One more day left in Hamburg. We go to a café in the morning for hot chocolate before Wilken leaves for work. He orders a brötchen with what looks like raw mince and a quartered onion on top.

I ask what it is. He says it’s raw mince, with a quartered onion on top. It’s an interesting local take on a hamburger, which I’ll grant that given the namesake the place has license to do.

Later, we wander about the Schanzenstrasse, which is your typical German postwar, pro-socialist, ultra-hippy and über graffittied locale. Mangy dogs scratch about by a colossal concrete hunk of a Nazi-era bunker next to the U-bahn station; decidedly unemployed-looking folk swig from beer cans in the car park, and something with dreadlocks – possibly a young man – stalks by with an al-foiled oven dish in hand.

I always feel well out of place in such hoods unless I’ve forgotten to wash my hair and put only one shoe on, but I feel better today when I look at the price tags as we stroll about the shops. Turns out your typical German postwar, pro-socialist, ultra-hippy and über graffittied locale is turning bourgeois. Oh, and those kids you might have seen throwing rocks and protesting globalisation on the news lately – they’re from the swanky private school around the corner.