Hamburgers, not potato fries

Hamburg, Germany

Cold. Daylight, and I'm cold: this is my first impression of Germany.

I found Hamburg to be very different from the cities in Sweden and Denmark.

Virgile and I, here, we don't know the German language.
We meet fewer fluent English speakers.
We encounter more street squatters drinking alcohol and sleeping in public groups.
We see more graffiti tagged on arbitrary walls.
We discover multiple abandoned building complexes.
We meet so, so, so many ducks in the water.
Welcome: A world exclusively accessed by voyeurism.
Is this what it feels like to be a tourist? Or a Hamburger?

Not the first time we've urban camped under a weeping willow in a municipal park;
unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy destroyed that other one in Manhattan's Central Park

Nine stories tall building, abandoned, covered in tag

Locals and tourists hop on sailboats to experience a view of the city on the lake

Others have a more pragmatic view and fish for hours from the stream

As we did kundalini yoga, the ducks submerged the water: synchronized bodily discipline

Four ducks float under a bridge

In this photo above

"Some 300 African refugees currently living behind Hamburg's Bismarck monument reportedly received €500 from the Italian government to leave for Germany. Officials are unsure what to do next, as they have no shelter and no money. Swathes of refugees turned up in Italy after war broke out in Libya..." ---from The Local

Real are the Stories of escape, people of bodies, authorities of boundaries, the ducks and the water, the illegal taggers and empty lots, sailboating crowds and fishermen sharing a lake. Where would I even begin to belong?