Bremen (Thursday 27 October)

Today we visit Bremen. Bremen is about two and a half hours from Castrop-Rauxel via the Autobahn.

You may have heard of Bremen. The city was severely bombed by the allied forces during WW2. I believe it was in retaliation for Hitlers bombing of civilian London with those V2 rocket bombs. Anyway, Bremen copped a hiding and very little of the city survived unscathed. But some of it did and fortunately surviving was some of Bremen’s most precious buildings. To protect these buildings from the bombers, the residents covered them with grass to disguise them from the air. The town hall was one. The church was another. These buildings are from the 1400’s. Can you imagine that? Just to touch these amazing old structures is a privilege. The town hall is so special, it has been Heritage listed as is the Roland statue in the market place. The Roland statue has pointers on its knees and the distance between these pointers was a legal measure of distance. If ever the length of something was disputed it was easy to resolve. Bring it to the Roland statue and measure it.

It’s Octoberfest here in Germany and of course Bremen has her own celebrations. In the centre of town are markets and food everywhere. Near the train station, sideshow style entertainment stretches for ever. It is a bit like sideshow alley at a country show except the food is much better here and of course there are huge beer tents. There are authentic traditional foods from all parts of Germany. Andreas was brought up near Bremen and nows the area well. And he has a great knowledge of Germanic traditions from all over. The foods were fascinating and we sampled as much as we could. The beer was good too. The rides? Don’t know – didn’t try any!