tba.

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Students’ Event Guide

& Literar y Journal
University of Hamburg
C ategories
weblinks
T able of C ontents
university life

film/cinema 3 CUT - impressive modern art?

readings 3 3 Zimmer Wohnung - pub poetry
market
4 Schachcafé - open almost 24/7
4 HasenschaukeL - a Doll’s House?
music
5 B-Movie - different home cinema
locations
6 coffee, music... and a nap
theatre
6 bargain like a pro @ Flohschanze
creative corner
7 Faces of The City - Gängeviertel
imprint
8 www.StoryOfStuff.com
8 Datscha Project - Get taken east
9 LiteraturhauS
9 Martin SonneborN
10 Mr. Chomsky & the music
12 The tba-family
Welcome to Hamburg!
So, you´ve already strolled up the
treefree, marble Jungfernstieg, spent
too much money in the crowded
Consumer Ground Zero, boozed
through the night at the Reeper-
bahn and had your bowels shaken
at the Dom. But you´re searching
for something different; culture be-
yond all-inclusive-musical-tickets,
subculture beyond what is already
labelled subculture? You desperately
want to find your niche in a big city,
the whimsical venues, the exciting,
out-of-the-way exhibitions? You
wish to be informed about the facili-
ties you have as a student, other than
choosing between three canteens?
And you want to know about the di-
versity of choices you have in your
leisure time, besides the one between
two top football teams? Luckily, you
don´t have to wait any longer.
Welcome to tba!
We welcome you to our very own
Hamburg; the garden of earthly
delights, the hedonistic stronghold,
the adventure playground, the little
wonderland where you can be active
in nearly every manner you wish to.
Here we are, unveiling all the secret
Shangri-Las and unknown urban
pleasures we have explored in many
years of breathtaking research. We´ll
reveal where to bargain for bikes,
the place to eat a Schnitzel all night
long and teach you how to celebrate
life the Russian way. We´ll show you
where you find fairy tales in back-
yard garages, the place to have the
best nap and where you can play
foosball with a trainer.
And you´ll
never walk
alone.
your tba team

You are welcome to join the tba-team with your spirit and knowledge,
whatever it may be! Meet us every Wednesday, 6 pm at the Anglarium
(Phil-Turm, 1st floor, room 171) or mail to: office@tbajournal.com
CUT - Kindergarden or impressive modern art? 3 Z immer W ohnung - Pub Poetry
When? Nov 12 - Feb 6, 2011 When? Party: Every day from 8pm.
10am - 6pm, Thursdays - 9pm Foosball sessions: Mo, Wed, Fri - 8pm
Where? Hamburger Kunsthalle, Readings: from 8pm on
Glockengießerwall (U/S Hbf )
Where? Talstr. 22 (S Reeperbahn)
How much? students 5 € - rest 10 €
Read more here: CUT @ Kunsthalle How much? Beer € 2.40
foosball session with trainer: € 2
A waterfall of orange lianas hangs from the ceiling of the room like
Let us take you to the 3-Zimmer-Wohnung; the best “private” party
an accurately shaped square of wild plants
in one of the city’s most curious streets. Bring your friends and
from the rainforest. Alongside it grow neon-
make yourself at home in this private party atmosphere. It’s up
coloured flowers from a block of granite.
to you whether you choose to spend your night enjoying parlour
However unusual, these are not the work of
games at the kitchen table, chitchatting with friends on the cosy
a loony botanist on LSD, but two pieces of
couch or playing PlayStation on a projector in the bedroom. Just
the exhibition “Cut” at the Kunsthalle. For
don’t forget to explore the dance floor in the basement or the foos-
those of you who only know silhouette cut-
ball corner! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday foosball enthu-
tings as a souvenir from fairs or renaissance
siasts meet in the basement and practice together at several tables.
markets, this exhibition will certainly prove
Anyone who wants to learn and play is welcome to join. The bar
mind-blowing. “Cut” shows all facets that a
also arranges readings every first
cut-out work can possibly enfold in hœuvres
and third Wednesday in the month.
of German and international artists from the
Stories from famous or less famous
years 1970 - 2010. Three-dimensional instal-
authors are mixed with live music
lations, brightly-coloured floral pieces and political statements in
and you can even send in your own
monochrome artworks fill the halls of the “Galerie der Gegenwart”.
story if you want to have it read out
The world of flowing, living paper awaits you!
loud.
J.T.
M.T.

