Hamburg is on the banks of the Elbe River, from the UK it can be a short party cruise, a local cruise, a gateway to the Baltic. Hamburg can feature in so many cruise programs. However, it is for many a taster, a few days on a ship for the first time. Hamburg on Google Maps
Beatles first foot in Hamburg was on the 17 August 1960, to play at the Indra Club on the Grosse Freiheit street for owner Bruno Koschmider, who also owned the Kaiserkeller. It was a 48 night booking. Their audience was often very small and mainly ladies of the night looking for business in the busy port town. Women and sailors paid for the musicians, who were often told to keep the volume down as women lived, worked and slept in the rooms above. The first night they were in shock, and often had second thoughts. Apart from the first night when they slept on the floor of the old businessman, Bruno Koschmider’s small apartment, their living accommodation was in the back of a little cinema, the Bambi Kinorough, and it was far from luxury. They were paid £2.50 each per day for performing four and a half hours on weekdays and six hours on weekends. It doesn’t sound a great deal, but then cruise ship bands sometimes do longer hours! However, George Harrison is quoted as saying, “The Reeperbahn and Grosse Freiheit were the best thing we’d ever seen, clubs and neon lights everywhere and lots of restaurants and entertainment. It looked really good. There were seedy things about it, obviously, including some of the conditions we had to live in when we first got there.” The rest as they say, is history. This, St Pauli area tour is very often a separate tour for adults only, see our tours page.
There are many links to help. We also have a great Liverpool section which includes the Beatles Museum, and a tour by Paul McCartney!
This is an early Beatles picture from the Indra Club.
See our own tour of Hamburg by Jean Heard, and the Town Hall Tour and Miniatur Wunderland. Plus an incredible find, a coffee shop that has a mini coffee bean roasting factory active for visitors to watch.
If you have just been on your first party cruise, have a look round Doris Visits, at the ship tours. You might want a smaller ship. A large ship with much entertainment and premium restaurants. The fun is the research. Cruise Web sites are not always easy to follow and can be notoriously complicated. Here’s how other ships circumnavigate the globe.
