Category: Bremen

Travels in Bremen Germany.

June 9, 2019 Bremen GE

We learned yesterday afternoon that Monday is a holiday in Germany which explains the big crowds both in Bremen and at the stellplatz.  When we got back to the stellplatz last night there was a sign in the entrance saying that there was no room in the parking lot. Because we liked Bremen and were worried about finding a similar sign in our next destination we decided to spend another day.

The market square in Bremen on a beautiful sunny day.  We had no regrets spending another day.

The World Heritage Site the old town hall that we saw yesterday had a tour today at noon and we decided to make that our highlight for the day.  We slept in and then spent the morning cleaning François and watching the morning exodus of motorhomes from the stellplatz before walking down to the city for our tour.

Part of the interior of the town hall with incredibly intricate wood carvings.

The tour of the interior was helped by an extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide who did a good job of explaining how Bremen developed as an independent merchant city under the Holy Roman Empire.  When Charlemagne first tried to incorporate Bremen into his empire he did so in the normal way by sending a bishop to the city.  The citizens of Bremen resisted this because they wanted the city government to be separate from the church.  Charlemagne’s son Roland agreed to this and Bremen claims to be the first government where the separation of church and state was formally proclaimed.  

The town hall next to the cathedral, the council of the city sat with their backs to the cathedral in the town hall to prove they were not beholden to the Bishop.

Unlike in other cities in Europe the town hall was as prominent as the Cathedral, and do to luck the building survived all of the wars that occurred over the 600 years it has been in existence.  In addition to the normal fantastic wood carvings and paintings the town hall also has a giant wine cellar that holds over 650 different examples of German wine.

The interior of the wine cellar under the town hall, with over 650 different varieties of German wine.  We had beer!

Part of the wine cellar is now a restaurant so we decided to treat ourselves to lunch down in the cellar.  When we arrived we were offered a private room for about 6 people built into the side of the cellar.  It was a cool place even though we were planning on a light lunch.

Roland the person who agreed to allowing Bremen to separate the government from religion.

After lunch we strolled thru town for a while taking in the sites, and people watching.  Bremen has a cute town symbol the four musicians of Bremen.  It is based on a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm about 4 animals who are abandoned by their owners when they are too old to be useful.  The 4 of them decide to move to Bremen to be musicians and even though in the fairy tale they do not make it to Bremen the town has adopted them as the symbol.  There is a statue of the four musicians next to the town hall and the legend is that if you make a wish and touch both forelegs your wish will come true.  It is important to touch both legs because as they say in Bremen if you only touch one it is just two asses shaking hands with each other.

Ton making a wish with the four musicians of Bremen.
Another depiction of the four musicians on the corner of a building.

June 8, 2019 Bremen GE

There was a pretty violent thunderstorm last night that lasted a couple of hours.  I think as a result we both woke up early and decided to get out of Hamburg before the traffic got bad, so we were on the road before 7am.  

Ton had Bremen on her list of must see places because she had read that Germans vote the people from Bremen as the friendliest in Germany.  That was enough for her to make it a must stop site for us.  We decided to take a walking tour put on by the tourist information office.  The guide was a local lady who told us she was afraid to speak English 10 years ago, but she decided in her 40’s to study and now gives tours about her home town in English.  

The Glockenspeil in Bremen is made of Meissen Porcelain and celebrates great aviators and sailors.

Bremen as a port town and aircraft manufacturing city was heavily bombed during WWII but the town hall, and a section of town called the Schnoor (string in English) survived intact.  The town hall is a UNESCO site and has a typical renaissance facade which is incredibly intricate and ornate.  The Schnoor was a working class neighborhood for the history of the city and as a result there are a lot of older homes from the 15th thru the 19th centuries that have mostly been turned into tourist shops and restaurants. 

The town hall is a UNESCO site and was intact at the end of the WWII so it is one of the best actual examples of buildings from that era in Germany.

Bremen has a well developed tourist infrastructure, and even early in the season was quite busy.  We enjoyed the tour and then just walking around town.  

The Schnoor an interesting part of Bremen with original examples of working class homes from the 15th thru the 19th centuries

We decided to treat ourselves out to dinner, and were looking at historical German restaurants when Ton said exactly what I was thinking, “lets get something beside German”, so we ended up with an excellent (and large) Greek dinner before heading back to François for the night.