3
S chachc afé - all-night Schnitzel
When? Weekdays: 8am – 4am, Weekends: 24h
Where? Rübenkamp 227 (S1/S11 Rübenkamp)
How much? Coffee: 1,70 € // Beer: 2,30 €
Main Course: 3,00 -13,00 € // Lunch: 5,00 €
Cocktail Happy Hour: Mo from 10 pm: 3,50 €
Read more: www.schachcafe-hamburg.de
Imagine the following situation: you are a student in Hamburg and
have been on a rough night out. All you now want is some food and
the thought of a savoury meal makes your stomach grumble. Your
only problem: It’s a Thursday night and even the notorious Kebab
diner has shut its gates. Luckily, you are in Hamburg. Because there
is a place that will satisfy all your needs: The Schachcafé (“chess
café”) is open almost 24/7. Alongside a broad variety of international
dishes, the restaurant, which is located in a
beautiful old railway building, serves what
is best described as German Soul Food.
Traditional meals like “Bauernfrühstück”
and Schnitzel come in portions that even
a lumberjack would marvel at and even the
brokest can afford. In the summer you can
enjoy their large beer garden. A special tip
for those of you with a smartphone: The
entire menu can also be found online.
J.T.
4
H asenschauke L - a doll’s house?
When? Wed - Sat from 9pm
Where? Silbersackstraße 17 (S1/S3 Reeperbahn)
How much? Beer: 2.-€ (Astra) - 2.40€ (Störtebecker)
Read more: www.hasenschaukel.de
Pinks and greens, the type of gaudy colours you might find on a
plastic doll’s house – if these are not your favourite colors, you might
be a bit reluctant when you see the music bar Hasenschaukel for the
first time. I certainly was. But inside this bar in St. Pauli you can find
a lot of cuddly reasons to stay: a stylish and lovely detailed art nou-
veau interior, which is truly home to some curled
dolls building up the lamp shades; eclectic sing-
er-songwriter and band concerts or DJ-ing for
free; and colourful and interesting people like the
owners themselves. You can enjoy shots or cock-
tails, have the obligatory Astra or try the quite
tart “Störtebeker Beer of the Righteous”, which is a house special.
You can also experiment with inconvenient anti-alcoholics – how
might a drink called “Wostok Tannenwald” taste? Check out the
entertainment programme online and get to know some ambitious,
non-mainstream singer-songwriters.
V.S.
 B-M ovie - a different home-cinema
When? Weekdays: 8am – 4am, Weekends: 24h

Where? Brigittenstraße 5 (U3 Feldstr)

How much? 3.50€ - 5,-€

Read more: www.b-movie.de

Welcome to the smallest cinema in the

whole of Hamburg. The B-Movie has
the intimate charm of a backyard garage
with a homemade stereo sound-system
and a tiny bar at the front. Similarly
wee is the entrance fee: you pay from
3,50€, up to 5€, depending on your will
to make a donation to the non-profit as-
sociation that is organizing the weekly
short film festivals, LGBT-movie nights and special programs for
deaf persons. The unconventional movie schedule is organized on a
topical basis and changes every month. In December it is going to
be all about fairy tales, also including the enchanting Czech Cinder-
ella story “Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel”. In addition to that,
the venue is also used for experimental music events.
J.T.

