…means that the Hamburg U-Bahn will be a breeze. That’s what I thought – before I had to take a cab to get home. But the ride wasn’t all that bad…Bowling is a great thing to do. That’s why my editorial office in Hamburg organized a common bowling round. No worries – especially because it wasn’t the usual tour where you go in a huge rented bus somewhere like Holland and where you get drunk until you pass out…

Well, we did drink, but not that much. And – to get there, we just needed to take the tube.

Moving: Bowling is a great game to play. And we did! When we couldn’t go on playing (as the alley was closed at 10 p.m.), we just sat around and drank. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, had I not lived at the other end of town and forgotten (or rather never known) that during the week the tube stopped running at midnight.

So, when I finally left the bar around 12.30 a.m., there was no tube left for me! And there I stood – without any idea which bus to take, where to find a map (let alone a bus plan) or where to head at all. I didn’t even know where North was! Eventually, I found someone who pointed me South (where I would find the bus stop I needed).

Totally relieved, I headed South. At the bus stop: only 20 minutes to go until the next bus, the plan said – which encouraged me to stay there in the freezing cold. At that moment, feeling no pain (maybe it was the alcohol), I was startled by a dynamic, young man who I had tried to ignore. I normally don’t talk to strangers when I wander around at one o’clock in a totally unknown part of a big city.

But he didn’t give me a choice: „Excuse me“, he said. „I am trying to find my way back to Mundsburg. Can you help me?“ I looked at him astonished. But, on second thought, the name „Mundsburg“ sounded familiar! It was the name of the tube station just 300 metres from my home.

And when I said this to the nice young chap, we decided to share a cab. And  it was worth while. As:

First of all, our taxi driver was a real 80s rocker with a so-called „Vokuhila“ (Vorne-kurz-hinten-lang) or mullet. And he was sporting a nice pink lumberjack shirt suitable for his stone-washed jeans. Chauffeured by the swinging hippster, we got home safe.

And I discovered that the nice young chap I was traveling with was not as unknown to me as I first had thought – at least not directly. He was going to start work for the NDR2, part of a public German radio based in Hamburg. That in itself is not very peculiar. However, when I heard „NDR“, I instantly thought of a girl I know from Radio Q in Münster. And when I told him her name, he yelled: „Well, I know her! And I even stayed with her the last time I came to Hamburg!“

At that point, I thought: Well, maybe the world is not as big as it seems…

L.