Coffee quest: Hamburg
Trying to find coffee amongst the caffeine-craving attendees of the Reeperbahn Festival proved to be a challenge this year…
Hamburg doesn’t want me to have good coffee. I am convinced of this. I arrived mid afternoon, in plenty of time for the NEXT Conference welcome party. I dropped my bag at the hotel, and hurtled round the corner to my favourite coffee shop near Reeperbahn before it shut.
It was mobbed. Hordes of festival goers hanging around outside, with a ;one queue for coffee. Disappointed, I trekked back to my hotel, and ordered a coffee there. Their coffee machine was not broken, exactly, but unable to serve coffee for reasons the server’s English and my German were too poor to communicate.
I gave up, and went to party, coffee less.
NEXT itself had coffee on tap, so my needs were well met on Thursday. On Friday morning, after one of life’s great pleasures (a leisurely hotel breakfast), I tried again. Still packed out:
it had always been quite quiet in the past. Alas, no longer. Good news for them, but disappointing for me. In fact, this was the closest I got to my lusted-after coffee:
Still, time and an incentive to try something new.
A quick rummage on the Standart forums, some cross-referencing with a map, and I was off to try a new coffee shop. It was a 20 minute stroll through the heart of Hamburg away.
On the way, I noticed this:
It's the Bismarck Monument. I've walked that stretch of road for eight of the 10 most recent years – and never noticed it before. That's… embarrassing.
Anyway… I found my new coffee shop for the trip Nord Coast:
A combined coffee shop, roaster and café? Perfect. I snagged a couple of bags of coffee (including a Kenyan) to bring and enjoy at home, before I'd actually sampled the coffee. Was it a risk that paid off?
The staff were gloriously friendly, switching fluidly to English after my lacklustre attempt to order in German. The time was ticking towards my flight home, so I settled on just a double espresso and my bags of beans.
Just a few minutes later, it arrived at my cosy wee table, with a glass of water alongside it.
As you can probably tell, I was so desperate for good coffee that I forgot to photograph it before I started in on it. It was… delightful. Lovely flavour, beautifully pulled.
It came down to the wire, but my Hamlet coffee quest succeeded. And I have my new beans to look forward to in the coming days.
