Bremen, Bremen

In November 2012, we had a trip to Paris all planned - plane tickets, hotel reservation, train tickets.  But, by then we also had learned we'd be moving to Denmark and would have to pay around $2000 for residency permits.

So, Paris was off.  We ate the price of the plane tickets (which, in Europe, were not horribly expensive) and hotel reservation fee.  But we still had our regional train tickets in Germany that we were going to use to get to the airport.

After some research, we figured out that the farthest we could get on our tickets was around a four hour train journey to Bremen in the state of Bremen.  We'd heard it was a lovely city and feeling our usual sense of adventure around Thanksgiving, we set off early Saturday to check it out.

First off, the old town was like a very cute version of Lubeck - all North German brick and half-timber details.  We didn't really have a plan, just wanted to walk around and grab a bite somewhere, which isn't our usual MO.  But, I have to say, it was just a nice, laid-back day and we saw some memorable things.

 

First, of course, was seeing the famous Brementown Musicians statue near the cathedral.  It became a game throughout the day to find small, decorative details around the city featuring a rooster, cat, dog, and donkey - on the lanterns, shop signs, fencing.  I believe by the end of the day we'd gotten to around 52 Brementown Musician sightings.

We also took slow strolls down through the uber-adorable Schnoor district and, my favorite area, pictured here, Böttcherstraße.  It was a long, winding brick-lined street with crooked chimneys and leaning walls - probably the most legitimately Diagon-alley-looking place I'd ever seen.   

We stopped into a bon bon shop and watched them make candy and also chose a little restaurant so we could try some Bremen specialties.

I ended up getting a flammkuchen - kind of like a pizza with very thin crust, onions, and bacon.  Paul got Pinkel und Kohl - Pinkel being a special type of wurst for the area and and kohl being some steamed greens.  

Two thumbs up.

We knew we had a long train ride home, so we began walking back to the station around 4pm, passing quite a number of hammer-dulcimer street musicians.  These guys were the jazziest bunch we saw.  Hammer dulcimer jazz band, huh.  It worked though.

Bremen stands out in my memory since it was the last real trip we took to explore Germany before we moved to Scandinavia.  It was a short visit with a long travel time, but it was still worth it.  We had the freedom, we had the train tickets.  And like we always tell each other when we're trying to get ourselves out the door, we never regret making memories.  Getting out into the world, seeing new things, learning more about how big and diverse and good the world is - we are always happy we did it.

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I'm counting down the days until my third anniversary of living in Europe by recapping trips that I never got around to highlighting.  You can see the list of trips (and links to them as they are written) here.