5
A ngl arium - Coffee, music... and a nap Bargain like a pro at F lohschanz E
Where? Philturm, VMP5, 1st floor, R171 When? Saturdays 8am - 4pm
How much? Coffee 0.50€ // Tea 0.30€ Where? Feldstr. 30, Karoviertel

The Anglarium is about all the average student needs between two Need some exciting stuff to give your leisure time a boost? Look-
seminars. In times of hundreds of people making a pilgrimage to get ing for something unusual and alternative for a friend’s birthday?
a döner, our Mensa is not a place to eat in peace and quiet anymore Or are you just up for a stroll in a vivid atmosphere on a Satur-
(or was it ever?). The coffee is expensive and the seating not at all day morning? Combine all your wishes at Hamburg’s most lively
comfortable. So why not seek refuge in our own beloved anglarium? shopping opportunity: The flea market at Feldstraße, St. Pauli. The
Here you’ll find a variety of couches, tasty coffee and tea for fair open-air street market will have you sauntering among thousands
prices and good music. Brightly coloured walls and posters let you of necessary and less
forget about the unwritten papers, necessary items like
the presentations to be held and antique jewellery,
the exams to be taken. This is a meat grinders, bikes,
place to relax and enjoy a little chat old comics, hand
with all the other students fleeing made soaps, knitted
from university’s drudgery. This is hats, vintage clothes
a place to have a party, for hallow- and everything you
een, christmas, anything. This is a can possibly imag-
place to spend your whole after- ine. After having
noon, even though your last seminar ended hours ago. This is the bargained success-
place to be! And it’s on the first floor, you don’t even have to get in fully, the street café Pauli Kantine on the corner is waiting with an
an elevator! affordable breakfast buffet. And you don’t necessarily have to be a
S.R. morning person to enjoy the ambience; the market lasts until 4pm,
every Saturday, all-year.
M.T.

6
 Faces of the city - GängevierteL
Where: between Valentinskamp & Chaffamacherreihe

read more: www.das-gaengeviertel.info

When you walk around the city, you usually take the same routes,
see the same buildings and spend your hard-earned cash at the
same well-known stores. But have you ever been to the Gänge-
viertel, located in the very heart of our city? The Gängeviertel
is a living and breathing museum, revealing the nature of living
quarters in 19th century Hamburg. Due to the rapidly increasing
population, the working people of the city were squeezed into
ever smaller spaces, often a stone’s throw away from the loud and
dirty factories where they worked.
In 2009, the “Komm in die Gänge”-initiative turned the twelve
remaining buildings, which were very run-down, into a place that
offers a colourful variety of interesting programs. Artists display
their works in rooms turned into studios, festivals take place, dif-
ferent projects and clubs to join are offered. You can go there for
brunch with your friends, admire the work of a young artist or
even rent some space to set up your own vernisage or realize your
own play.

So the next time you find yourself wandering around Jungfern-

stieg or Gänsemarkt, don’t hesitate to seek out this hidden place
and enjoy the unique atmosphere and the creativity of its denizens.

O.S.

