Edited by Jim McCrory, Tuesday 22 July 2025 at 16:02
A Midnight Encounter at Hamburg Airport from a travel memoir
We were standing outside Hamburg Airport. It was past midnight, and the arrivals area had emptied of life. Our friends, who had promised to collect us, were nowhere in sight.
The automatic doors behind us sighed open and shut with the occasional lone traveller, but the road ahead was still and silent. Our phones had little battery left. As the minutes ticked by, we exchanged anxious glances. I called a nearby hotel and booked a room, just in case. Better to have a bed than stand bewildered in the dark.
We decided to wait a little longer, reluctant to abandon hope.
That’s when he arrived—like a character from a sixties movie. A battered old car. He rolled down the window and singing to himself and swigging from a brown beer bottle.
He called out something in German, cheerful and booming.
“Alles in Ordnung? Wo wollt ihr hin?” (Everything okay? Where do you want to go?)
Panicked, I resorted to my long-abandoned schoolboy German. “Ich… bin Touristen. Ich habe keine… Deutsch.” (I… am tourist. I have no… German.)
He laughed—a big, generous laugh that echoed in the night—and switched to English. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
Such unexpected kindness. I was touched. “Thank you,” I replied and explained we were waiting on friends.
He raised his bottle in salute. “No problem! Alles Gute!” he said, and with a final grin, drove off singing unashamedly into the night, a lone troubadour.
A Midnight Encounter at Hamburg Airport
A Midnight Encounter at Hamburg Airport
from a travel memoir
We were standing outside Hamburg Airport. It was past midnight, and the arrivals area had emptied of life. Our friends, who had promised to collect us, were nowhere in sight.
The automatic doors behind us sighed open and shut with the occasional lone traveller, but the road ahead was still and silent. Our phones had little battery left. As the minutes ticked by, we exchanged anxious glances. I called a nearby hotel and booked a room, just in case. Better to have a bed than stand bewildered in the dark.
We decided to wait a little longer, reluctant to abandon hope.
That’s when he arrived—like a character from a sixties movie. A battered old car. He rolled down the window and singing to himself and swigging from a brown beer bottle.
He called out something in German, cheerful and booming.
“Alles in Ordnung? Wo wollt ihr hin?”
(Everything okay? Where do you want to go?)
Panicked, I resorted to my long-abandoned schoolboy German.
“Ich… bin Touristen. Ich habe keine… Deutsch.”
(I… am tourist. I have no… German.)
He laughed—a big, generous laugh that echoed in the night—and switched to English.
“Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
Such unexpected kindness. I was touched.
“Thank you,” I replied and explained we were waiting on friends.
He raised his bottle in salute. “No problem! Alles Gute!” he said, and with a final grin, drove off singing unashamedly into the night, a lone troubadour.
I never forgot you, kind stranger.