Thank you to Brigitte who sent me this card. Brigitte is not a postcrosser because she doesn't have a computer but she likes swapping cards with people when she gets the chance.
I am used to seeing little cartoon churches
and town halls and boats and statues on this type of card but, hang on a moment,
what is that naked lady half way down the left hand side?
The answer is she is representing the
red-light district, something that is illegal in Britain. The Reeperbahn is a street in Hamburg's St.
Pauli district, one of the two centres of Hamburg's nightlife and also the
city's red-light district. In German it is also sometimes described as die sündige Meile (the sinful mile). Due to the problems with prostitution and
the high crime rate, in 2007 the Senate of Hamburg enacted a ban on weapons in
the Reeperbahn area. The St Pauli Preservation Society decries the
ongoing gentrification of the area. Some people blame the decline of
the Reeperbahn's prostitution and pornography businesses on the rise of
discotheques and cheap bars that attract teenage customers.
In the early 1960s, The Beatles (who had not
yet become world-famous) played in several clubs around the Reeperbahn,
including the Star-Club, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten and Indra. Stories about the
band's onstage and offstage antics are legendary. John Lennon is quoted as having said "I might have been born in Liverpool -
but I grew up in Hamburg".
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