Beatlemania - we went to Hamburg's newest museum

Just last month Hamburg's newest museum opened, "Beatlemania", a Beatles museum and is at the Beatles Square, on the corner of the street Grosse Freiheit, where the Clubs Top Ten, Kaiserkeller and Starclub were located. The Beatles played these clubs. Since I spent many years as an extreme fan and my kids had been infected with the bug (get it - bug!) last year, there was no doubt we would visit.
The museum stretches over 5 stories, though in actuality, only 3 are exhibits. Mostly they recreate the feeling of the early sixties in Hamburg and the exhibits themselves are lots of memorabilia, papers, bills, letters, documents and multimedia experiences. To understand the beginning of the Beatles, this is a great spot.

We got Beatles passports with a map and a keycard to start interactive displays, record our bad karaoke singing or take a picture behind all the people in the St. Pepper's cover. One of the coolest thing was a room that started with one screen showing a concert - I believe Shea stadium - and then more and more screens are being turned on all around you, all showing different, but similar shots of the concert. All this happens while being immersed in the sound of the concert and it was such an interesting experience, because it totally caught me and I got so emotional - no wonder the fans were fainting left and right.

Of course the girls were exited, but they are not THAT interested in the history and the background, after all, they are only eight and ten. Mostly they just loved looking at all the photos and hearing the music everywhere. There were interviews with people that were friends with the Beatles at that time, which was interesting, but it was hard to hear them, because the music was too loud. Sophie's favorite was the control room of the yellow submarine, Johanna liked all the fan paraphernalia and I was thrilled to see all these newspaper articles, old magazines and photos that I had collected many years ago.

















We got an additional kick out of coming through the St. Pauli subway station 4 times today. Why it is so funny? Because Paul's 'grandfather' calls him Pauli in 'A Hard Day's Night'. Of course the museum is located in the red light district on the Reeperbahn, the one street known to everybody in the world, but my children did not notice anything at all - lovely innocence. The museum was completely empty though, not a good sign after just having opened, we paid a fortune though to get in and you just don't get enough bang for the buck.