The Nome daily nugget., 1937-08-28


 sculptured reliefs, are brilliantly illumi mated. On bad days, when fog or ica slows down the Elbe ferries or crowdi the bridges, pedestrians and cyclista all prefer the dry, warm tubes. Many Languages There. Hamburg Is a polyglot port. Shop ping street window cards read Eng fish Spoken" "Se Habla Espanol,' "On Parle Francais," Syrian cafes dis play sidewalk dinner signs in fish worm" writing. The hoariest newspa per joke tells of one store whose sign read, German spoken here." English words and phrases five o'clock tea," "sport," morning coat," 'gentleman," even "boule dogue' for bulldog-are often sandwiched in Ger. man speech and news text. "Jazz" 10 pronounced "yotz." At the theater one sometimes hears the phrase "Echt Amerikanische Yotz Bandt," meaning "real American jazz band!"
 Germans take their pleasures seri. ously. Sport Is highly organized 90 that fun-making may function smooth. ly. like electric cargo cranes in the harbor! Hamburg crowds leaving for winter sports take every conventional article advertised In fashion journals Watch the Luft Hansa planes, whose pilots can't start till uniformed air | policemen come with orders; or ob- serve the race crowds on Derby day. where many wear monOcles and Lon. don sport clothes, and see with what clocklike precision all events are clicked of. In busy cafes walters keep count of beers served by the number of paper coasters stacked under each guests glass.
 Go out in Mecklenbarg to shoot, and servants carry your coat, lunch, gun, shells, even a stool to sit on, while others drive the game past you. in easy shooting range.
 In vast St. Pauli pleasure palace you see dinner dancers suddenly scurrS from the floor when uniformed attend. ants rush in, as if raiding the place. dragging mats, rugs. poles. wires and all the gear of aerial acrobats. In . jiffy this Is set up, and girls in tights are flying through the smoke or swing ing out over the tables by trapeze. Just as magically, all this spectacle vanishes; again the jazz band plays. and back to the floor the diners rush to dance again.
 AIster Lake In the City. Alster lake Is set in Hamburg like reflection pool in some ornate expo. sitlon grounds. Imagine Times Square, in New York city, as a tree-bordered lake, alive with toy ferryboats, rafts, pleasure craft. floats, and swans. Ham. burg's Alster lake Is like that, only larger. A river. the Alster, on its way to the Elbe splays wide as 1t reaches the city. A dam divides the lake, cut. ting off one end, the Inner Alster. iD Hamburgs busiest quarters; 50 that hotel guests. department store and office building workers can look down on cafes and canoes and watch huge hocks of swans fed at troughs like pigs
 Riding to Hamburg in third-class coach affords quick flash of life among the masses. Through snatches of salty dialogue overheard run the themes about which working people think. Jobs, wages, the price of food and clothes, what the government ought to do, politics in Its many variations the same here as everywhere. Also. you hear many poor are leaving the city to save rents and try to live on the land. Some men in the coach, re turning from visits with country kin, carry a goose, a sack of fruit or pota. toes.
 Tt was better before the war;"
 "Ach, va, the good old peace times F.
 Peace, war; fires, floods. and cholera Hamburg has known them all since Charlemagne first laid out the place as 'ort from which to fight the Wends. the Swedes. and other half. wild pagans hereabout, whose descend. ants later helped people England Danes, French, Russians have struck their blows at Hamburg But, from the day that Tome soldiers built the first hut and sounded their bugle blasts over the swanipy Elbe lands down to the steain-siren chorus of to day. Hamburg has slowly grown in power and influence. till now she is ths greatest seaport In continental Europe Heiress of the Hanseatic league. Ger mans call her.