Hamburg and how things have changed.

We were in Hamburg last week for five days. It was my first time there. It is Germany's second largest city, around 1.7 million people and has Europe's largest port. A very interesting city, very international and many very different neighborhoods some of which are quite beautiful. There's one neighborhood that is a similar to Berlin's Kreuzberg, leftie, anarchistic and filled with youthful rebellion. It is different from Kreuzberg though because there are no Turks living there, but is interesting, filled with cafes, restaurants, bars, clothing boutiques, etc. It's become(ing) quite gentrified. The clothing boutiques were packed with young people in their 20's paying top Euros for very expensive clothes. I found myself thinking how times have changed because when I was in my 20's first off in cities like San Fran there were no clothing boutiques in alternative neighborhoods to speak of besides second hand clothing stores and secondly nobody had any money or interest to spend huge sums on clothes. People just didn't care about that at all. Now, some people in their 20's do.