It’s still dark and there’s a fresh breeze blowing. A couple of friends and I are heading to the Fischmarkt. It’s five o’clock in the morning; we’ve been out all night partying on the Reeperbahn. No sooner do we arrive at the Elbe than we see the first stalls: fresh fish and all sorts of fish rolls, of course; but you can also buy fruit, vegetables, meat, coffee and even plants, clothes and all sorts of knick-knacks. The Fish Market – held early on Sunday morning for over 300 years (originally to give people enough time to go to church) – is much more than a fish market today.

It’s one of Hamburg’s main tourist attractions and, for us, the perfect end to a night out on the town. And a fish roll is just what the doctor ordered. In the former fish auction halls, it’s no longer the cries of the market sellers that ring out but live bands, whose music help keep our tiredness at bay. Before heading home, we take a stroll across the market. The view of the harbour on the other side of the Elbe is wonderful. Feeling tired and a bit chilly, we take in the harbour lights and enjoy the sunrise. Then it’s time to go home.

Hamburg will be my home for another three weeks, so it’s time to start saying goodbye to Airbus, the people and the northern German city.

Origin of the Beatles haircut

Hamburg and its museums – a great combination. Unfortunately, the claim I made in my first article that the weather in Hamburg isn’t all that bad hasn’t proved to be true all that often. No need to let it get to you (although you do miss out on the odd hour here and there on the Elbe beach or the Alster): you can pass the time at the art gallery or the museum of ethnology or the Emigration Museum. Beatlemania is also worth a look. The entire story of probably the most successful band of the twentieth century is painstakingly presented over six storeys. And the fact that it’s in Hamburg is no coincidence, either: on 16 August 1960 John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best arrived in the city and played in Hamburg on many occasions over the next two years. On the lookout for English bands for his Hamburg nightclub, German entrepreneur Bruno Koschmider turned to his Liverpudlian business associate Allan Williams, who was The Beatles’ manager at the time. The day after they arrived, the band already played a concert – for the first time as “The Beatles”. They then performed every day at the “Indra”, a former strip club in an der Grossen Freiheit, a famous side street just off the Reeperbahn. The club had just been done up and the audience were a bit put out by the band at first (they had been expecting women to take their clothes off).

In the weeks that followed, however, The Beatles won them over and earned their respect. Later, they met the drummer Ringo Starr, who was playing in another band at the time, and he replaced Pete Best in the line-up. At the end of 1960, The Beatles were deported for concealing the fact that Harrison was only a minor and following an alleged arson attack by McCartney and Best. Only Sutcliffe, who by now had got together with the German photographer Astrid Kirchherr, remained in the northern German city. Later – after Harrison had turned eighteen – The Beatles returned. Their style and appearance were influenced greatly by the photographers Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer and the artist Klaus Voormann during their time in Hamburg. The “mop-top” haircut came from Jürgen Vollmer, who had cut his own hair in the style. Later in an interview, he recalled his meeting with Lennon and McCartney in September 1961: “They looked at my hairstyle and said, ‘Yes, we want that funny haircut too’.”

Air Finkenwerder

My internship at Airbus is nearly over. I’ve had an exciting time and I’m glad I spent almost half a year here instead of just a few weeks. It takes time – especially in a large company – for you to get an overview. It’s been fascinating to experience the daily routine at Airbus and follow the progress of the project.

And you never grow tired of hearing a funny Airbus story from the past or present. One story in particular from 1967 tickled my fancy: “Air Finkenwerder” doesn’t exist, but that’s what the Spanish charter airline Spantax was nicknamed after the following incident: the pilot, Rodolfo Bay, was cleared for landing by Hamburg International Airport only to touch down a few minutes later in good weather and visibility at Finkenwerder – the airstrip of the aircraft manufacturers Hamburger Flugzeug GmbH. “A giant bird is going down!” the air traffic controller in the control tower warned the fire brigade. Sure enough, the runway at Finkenwerder was too short for the four-engine Convair Coronado jet and the plane only just managed to screech to a halt before it ran out of tarmac. Bay – with 34'500 hours of flight experience under his belt – immediately owned up to his mistake: he had mixed the aircraft company’s mini-runway up with Hamburg International. He had flown his crew and the 128 holiday-makers returning from Majorca to the brink of disaster as the Finkenwerder runway was only designed to take a maximum of twenty-seven tons per landing gear; the Coronado’s had a load of forty tons each! The minimum runway length need for the machine: 1690 metres; the aircraft manufacturer’s: 1360 metres!

The runway was too short for it to take off so the passengers were taken off along with their luggage and the fuel tank emptied to a minimum. The plane finally touched down at Hamburg airport three hours late, where a group of journalists were waiting for the pilot, who was also the president of Spantax. Ironically, the press conference had been called by none other than Rodolfo Bay to demonstrate how reliable and punctual their airline was! The aim of this air display at Hamburg airport was to set the press straight: several charter companies – including Spantax – had been labelled as unreliable the week before. Bay certainly didn’t prove them wrong – but the name of his airline company lives on at Finkenwerder to this day.

Swiss woman among Germans

Unlike Spantax, the Swiss and the Germans are thought to be reliable and punctual. But what else have we got in common with our German neighbours? And what cultural differences are there? I’d never really thought about it before I came here. I’m actually half-German; my mum grew up here so I came to Hamburg every year to visit relatives when I was a girl. So I arrived in Hamburg at the beginning of April convinced I’d unleash my German side and fit right in. But you can’t unleash what isn’t really there – and I feel more Swiss here than I do in Zurich. It’s a different culture, even if it might not seem so at first. We basically speak the same language. But I often feel as if I’m speaking a foreign language, only I hear my own mistakes. Society is more direct; I’ve noticed that people are often very friendly in shops here, but on public transport people don’t think twice about telling you what bothers them, sometimes in no uncertain terms. Things are different in Hamburg and it took me a while to get acclimatised to it. One more experience I’ve had here. But I think I’ll give the mop-top hairdo a miss!

About the author

Julia Moser is no stranger: she has already written several articles for ETH Life about her semester abroad in Rome and as a columnist. She is currently doing an industrial internship in Hamburg at the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, where she can live out her passion for planes. She discovered this interest when she was fifteen years old and originally wanted to become an airline pilot. However, when she left school she decided on a degree in mechanical engineering at ETH Zurich instead. In her free time, Julia Moser is also interested in art and painting.