In August 1960 the Beatles arrived from Liverpool after a long trip in an overloaded, beat-up Austin Minibus. 

Future arrivals and departures were through Hamburg Airport and the Main Railway Station.

The Schmuckstraße was once known as the Chinese street were many Chinese seamen and harbor workers had lived with their families. Near the end of WWII  they were deported to labour camps or evacuated Hamburg. By 1960 Chinese had returned to other parts of the city. Today there are numerous Chinese restaurants operating in other parts of St. Pauli.

PAUL: If you went round the back there was Chug-ou. It was a Chinese Place just three hundred yards up the road, slightly off the Reeperbahn. Its great attraction was pancakes -'Pfannkuchen mit Zitrone bitte, und Zucker' - pancakes with lemon and sugar. It was the only place that sold them; everywhere else was 'foreign food' for us.

There is a plaque across from the Kaiserkeller with the following inscription:

Die "Chinesenstraße" Schmuckstraße

Für die harten Arbeiten an den Maschinen und als Schiffsköcher oder Hilfsstewards wurden auch auf deutschen Dampfschiffen immer häufiger Chinesen eingesetzt. Seit jener Zeit siedelten sich Chinesen in der Nähe des Hamburger Hafens an,nicht in großen China-Towns wie in Amerika, sondern in einer Seitenstraße der Großen Freiheit, der Schmuckstraße, in deren Häusern entstanden chinesische Speiselokale, Läden und Logierhäuser. Diese Chinesenstraße gab es in der NS-Zeit noch immer. Der Einsatz von Chinesen auf britischen Kriegsschiffen bot den Nazis aber den Vorwand, den Chinesen Spionage zu unterstellen. Am Morgen des 13.Mai 1944 wurden 160 verbliebene Chinesen verhaftet und ins Arbeitslager "Langer Morgen" in Wilhelmsburg deportiert.

Today the notorious Reeperbahn has been taken over largely by tourists. Most of the wild and wicked sex clubs and brothels have been replaced by musical theatres, much tamer clubs, sport casinos, and Internet cafes and American fast food chains such as Macdonalds, KFC, and Subway, as well as fish & chips, curry, sushi, hot dog, Chinese, Indian, and middle eastern restaurants.

GEORGE: They were all very nice people and it was really good for us to meet them, because they were more cultured than the locals. They had a great appreciation for us, but they were very artistic and interesting in themselves. They were the arty crowd around Hamburg. We started hanging out with them. We learnt more from them at that point than they learnt from us, including style. Klaus, Astrid and Jürgen became real friends.

GEORGE: Stuart was engaged to Astrid and he decided that he was going to leave the band and live in Germany because Eduardo Paolozzi was coming to be the lecturer at Hamburg Art College.

KLAUS: Every second of Stuart's short time he was doing something. He saw 10 times more than other people. His imagination was fantastic. His death was a tragedy. He would have done so much.

 

Take a stroll along the banks of the Elbe river as it appears today
www.hillmanweb.com/BEATLES/elbe.html

There are more than 2100 animals in the famous Hagenbeck zoo. Carl Hagenbeck exhibited seals on Hamburg's Reeperbahn for the first time in 1848. The lions' tract was once remarkable as being the first unfenced enclosure for lions in the world. One of the zoo's biggest attractions is the 'Troparium', with its sharks and moray eels, corals and sea-horses, piranhas, alligators and anacordas. And both young and old enjoy the sight of the walrusses at feeding time, the baby elephants lumbering along and the breathtaking dolphin show.

Around the turn of the century, Carl Hagenbeck (14th June 1844 to 14th April 1913) had the idea of exhibiting animals in bar-less, open-air enclosures instead of in cages. Instead of bars, the animals are separated from the public by invisible ditches. This idea was patented by Carl Hagenbeck in 1896, and in 1907 he opened his Zoo in Stellingen, a district of Hamburg. Since then, zoos modelled on Carl Hagenbeck’s design featuring open-air enclosures and panoramic landscapes have opened all over the world. Hagenbeck’s Zoo has become known as the forerunner of the modern Wild Animal Park.