Bremen- A Hanseatic City & Free State

…And my hometown where I grew up. I still have an aunt and cousins there but our former granny flat is no longer available. Therefore we needed a hotel. That plus the rental car we picked up in Hamburg were the first real costs after our transatlantic flight. 

Bremen, with a population of over 500,000 is one of  the 16 Bundeslaender (states) in the German federation. The only other "free town-state" is Hamburg, also part of the Hanseatic League. Its main claim to fame is that it's the home of the Town Musicians of Bremen, a fairytale recorded by the Brothers Grimm.

In case you don't remember it from your childhood: “In the story a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster, all past their prime years in life and usefulness on their respective farms, were soon to be discarded or mistreated by their masters. One by one they leave their homes and set out together. They decide to go to Bremen, known for its freedom, to live without owners and become musicians there. ("Something better than death we can find anywhere.") Thank you, Wikipedia!

Its famous sculpture of these 4 animals stands in its main square adjacent to the city’s magnificent Rathaus (town hall) and Dom (Cathedral). The main hall in the Rathaus is most impressive with its heavy woodwork carved hundreds of years ago showing the splendor of the Hanseatic League’s hayday.  

The Cathedral , a Gothic building built between 11^th-13^th century revealed a gruesome find in 1698. In its basement, two mummified corpses were found: presumably roofers who had fallen off the roof a long time before, maybe even during its construction. For a long time, scientist thought that the lead used for roofing and the radioactivity that it gave off were responsible for their mummification. Current thinking is that it was a natural desiccation process of the two corpses that were forgotten there.

When I was a child, they were still on show in the cellar, now they are housed in the Dom’s museum.

The old part of the city is a real medieval town in itself: It’s called The Schnoor, and well worth the walk through it over by the side of the river Weser: Full if intriguing artisan shop and boutiques as well as coffee shops and restaurants. No surprise, you’ll encounter many tourists.

The Floating Angel - by Ernst Barlach

There was an very abrupt end to last year's Home Swap blogging. I'm resuming it now before Season 3 gets under way.Yes, we are planning to do the same this summer again. Well, not the same put a swap or two!

We spent our last day near the Baltic in that big meandering house packing, cleaning- naturally and got one last interesting piece of sightseeing in. The town of Guestrow, near where we stayed has a Dom -German for Cathedral- that is well renowned for a sculpture by Ernst Barlach. It is called The Levitating one.
Barlach was a German sculptor who came to live in Guestrow. The sculpture was made of bronze in 1927 as a memorial for the fallen soldiers of World War I. Unfortunately, under the Nazis Barlach fell into disgrace and his works were declared Degenerate Art -together with many other artists, painters and writers. The Levitating one was removed form the Dom and melted down.

Shortly after World War II in 1953, a new sculpture was created out of a mould that had survived miraculously. A quote by Barlach explains the meaning of this unusual figure:"For me, time came to a standstill during the war. It couldn't be fitted into anything else earthly. With this figure I wanted to reflect this feeling of hovering in a vacuum..." His fomer house in the woods near the lake of Guestrow was turned into a museum and well worth a visit.
The Dom itself is a typical red brick building like so many churches in Norther-Eastern Germany. Guestrow also has a remarkable castle that underwent big reconstruction when we were there. It was fun to cycle around a little town, see the old parts, stop for a drink or ice- cream or make it out into the open, into its beautiful landscape that is totted with hundreds of lakes.

After that we left, going west into the direction of Hamburg where we had to drop our swapped car for our exchange partenres who came back from our house th enext morning. From there our next destination was to the south visiting my family before embarking on our second exchange.

Next Stop: Berlin

(Brandenburg Gate with its Quadriga on top)

Eventually, it also feels like summer. Now we can leave the old brollie and coat at home. We didn’t come here for the weather; on the contrary, we needed to escape the Floridian heat. Locals said that at least they don’t have brush fires here. Southern Europe, Mallorca & Greece in particular, are literally being scorched.

