We left the hotel at 10:00. Before entering the Autobahn to Hamburg we drove by several Berlin landmarks: Siegessäule, Olympic Stadion, Waldbühne – the latter built on the site of an ancient Germanic Thing meeting spot.

We arrived in Hamburg around 13:30. Jon and I had lunch in the hotel restaurant. Ordered Kohlroulladen, to continue our exploration of German cooking. I expected a mixture of onions and cabbage rolled into a thin slice of meat, but it turned out to be meat rolled into a cabbage leaf.

At four we drove to the KulturKirche – culture church – in Altona, the first of three concerts in churches in a row. Lutherans sure are different. This church sold beer in bottles before the concert. (((I think the Lutheran church in Köln even has a bar built into the building)))



These three churches are functioning Lutheran churches, all old and beautiful. The natural reverb can be a challenge and we could not perform here with the band, but it makes for a lush guitar sound. The heating is limited to 18ºC, which is 64.4ºF, to preserve the large pipe organs. I wore two layers and made sure my hands were warmed up before I started.

After the concert I signed a few CDs as this was the only location were albums were sold at the concert – a local CD store had asked permission to sell CDs. A man told me his friend had attended my concert in Munich and quickly SMSed – he pronounced it zimzing, which I enjoyed – that he should go to this performance. The verb smsing – zimzing – is cool, but the word Handy for mobile phone is awful. Jon suggested that a phone is a phone is a phone. Who cares at this point whether it is a landline or a mobile. It certainly isn’t the status symbol it was when only a few people had a car phone. To say, call me on my car phone probably impressed people circa 1990.