To the five Burroughs...

This is an excourse about the different parts of a German city in general and Hamburg in special. Hamburg is divided in seven districts (German: "Bezirke"). The next structure beyond are nearly 100 neighbourhoods/barrios/quarters/whatever you wanna call it (German: "Stadtteile"). I lived in St. Georg for 5 years, before that I lived in Borgfelde for 4 1/2 years. The origins of those names differ - while Finkenwerder, Moorburg or Altenwerder for instance were fisher's villages for ages, Altona was a town of it's own till the Nazis melted it together with Hamburg. Altona was a part of Denmark til 1866 and secured freedom of believe for all inhabitants. Between Altona and Hamburg was a kind of "buffer" - the world famous quarter St. Pauli. St. Pauli lay outside the old city walls, on the west side, and at the harbour - where the hookers and the foreign seamen stayed, where people have to come through when they were on trading business - and where people stayed, who had to hide from parts or inhabitants of the inner Hamburg. St. Georg was the eastern part outside the town walls, here the citizens of Hamburg sent all their folk which was ill or who were too poor - the pestilence quarter, later a kind of early quarantine - but the water flowed first across the shores of St. Georg and then in the old town, well, think about it...

Both parts of Hamburg have still a lot in common. In both parts there are whorehouses in the first floor of seemingly "normal" buildings, there's a lot of prostitutes and a lot of the same problems. Well... But now I'm gone, looking what the other "St." will bring.

Ah, yes, and there's no "five burroughs" of course, but three bigger cities and a lot of smalltowns, villages and else melted together for one big Hamburg.

(Written offline, see date below, published way later...