Beach culture in Hamburg? There are no barefoot people crossing the streets with boards under their arms. Beach chairs take a long time to look for. Swimming is not recommended in either the Elbe or the Alster. The Hanseatic city is not even by the sea. But in the cool north, even if you can say: It can get extremely hot in summer. On this day, for example.
Seagulls screech. Launch horns. Harbor cranes soar into the sky. A couple of container ships disappear on the horizon. The guest of the beach club Strand Pauli follows all of this out of the corner of his eye, while he is mainly busy blinking in the sun. Here on the Elbe, between Landungsbrücken and the fish auction hall, Hamburg sounds and smells as if it were right on the North Sea; the captains still have to sail almost a hundred kilometers down the Elbe before they can actually set sail. Directly behind the beach club, stairs lead up to St. Pauli and the Reeperbahn. Anchors, steering wheels and sailor brides sneak their way into the tattoos of the guests. You can’t get more Hamburg than this. No longer a cliché either, but: It’s all real.
The sand comes from the heather: totally local, assures the beach club operator
Only the number of sailors one might encounter has rapidly decreased. But the number of deck chairs is growing. Three beach clubs are lined up on the landing stages: two on the parking deck (Hamburg Del Mar and Dock 3) and Pauli beach at the front of the Elbe. Only a railing separates the guests at Pauli Beach from the water, which is neither Caribbean blue nor Croatian crystal clear, but it glitters. You sit under umbrellas, a homemade lemonade or an ice-cold mojito in your hand, let the sand trickle through your toes. Or cool the soles by digging your feet into them. Beach habits emerge almost automatically. What is different: this sand has never felt the surf. In fact, he comes from the heather.
“Local stop”, says Hendrik Olschewski, the managing director of Strand Pauli. And yes, he’s right. After all, the heather is around the corner. Unlike Ibiza or the Caribbean. Sand and palm trees – that’s what you need for flair. Otherwise you could call the whole thing a beer garden. Most beach clubs in Hamburg are actually dependent on purchased sand, because natural beaches are rare, at least in the city center. The Elbe beach, for example, only begins four kilometers downstream at Övelgönne.
The main thing, casual: Hendrik Olschewski, 33, managing director of Strand Pauli.
(Photo: Anja Martin)
“Hamburg is committed to the fact that beach clubs are part of city culture,” explains Olschewski, a native of Hamburg, 33 years old, with a baseball cap, shorts and hoodie. In fact, the first beach clubs opened 18 years ago on fallow land that was created through restructuring in the port. First trucks dumped their sandloads at the old wooden harbor, then in the parking lots of the closed England terminal. Time and again, temporary replacement areas were found for interim use. Finally the clubs polished up the bad image of the harbor edge – and paid rent for unused places.
Strand Pauli has never had to move. It has existed for 16 years, twelve of which Hendrik Olschewski witnessed. He’s sitting at the bar table in the restaurant with an open notebook, which looks like a straw hut. Behind him hangs a plaited mat painted with palm trees. In general, the furnishings seem wildly collected, homemade, casual. There is something to see everywhere, many details that convey a beach atmosphere. Including handwritten sayings, such as on the self-service counter: “Without a snake, there is no paradise.” The consciously temporary is of course part of the beach club style. It goes without saying that architects are always behind it – and that everything is accepted and statically calculated, could basically last for decades.
No paradise without snakes: the colorful, temporary is part of the atmosphere of a beach club like Strand Pauli.
(Photo: Anja Martin)
In the beginning, Olschewski only worked during his hotel and tourism studies at Strand Pauli, since this year he has been the sole managing director. What does he think, why the beach clubs in Hamburg are so celebrated? “We live in an age in which people move to cities, live in metropolitan areas, where you want to see the horizon instead of looking at streets and take a break from the three-room apartment,” believes Olschewski. “Just looking these 400 meters over the Elbe gives you a lot of space.”
Monkey Beach, that means: no frills and please relax!
Eight to ten percent of Hamburg’s urban area consists of water. The 164 hectare Outer Alster and many canals that slide into the residential areas come to the port and the Elbe in the northern city center. Some run very urban between house facades, others behind villa gardens. If you get off the bus at the noisy Mühlenkampbrücke in Winterhude, you only have to go down a few steps to the pier – and the city is far away. Roads are suddenly waterways; instead of cars, SUPs, canoes and rubber dinghies operate. The curb gives way to a green bank.
Here on the jetty is Monkey Beach: It consists of an outside bar, potted palms, beach loungers, spaghetti armchairs – and people who relax and look out over the water or watch the goings-on. It doesn’t get boring, since the corona pandemic has been even more happening on the water than before. Some in the beach club are canoe excursions on paddle break themselves. After a drink, they don’t climb up to the street, but climb back into their vehicle at the small wooden walkway, slide into the Osterbek Canal, the Hofweg Canal or the Long Zug, an offshoot of the Outer Alster. Watching others doing water sports – that also has something of a holiday beach.
No sand, but still a holiday mood: Monkey Beach at the Mühlenkamp jetty in Hamburg-Winterhude.
(Photo: Anja Martin)
However, one component is completely missing: sand. Instead, you sit here on an anti-slip surface – a requirement of the city. “We actually thought about spreading sand, but that weighs too much,” says Bastian Rößler, the operator. Understandable, because the wooden pier only stands on stilts in the canal. But even so, for the 37-year-old with tattoos and undercut, it has the most important attributes of a beach club: “It has a holiday flair. It’s green. It’s relaxed. You only come for an hour and forget the time.” That is the greatest compliment for him, “when people forget the time”. Apparently that is exactly what the guests are looking for in this place: a casual zone instead of a chic café. Innovative drinks, sitting close to the floor, self-service. When Rößler took over the investor in 2018, he wanted to do it differently than the rather chic predecessor, and therefore he absolutely needed a new name: Monkey Beach instead of Fiedler’s, as it was called before.
The club name takes you straight into the tropics, and for Rößler there is also a kind of motto in it: restaurateurs shouldn’t take themselves too seriously, it seems monkey. So always stay relaxed. He knew about drinks. After all, he still has a bar in Eimsbüttel (Mr. Ape) and is a sommelier. For the meal he brought in a restaurant operator who sells poke bowls on the upper floor, which you can remind yourself to bring to the lounger with a beeper. The Hawaiian national dish, a rice bowl with raw fish and toppings, goes perfectly with a beach club, with drinks bars in the shape of a surfboard, with exotic furniture and sprayed hibiscus flowers.
Just don’t take the inn too seriously: Bastian Rößler, 37, operator of Monkey Beach.
(Photo: Anja Martin)
Unrecognized surfer? Water sports freak? Does he come to work with the SUP? He laughs: “No, no. I like to look at the water, but that’s about it.” And he feels like most people who spend their free time in the city’s beach clubs. The water calms down, relaxes and lets you dream of the holidays. The clubs are small escapes in their own city and islands of calm for tourists who need a break. Since the opening after the lockdown, they have also been used to dispel the pandemic pale. Monkey Beach was also closed for a long time. “We felt Corona a lot,” says Rößler. They were able to open last summer, with restrictions and distance, but the entire winter business was canceled.
Winter business for beach clubs? The Monkey Beach extends the awning in winter and uses the interior. Strand Pauli also needs winter: “We basically hold Christmas parties for seven weeks,” says Olschewski, normally. Now you can apparently say goodbye to two thoughts: that beach clubs only work by the sea. And that they are exclusively a matter of summer.