Barricades protect Hamburg home during Michael Jackson stay

Jan 28, 2006, 13:17 GMT

Hamburg - Police have had to throw up barricades around a suburban Hamburg home to keep the fans and the curious at bay since singer Michael Jackson, 47, arrived to spend a few days with friends.

Police confirmed a report in the mass-circulation daily Bild that the US star was staying at the home in a quiet, green, northern section of the city. Bild said he was visiting a man he had known since a 1995 television appearance in Germany.

Two of Jackson's three children, Prince, 8, and Paris, 7, had joined him on the trip, arriving by air on Thursday morning.

Bild quoted a woman friend of the host family who had disclosed a previous Jackson visit to Hamburg saying that the children and their father had played hide-and-seek and romped through the house, which has a snow-covered garden.

Jackson also stayed with the family in 1997, sleeping in the spare room, going for a stroll on the bank of Hamburg's Elbe seaway and to a movie theatre. Many Hamburg people saw him, but most acted bored, because it breaches German manners to stare at or accost strangers.

Police did not disclose how long he was staying this time, but said barricades were put up to stop fans walking onto the property.

Bild reported that further flights were booked in Jackson's name to Munich, Venice and Paris, with a reservation back to his Bahrain base on February 10.

After his acquittal on Californian charges of child molesting, Jackson moved to the Gulf to live in greater seclusion.