Mission accomplished :-) (Hamburg)

In my conference outfit, with the other speakers of the final plenary.

Well, now I can breathe freely. As I may have mentioned, this conference is about Travel Medicine, a specialised field focusing on all those health problems related to travelling, especially to the more exotic destinations. My own talk had nothing to do on this, though, as the organisers had asked me to give an overview on how the tourism industry is trying to address the issue of climate change. The topic itself is quite familiar to me, but being one of the speakers in the final plenary session, I felt some pressure to give them their money's worth so to speak.

As  am writing this, the conference has ended a couple of hours ago and I feel like kicking back and relaxing. My talk and seemed to go down pretty well, the audience was attentive and interested and I felt I could give them my best. Must say I feel relieved now that it is done, despite really enjoying the challenge of talking to an audience sligthly outside of my usual circuit.

Yesterday, I attended sessions on topics as wide ranging as snake (and shark!)bites, acute mountain sickness and malaria treatment, all pretty close to what I have to think about when organising my own trips. Contrary to what you might expect, it turned out quite easy to follow the presentations, as there was hardly any sector specific jargon and the health problems themselves were certainly familiar enough ;-)!

At the Conference Dinner.

Last night there was also a Conference Dinner that took place at the prestigious Hamburg Museum. As I had been so busy with the last-minute preparations for my talk today, I had not had time for the Most Important Thing of all: finding out about tango for that night. However, miraculously I managed to hunt down a computer with internet connection although the museum offices were already closed, and quickly located a milonga only 10 minutes' walk from the museum. So, after the tasty and varied meal, a surprisingly entertaining speach by one of the organisers (sorry to say this, but often these talks are anything but!) and some (pretty loud!) German music, it was time to move on to the dancing part of the evening.

Dancers at La Yumba.

The venue, La Yumba, turned out to be another old, lovely building with high ceilings and polished (and very slippery!) floors, teeming with people and throbbing with tango. I immediately felt at home, and although it took a while to be asked to dance (most people seemed to have come to the milonga in pairs and were hardly dancing with others), in the end I did get to dance a lot. At first, my shoes were a problem as I kept slipping on the floor, but slowly I got the hang of it.

As always, it was really interesting observing the interpretation of tango in a new country (this was my first experience of a milonga in Germany). I don't know if it was just this particular place, but it seemed to me to be quite a traditional atmosphere where women really did not ask men to dance, and where almost no-one actually ASKED, rather, the question and acceptance was done by eye contact. Luckily, I had been told about this by friends in Finland. So although at first it seemed like nobody was even looking at me, slowly I did get better at accepting invitations, hopefully without looking too much like a mongoose scanning the sky  for predators :-)!

What I noticed was that here, just like in Sweden and Denmark, some of the best dancers seem to be immigrants. Perhaps it has something to do with being a bit of an outsider and looking for a way to be accepted, or maybe it is more the fact that people from a Latin American background can identify with tango better, but it often seems like it is those who don't really fit in who manage to express the music and lead their dancing companions the best. Interestingly, even the history of Argentinian tango is closely connected with immigrants, as in the first decades of the 20th century tango was often the only way in which they could have a chance to be close to a woman (without paying for it, obviously), and thus it payed off to be a good dancer.

As to the Germans themselves, I could not see a lot of difference in their tango except for one thing: there is certainly a lot more speed on the dance floor here!! They really are moving fast and efficiently, perhaps not doing so many figures (I saw almost no ganchos), instead focusing more on the flow of dancing? The possible downside of this is, however, that there is less time to really enjoy the slower, calmer moments in the music.

Dancing with René, a wonderfully musical and entertaining leader.

Another thing that I seemed to notice in that particular tango place at least was that there does not seem to be that much emphasis on posture. It can of course be (and I would certainly hope so!) that I am still influenced by the teachings of Aisha and Victor, but I am paying a lot more attention to posture and the so-called 'quality' of dance (in terms of movements, dancing to the music as well as listening to your partners' movements) than before. So, in the end, it is difficult to say whether there is such a big difference in these aspects between the 3 countries I've visited so far, or whether it is just my own awareness that has changed?

Will be going into another milonga tonight, this time in El Abrazo. According to René, my most entertaining dance partner from last night, this is THE place to be tonight, although a couple of other options exist too.

Tomorrow, I will be relocating to a hostel for one more night in Hamburg, as I need to do some serious work on a chapter to a travel guide. After that, let's see where my travels take me! It looks quite likely that I will carry on towards Düsseldorf, as there will be a big tango festival (TangoCamp) next weekend...