Pretty slippery city
Having grown up against the earthy backdrop of chocolate hills, soot blackened coalminers and rolling green valleys in rural South Wales, it has been something of a refreshing sight to have been spoilt by nothing but drifts of pure white sugar for the last three months in Hamburg’s resplendent Hafen City.
Alongside the picturesque visual array of red brick warehouses, draped elegantly in wreaths of crystallised snow and twilit bridges glistening by night, there are also other, more unusual sights to behold.
The daily streams of tourists with their clicking cameras, the street workers in their overalls and sartorially suited businessmen and women in perfect pinstripes, polished brogues and elegant quiffs, have suddenly become a slipping mass of bodies, painstakingly tiptoeing and slithering along the frosted cobblestones and clambering their way up and down embankments of ice.
Even the ducks, usually cutting a carefree figure, swaggering and sashaying along the maze of winding waterways, have been reduced to a perplexed gaggle of web footed break dancers, trying to keep time to a strange beat.
The winter panorama of the Hafen City, serves not only to indulge the eyes and pamper the senses, but to be a great leveller of people and animals, from whichever walk, or should I say “slip” of life!
Lewis Jacquest, Training Coordinator, Institute4Languages