The Yard

Some ten thousand cars pour daily through Stresemann Street like a never ending stream of sardine cans. When you enter the yard, with the usual noise in your back, you see the main entrance of the building, the former DOSE factory, now turned into an almost chic center where writers, painters, sculpturers, dancers, and craftsmen have their working space. Right by the entrance is the garage, where painters sometimes stage an exhibition. You turn right and come to a smaller part of the yard, where the delivery cars of a pizza service wait for work.

Graceland

The next thing you notice, is the "Graceland" restaurant with a mean green alligator on the sign. Right there you are: Entrance E. You open the door, you smell a strange mixture of herbs. You may say: Southern cuisine smells like that. But in North German Hamburg this is an extravaganza for your nose, a little vexation of the mind, and it's like a legal psychedelic drug that gets your imagination started.
All you have to do now: Simply climb up three stairs to enter the Writers' Room.

A little Ivory Tower

Right under the roof they sit in two rows of four, at each desk an Apple computer with a licensed copy of Word 6.0, all sponsored by the Kulturbehörde Hamburg, the town government department for culture which supports this project heavily. Since summer 1995, about twenty writers here find a place to work. Either they have children at home, or no computer, or they are simply more brilliant when the fridge is miles away.

There is a small bureau with a kitchen and coffee machine, where Nina Jäckle sits who, though a writer herself, does all the paperwork. "Sometimes I feel like a nurse in a hospital," Jäckle says amused. "I look through the window and imagine an author showing me a manuscript. What is it?, I ask. And he answers: a novel."

Not everyone

is suited for work on the "Galeere", sitting in a row, sometimes all for yourself, sometimes with eight people working at the same time. People who write poetry quite often feel uneasy working with other people. To them, words are too intimate. Either they stay just a short time, or never rent a space at all. But others feel relieved to have an oppurtunity to talk between bursts of inventiveness, or bursts of writers' block, to have a chat which lasts as long as it takes to drink a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

Working times also vary

Some work only in the early hours or on weekends to have the place for themselves, some come regularly three or four times a week. Some come everyday for three weeks when work has to be done, and then stay away for months.
One of the regulars is Jürgen Abel, who sits in an adjacent room and prepares a monthly flyer, "Literatur in Hamburg" which shows all the information on literary events in the city.

And there, in the left-hand corner,

is the computer which gets a lot of attention lately. It's the Power-PC with the net connection, where Abel, Jäckle, and fellow writers Christine Garelly, Folko Hülsebusch, Mattis Manzel, Hartmut Pospiech and Michael Prahm (in alphabetical order) prepare the launching of the first German-language literature forum on Compuserve, which is due on August, 1st, 1996. Which means: No more idling around, showing the place to strangers who are not even able to read German. But while we go to work, we invite you to stay, look around, have a cup of virtual coffee...

So this is what you miss while you read this...