Open doors: Hamburg

Hallo from Hamburg!

We have entered a more communal and social phase of our Jubilee. After our time in Amsterdam and Berlin we took the train to Hamburg - home of many, many old friends.

Here’s a taste of what we did as we happily skipped from one dinner party or lunch to another all curated by our lovely host and friend Stefanie.

Home Away from Home

Stefanie is a dear friend of the family and we stayed with her and her gracious husband Andreas in Bergedorf. Their son Caspar (who attended the Chicago Waldorf school for three weeks and lived with us five years ago) was wrapping up his high school days - dances, sanctioned school prank days, and a stream of older teens coming by the house. Andreas was around this time as he is starting his own sort of jubilee having literally just had his last day of work for the next year the day we arrived. Stefanie was our cruise director - organizing visits to see our many friends.

Sitting in the backyard with Stefanie and catching up on the lives of old friends and family, re-telling old jokes and making new ones, makes time bend for me - it’s as if no-time and much-time has passed all at once.

Photo Shoot

Stefanie is a super talented photographer and shoots gorgeous portraits. She and Willa Marie pulled an Annie Liebowitz and Grace Slick photo shoot one afternoon. I worked the fan.

Diaspora

705 Scott Street in San Francisco, where I grew up and where my parents still live, has always been a way station for friends, old and new, from around the world.

My parents have an open door policy that has brought countless people into our lives for stays that range from a couple days to years and years. It’s been a boon to our family. A source of ever widening global connections. This generosity of spirit, and enduring deep curiosity about others, has been a well spring of happiness for us.

The Germans we know love to return the favor of hosting. We had a dinner party at our friend Tatayana and Eugene’s house and sat around the table in the evening with many who have sat around our table in San Francisco.

Steiner

The next day we visited the Bergedorf Waldorf School which both Tatayana and Stefanie’s kids attended for a used clothing sale benefiting sustainable textile manufacturing in Asia. The event was organized by Tatayana’s daughter Paulina who’s a senior at the school.

Countryside Libertines

We visited Wolfgang and Pirio at their cottage a little over an hour outside of Hamburg. These world travelers who live surrounded by Balinese and Japanese curios they’ve collected, and art they themselves have made, love nothing more than sitting in the sun and eating and drinking and talking.

We spent six hours with them one afternoon at the table, on the water, in the grass. Lovely.

Stefanie composed a slide show of the day:

Aging Gracefully

We closed our whirlwind social party with a boat tour of the river Elbe and Hamburg harbor with our old friends Ulla and her daughter Trixi who lived with us for a year in San Francisco back in the 80s. Great to see them and trade book recommendations and learn about how an avowed German leftist and bohemian, Ulla, has convinced the City to convert a defunct community hospital into a communal senior living center for her and her neighbors. She moves in early next year.

Onward

We left my mom in Hamburg and she'll hang out with friends for a few more days while we are on our way to Oslo where we meet up with the Danzigs and Sheri, Abraham and Silas for our trip to Norway.

Stay tuned for dispatches from north of the Arctic Circle.

Love, love and love from all three of us and always remember the deep blessings that come from opening one’s doors to the stranger.

- david