Having only been in Hamburg for a few days, after spending the summer in Canada and living the previous two years in Switzerland, the large German city certainly took some getting used to. Specifically the Reeperbahn, with its boldly lit sex shops and strip clubs, mixed in with typical touristy pubs, theaters, and a cop shop; at first glance it was all both amusing, but also confusing.
Amusing were the map wielding, walking-shoe adorned tourists, departing from their musical matinee, gasping at the sight of shop windows decked out with ball-gagging manikins. Confusing were the young women lining the side street across from the police station, each placed perfectly six feet from each other, dressed in hot pink and sporting fanny-packs.
But the one thing that still gets me, especially as the cold weather rolls in, are the girls with the fanny-packs, the prostitutes, continually lining the streets, now with their bare legs and big moon boots, and nearly all of them much younger than I. Prostitution is legal in Germany. This includes the girls on the street as well as those working in brothels, hotels, and apartments.
And like many other types of business, some German brothels engage in very typical sales tactics and gimmicks like offering loyalty cards, shuttle buses, even senior discounts. Further, prostitutes in Germany have unions and even health insurance. Where I come from, public prostitution is illegal although buying and selling sex is not. For the most part, sex-workers in Canada are often considered to be drug-addicted streetwalkers, banished to the corners of the worst parts of town, marginalized to the worst extent.
Although the German government has attempted to change this stigma, in part via the legalization and the granting of labor rights, not much has really changed. That said, the women with the bare legs and moon boots, whatever it is that lies down the red-lit alley where women and children are not allowed to walk, and the blatant ads in the paper selling sex with girls that look so young, continue to mar my otherwise wonderful expat experience here in Germany.
