City Nord

City Nord is the setting of Fiete’s new night work for Shell, and the place where he hopes a steady job will mark a turn toward a better life. It first appears not as a familiar destination but as an unknown working landscape: factory grounds and office buildings to be watched after the daytime staff have gone home.

Setting and First Arrival

In June, Shell hires Fiete as a guard responsible for patrolling its factory grounds and office buildings at night. He has never been to City Nord before. On June 20, with his shift due to begin at 5:45 p.m., he sets out at 4:30 so he can approach the new job without haste. He walks to Altona station in warm summer weather, feeling physically better than he has for a long time after drinking as little as he could the previous day.

His destination is Kapstadtring 2. When he arrives, hundreds of employees, perhaps a thousand, are streaming out of the site. Their departure gives the place its first defining rhythm: the daytime workforce leaves just as Fiete’s solitary night begins. He is excited by the prospect of being alone and in charge of the immense area, then asks his way to the office of his supervisor, Mr. Wolter.

Work and the Promise of Change

The job makes City Nord a turning point in Fiete’s daily life. Night shifts mean he can no longer go out as before, so he expects to drink much less: after work, he imagines, there will be a beer or two, a matching number of spirits, and then sleep. He invests the post with more than practical hope. In his mind, a socially respected occupation requiring dedication, discipline, and diligence will remove him from the ranks of the abandoned and disreputable and take him away from the dirt, cold, humiliation, and physically punishing labor he associates with St. Pauli.

That confidence also exposes the gap between a new workplace and the unresolved conditions Fiete brings with him. He assumes that the problems at home will somehow disappear now that he has a job, though he has no clear plan for how that will happen. City Nord thus represents a possible change in routine, not proof that his past has been left behind.

Narrative Significance

City Nord introduces a brief image of ordinary social order: employees finish work in crowds, while Fiete arrives to take his place on the night shift. Their overlapping movements make his new role visible, but also underline its isolation. He will inherit the site only when its regular occupants have gone.

The contrast with St. Pauli gives the location its larger significance. Fiete sees the move to City Nord as an escape from a degrading existence and a chance to become one of the respectable working people whose routines he imagines for himself. The narrative presents that hope alongside his continued drinking and his assumption that difficulties will resolve themselves, keeping the promise of a fresh start distinct from any demonstrated resolution.