7
 www .S tory O f S tuff . com
Apple’s new iPad is apparently both ‘magical’ and ‘revolutionary’, at
least according to Apple. People stop and stare when they see one in
the ‘wild’. Friends have started to tell me that they ‘need one’. Mean-
while, Christmas is coming, and the pressure to consume is growing
with each passing week. Many of us will spend the weeks leading up
to Christmas, running around like headless chickens, on a mission
to buy all of the presents on our Christmas lists.
But where does all this stuff come from? For most of us, the answer
to this question begins and ends with ‘the shop’.
Whether online or High Street, we purchase
products without considering where they really
come from. And when we throw them out and
buy the latest phone/notebook/iPod, where do
our once beloved products end up?
The point is that we rarely consider where our
Stuff comes from, and where it goes once we
find something new to play with. For those of
us who are curious about how the system works,
check out the above link, the story it tells really is revolutionary.
M.L.T.
8
D atscha P roject - Get Taken East
When & Where?
• 17.12.10, 9pm, Datscha-Party with Pep-See (St. Petersburg)
@ Fundbureau, Stresemannstr. 114 (S Holstenstr)
• 8.01.2011, midnight: Silvester 2 „Noch ein Mal mit Gefühl“
@ Uebel und Gefährlich, Feldstr. 66 (U3 Feldstr))
Read more: www.datscha-projekt.de
A datscha (russ. дача) is a place to forget about all the obstacles
destiny gladly decided to put in your way - a place to unwind and
to have fun with all your friends and family, simply said: a holiday
house. For people who don’t have enough money to build their own
datscha in the Crimea, but need a little holiday, the parties of the
Datscha-Project are definitely the ones to aim for. While listening to
bands that dedicated their musical careers to BalkanBeats, Balkan-
Ska, GypsyBrass and co., you can dream of onion domes and dance
away everything that keeps your world from going round. And if you
don’t feel like dancing, you can just
lean back and enjoy a little cultural
crash course in Eastern European
joie de vivre. The glorious mission of
the Datscha-Project: to make East-
ern European music world-famous.
Their motto: One has to celebrate
when one has the chance.
I.W.
 L iteraturhau S - where books live
Where? Schwanenwik 38 (U3 Mundsburg)
How much? Coffee: ??? € // Beer: 3.70 €
Read more: www.literaturhaus-hamburg.de
Wintertime – just the right season for hot tea, fluffy
blankets and a thick book. Those of you who aren’t sat-
isfied with merely reading books alone, wrapped up at
home may enjoy Hamburg’s Literaturhaus. Situated
close to the Alster, the white building might seem a
bit posh at first glance. In fact you might come across
some middle-aged, carefully dressed couples, draped in
pearls, if you go to one of the numerous readings, but
the Literaturhaus caters for all those who wish to learn.
The so called “Schreiblabor” for instance is a workshop
for young people who want to improve their writing
skills and style with the help of two young authors. You
can join Poetry slams or the “irgendwie komisch” events,
which are satirical or humorous readings with authors like Martin
Sonneborn and Heinz Strunk. Climbing up the stairs under the eyes
of dozens of photos of T. C. Boyle and the like, you will find a cosy
café and a bookstore that round out the atmosphere and make the
Literaturhaus the perfect place to spend a snowy afternoon.
V.S.
9
M artin S onnebor N
“How can anyone hate Ossis like that?“ – this headline of
the Berliner Kurier describes the core of the work of Martin
Sonneborn, former chief editor of the world-famous satiric
magazine Titanic and head of the political party Die Partei,
which is keen on rebuilding the Berlin wall again.
Well, how can he? Does he really hate people from Eastern
Germany? How can he wander around the borders of Berlin
and turn his strange experiences into a film and a book en-
titled “Heimatkunde”? Why was it his achievement that the
Soccer World Cup took place in Germany in 2006? How
can he start exchanging bulbs with energy saving bulbs in
numerous households in “Dunkeldeutschland”? How can
he invade people’s homes pretending to film video clips for
Google Home View?
Because people let him. Because it’s satire. Because it’s his
inner calling and job. Because it’s hilarious. And because it’s
Martin Sonneborn.
V.S.
 Mr. Chomsky & the Music
In the early 1970s American linguist Noam Chomsky shook the
world with his reasonings about the existence of a “universal gram-
mar” which supposedly is innate in every human being - no matter
of what origin he or she is. According to Chomsky, this “univer-
sal grammar” allows humans to acquire language based on certain
universal rules and the presence of a human-specific ‘language ac-
quisition device’ also called LAD. He argued that the grammatical
principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the dif-
ferences among the world’s languages can be characterized
in terms of parameter settings in the brain - this approach
