Techno music helped Litz to detach from reality. Her mind focused on specific repetitive sounds and relaxed. She put off her headphones, wore a heavy jacket and a small backpack and got off the train, which had arrived perfectly on time at Hamburg. It was surprisingly sunny.
She had visited Hamburg already. By mistake. Her German was rough, she had booked the wrong train with a too fast move on the internet. Her attention got distractedly caught by the signs of a new private company hitting soon the railway industry. She could instinctively perceive indisposition in the air. She went straight on out of the station and walked under the sun until the river.
The landscape of Hamburg city center reminded quickly of its ancient fast. The atmosphere exuded feelings of sovereignty and abundance. Severity, though, was palpable as well. Litz imagined herself walking there centuries before and understood the concept. She smiled inside and headed to a trendy café facing the canal.
The café was populated by snobbish young people, chatting casually and relaxed. She ordered a quick espresso and sat in front of the window. Cleaned her mailbox, replied a few emails, got a couple of scheduled calls, and then stopped for a second to impress the view of the canal in her mind. There was inside her the unconscious fear of transformational change. Paradoxically, the more she was near a historical place, the more she was aware of it.
She didn’t feel like going into any museum that time. She was hungry. And picking a restaurant had become a sport. She went for something with new German cuisine. Meaning exactly 804 kcal of hamburger with avocado cream and goat cheese served on natural bread at Hans Im Glück. Options were endless and she felt kind of a weirdo drinking a non-alcoholic beer, but – you know what? – that was the new thing.
Litz was expanding her customer base. That day she would attend a big event in person. The event was hosted at Hamburg Cruise Center in Altonaer FisherMarkt. When she reached the place, she realized there was an outstanding landscape to sightsee from a very high standpoint. She climbed the structure made for the panoramic view and stopped at the very top of it, her breath away. She had deeply understood the power of contemplation. Since the very beginnings of the evolution of human species, expanding your horizon had led human progress toward exploratory learning.
The boats in the harbor were lazily waiting for new supply orders. They were a mosaic of colors. From her position, she couldn’t hear the hassle of people working hard so that logistics operations went smooth. She could understand their feelings, though. Her thoughts went straight high to the sky on the benefits a solid network of satellites could deliver to those people.
The event went well. The funniest person she met was a model-agency consultant who suggested Litz a few tricks to stand out from the crowd based on aesthetics. She noted down the tricks, took a professional photoshoot, and eventually left the event. Her notebook was full of new potential customers, and she had booked to go to theatre that night. Her old friend Rory had invited her to a piece of improvisation comedy.
She didn’t have time to dress up. Hamburg’s traffic was frenetic, and she liked to travel smart and sustainable by underground. She arrived fashionably late. Rory was magnificent in her theatre outfit, holding a white wine glass and a slice of made-for-the-event pizza. Her friends around the coffee table were beautiful people as well. She felt slightly embarrassed at the beginning. Luckily, she had a lot of stories to tell. She politely captured their attention and favor soon.
The comedy was intelligently sarcastic. A pool of young and diverse people from all over the World improvised a few straightforward jokes who made her reflect all night. Too bad prohibitionist measures were on, or she would discuss the jokes with her new friends in more detail afterwards, in front of a good cocktail. Bad times were coming, Litz thought, mentally counting the policemen around her.
The day before leaving Hamburg, Litz went to dinner out with Rory at a famous hamburger place next to the main train station. Strikes had become the norm since she had arrived, and she couldn’t risk losing her train. The two friends recalled their old fun moments together and had a very good time anyway.
The train arrived outrageously late for German standards. Being one of the last trains, some people were complaining loudly, filling the train banks with their bodies, spreading negativity and even panic in the air. Litz was distant and cold, as usual. She gave directions. She calmed down people looking for help.
When she finally took her seat on the train, she realized she still did not know where exactly to go next, once arrived at destination.
