taken by a guy and his highly strung female dachshund. The dog was alternating between hitting my trouser legs with its thumping tail, and trying to lick my shoe or my hand or any part of me it could reach. I know I was a dog magnet today. I'd provisioned for long ride, making the crazy sorts of food decisions you do when you're trying to beat everyone else to a seat on the train. I'd eaten a ham roll, a half kilo of fresh strawberries from a farmers market I'd passed on the way to the Hauptbahnhof, and a berliner (not JFK the president) but rather a freshly made jelly doughnut from the same market.
As luck would have it, I was giving as good as i got. I made it through the whole trip by listening to an audio book on my smartphone. The book is a prize winning young adult novel from 2001. It's called "Code Name Verity" and it's about a female Scottish spy captured and tortured by the SS in occupied France in 1943.
This literary choice was the perfect juxtaposition between hysterical kids, hysterical dachshund, and a 4-hour trip to Hamburg.

When I got to the hostel after half walking half riding my loaded bike from the Hauptbahnhof, I checked in, unpacked and took a shower. At 5:30pm I ate the Friday night 7 Euro and change meal in the hostels cafeteria: pork schnitzel, salad and rice pudding with cherries. I'm do hungry I could have eaten twice the amount, but food servings in Germany are rarely all you can eat.
The hostel has the most extraordinary view of Hamburg's working waterfront from its dining room. I may just have to come back at 8:30pm for happy hour so I can have a hamburg beer and a front row seat on the harbor below.