being labeled his “Principles and Parameters”-theory. He
concluded that every language is based on a collection of
parameters and switches, which in every modern language
is actively or passively present and which conclusively allows
the researcher to differentiate types of languages based on
these parameters.
Since that time, many linguists have followed in Chom-
sky’s footsteps and tried and still try to prove this universal
generative grammar and during the last decades a whole
school of thought - either called Generativists or Chomskyites -
emerged. It is a heatedly-discussed topic in the realms of linguis-
tics (in theory as well as in fields such as Applied Linguistics or its
German equivalent, the field of Sprachlehrforschung) - but a different
form of this universal grammar has been claimed to exist in a quite
10
different field of work since the 1970s.
As has been presented by music theorists Lerdahl & Jackendorff
in their 1983 work on a generative theory of music, apparently the
human brain is hard-wired to being able to perceive and connect
music in scales. The interesting thing seems to be that every human
being is supposedly linking single notes automatically to a system
of music called the pentatonic scale (which is re-presented i.e. on
the piano by black keys). This scale divides the range between a base
note and its following octave by five evenly-distributed in-between
pitches. The presence of pentatonic scales in almost every cultural
space is one of the most striking facts because one can
argue that this universal presence can be linked to an in-
nate need of musical expression in exactly this form.
American musician Bobby McFerrin makes practical use
of this phenomenon. Since the 1980s he uses interaction
with the audience as an active element of his stage per-
formances. Within such an element, he succeeds in sur-
prising people of every origin when he confronts them
with their innate musical capabilities. For example, Mc
Ferrin sings one note to the audience and simultaneously
connects this note with a little on-stage jump and then invites the
audience to sing this note whenever he does the jump. Subsequently
he adds two other notes/jumps in different places next to the one
original note/jump. And then, without any further advice on how
to proceed with and adapt additional notes to differing jump loca-
tions, the audience will end up singing along with McFerrin in this I do believe that in relation to music, Chomsky’s “Patterns and
pentatonic scale. The artist, after having presented this phenomenon Parameters”-approach is a valid theory because of the universality of
at the World Science Festival in 2009, concludes that “regardless of presence in all corners of the globe. Out of this core concept, many
where I am, anywhere, every audience takes that”, indicating a uni- variations such as our Western-standard Dur- and Moll-scales based
versal existence of pentatonic understanding of music. So does that on a diatonic/heptatonic/chromatic system evolved. And this devel-
mean that we all do follow the same in-built musical compass? opment can consistently be adapted to languages as well, although
Critics argue that the recognition of these patterns do not nec- the underlying system is a more complex one.
essarily mean that all people are hard-wired to the pentatonic con-
T.S.
cept. They rather see the explanation in group dynamics which they
describe as the group following a small number of people who, by
training, are prone to adapt this tonal scale to the variants given (e.g.
by McFerrin). In broad terms that means that a small percentage of
the audience really do connect the given tones to the pentatonic sys-
tem because they are used to it, but the vast majority unconsciously
only follows those “lead singers” in the audience. I personally do
not know of any scientific research substantiating this argument, but
even if so - this does not extenuate the fascination the pentatonic
phenomenon has on me.
In addition to that, we can argue that one tends to categorize such
questions into all-or-nothing patterns such as the “universal gram-
mar” or the “same musical compass”. But life itself, in the form of
evolution, has shown that things hardly can be put in binaries, in
simple black-and-white schemes. On the contrary: through myriads
of evolutionary processes (which can be adapted not only to biology,
but also to linguistics as well as music theory), language as well as
music evolved into a manyfold universe of variations.

11
Imprint - The TBA-family editor Teresa Wolff

sub-editors Susan Reichelt, Marc-Liam Toolan,

Tobias Steiner, Julia Tegtmeyer

authors Reichelt Susan (page 6)

Spyth Olivia (page 7)

Steiner Tobias (pages 10f )

Struckmann Vera (pages 4, 9)

Tegtmeyer Julia (page 3,4,5)

Toolan Marc-Liam (page 8)

Torinsson Malin (pages 3, 6)

Wiegert Isabella (page 8)

photography Olivia Spyth, Malin Torinsson, Sarah Kaufmann

layout Tobias Steiner

copyright 2010, all rights reserved: tba - to be announced
Students’ Event Guide
& Literary Journal
University of Hamburg