Cologne, Bremen, Hamburg

Bremen Church
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Today was to be a long driving day taking us up to the northern area of Germany. A scheduled departure time of 7:30am had us up early before the sun. The weather today was overcast and as we set off the visibility was very low as a lot of fog had set in.

Off on the Autobahn we went, watching the cars race by us as the coach was limited to 100km/hr. Maria our Tour Leader gave us some commentary about the town of Bremen where we were due to stop for lunch. This town was where the operators of the Bremen port took up residence, in an effort to protect themselves from pirates and raiders which normally frequented the ports. In Feudal times, it was also a town which was controlled by Handseatic, where the residents of the town set the laws, as opposed to a Feudal lord, which like the mafia, paid men to be their army and then charged landowners and merchants inside his feudal domain for protection by his soldiers.

Sweet smelling cologne..

Bremen Square - old merchant houses
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Part-way to Breman we have a "comfort-stop" after driving for 2hrs where we are first given an overview of this new facility by Maria. Here, you have to pay 50cents euro to use the public toilettin, which you insert into a coin slot. On the other side of the machine, after you pass through the turnstile, you collect a coupon, which you can then use upstairs in the market area for a 50cent euro discount on any purchase made in the centre. The other technology utilised here is the self cleaning toilets. After flush, a block comes out from the back, then the toilet seat swivels under the block effectively cleaning the seat for every use. Great in principle by damp in practice. :)

The characters from the Donkey, Dog, Cat and Rooster tale - originated from Bremen
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Onward we travel for another 1hr45min to get us to Bremen. On the way Maria tells us a bit about the history of the Grimm Brothers whose main job was not to scribe fairly tales, but were responsible for writing down the very first German Dictionary. While doing this, they talked to German people and these people relayed to them the legends and tales of old which were verbally passed on to each generation. The Grimm Brothers then put these in print, and these tales became popular. Maria told us the tale of the Donkey, Dog, Cat and Rooster, which source was originally from Bremen. Later we would see that there were sculptures and statues of these throughout the town.

Hanseatic Roland Statue
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On arrival in Bremen Maria takes us on a short walk to the Bremen square, pointing out the typical old merchant houses and places we might like to investigate further during our two hours of free time. We were also to find ourselves something for lunch during this time.

Outside the Bremen Parliament stands the Roland Statue, one of which stands in each Handseatic controlled town of olde. Maria explains that in olden times, each town used its own measurement scale, so that merchants coming to town to buy goods like cotten from the port did not know how much to purchase in terms of the local measurement scale. This was solved however as each Roland statue was exactly the same size, and a measurement scale of "one knee" was taken as the distance between the two needle points on the knees of the Roland Statue. This scale was adopted by all Handseatic towns.

Church Guard
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Joe and I spent our free time walking around the local town, admiring the quaint alleyways and houses. We found our way to the "schnoor" area of the town, the fishermans quarter. Here the small alleyways and narrow houses have been converted to shops selling many and varied items, as well as cafes and restaurants. We found a larger cafe/bar where we stopped for a double-decker sandwich each for lunch, while admiring the passers-by in what seemed to be the flowermarket part of town.

At 2:15 it was back on the bus for the final two hour ride for the day to Hamburg. There was not much to look at during this ride as we were on the autobahn and the sides are built-up much like our own to limit noise to the local area. On arrival at our hotel in Hamburg, a newly converted old circular water tower, we check-in and have an afternoon kip.

Decoration above one of the small passageways
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We then head out at 6pm on our optional dinner excursion for the evening at a typical Hamburg restaurant. Here we were served Sauerkrauht soup, salad, trio of meats with vegetables, and a fresh berry and custard dessert. We were then taken on a short bus ride through the red light district of Hamburg, to view the colourful neon lights, which is located in one small street. There didn't seem to be much business going on tonight. That was the end of our evening with Willy our bus driver taking us back to our hotel.