  

The weekend was spent at my daughter’s in Berlin. I’ve been to Berlin several times, yet like in any other capital, there is so much to see! Berlin became the capital of reunified Germany in 1990 and the seat of the German government since 1999 – much to the dismay of some countries who feared that Germany’s position in Europe was becoming too big again and felt reminded of a certain time in our history. Its dominant position within the European Union and especially during the recent fiscal crisis have renewed and aggravated these sentiments.

During previous visits, Berlin was one big construction site but this has come to an end over 20 years after reunification. A lot of hip young people are drawn to the capital and there is a lot of entertainment. We primarily explored the neighborhood (“Kietz”) where my daughter just moved to. Berlin is like a conglomerate of many little villages with their distinct features, many pubs, restaurants of almost every nation under the sun, and flea markets at the weekend. Even after 2 days of walking around and eating out, some faces seemed familiar already.

.(Picture of Berliner Dom / Cathedral in the city center).The best way to get a first impression of the city (3.5 million inhabitants) is a guided bus tour

Take the "in" out of Intrepid, please

Did I mention we have a second home swap planned in France near Paris? After 2 days on the road with pit stops to see two famous cathedrals, I’m beat. First we visited the big Dom in Aix La Chapelle (Aachen)  where Charlemagne was crowned in 800 A.D. and then the huge Gothic cathedrals at Reims. built a thousand years ago and where all French kings were crowned. This included a little detour from the direct route to our destination, but both were worth it. The weather Gods seem to be thinking it’s autumn already. Mostly cloudy with rain showers and 17 degrees Centigrade max. Both times we got out of the car to do our sightseeing, the sky cleared up temporarily so that we could walk to the cathedrals on dry foot and even have a bite to eat sitting outside, wrapped in a blanket, however. Restaurants in Germany provide those when the weather just wouldn't comply. We drove through the beautiful countryside of the Ardennes in Belgium, very hilly and deeply forested.Lots of battles took place here in both World Wars, Even the 120km from Reims to Paris showed us lovely, green French countryside, surprisingly devoid of populated areas.

The car’s navigation system took us right into evening rush hour Paris, a place you do not want to experience. Everything was choc-a-block and Miss Navi constantly rerouted us, sent us on U turns to avoid the “traffic problem”, as she called it only realizing when it was too late that there were more of the same in the other direction. We had an unscheduled free two-hour-long sightseeing tour of Paris, the Internal Peripherique as well as the External. Trying to get over a bridge to cross the Seine was the target to take us out of this bedlam. There may have been traffic rules in the olden days. Now everybody seems to fend for himself, the survival of the fittest. Motor bikers weaseling their way between cars in a dangerous fashion domineering the roads.Well, if some don't make it, it only proves Darwin is right; let's not forget that kidney donors are badly needed and derive form this pool of humanity. I drove while hubby tried to reconcile Miss Navi and his own GPS (mentioned before!) as well as juggling a map.

People cut in in front of me from all sides; I wasn’t the typical alpha male Parisian forging through and our foreign number plate didn’t earn us any sympathy. I had done trips from Ireland to Germany that took me through the French capital before. I wonder how I ever navigated the Paris road system on my own, without a GPS or navigation system or a hubby in the passenger seat. 
We made it to the house just before dark, found the keys and were able to disarm the alarm. We also brought in all our six Big Berthas without the skies opening again on us. We were at the “Final Destination. But sometimes it's happier to travel than to arrive…

In the meantime a little storm had been brewing back home. The change over from one family to another in one day required some careful planning on my part, i.e. to have the taxi in place at the appointed time for pick up and drop off. And the more important thing for me was to guarantee a clean house for the newcomers. For that purpose I had hired a cleaner to tidy up after the Germans and change the sheets and wash the towels. It's no fun to arrive to an unmade or dirty house after a transatlantic flight and travel time of almost 24 hours.

The cleaner sent me an email “You won’t like this, but…the Germans locked the door from the kitchen to the garage which has a deadbolt.” The cleaners couldn’t get past the garage for which they had the lock number. So the house remained uncleaned, the next, the French family couldn’t get in the way they had expected. They had to find the hidden key in the dark in the slashing rain only to face unmade beds at midnight. Why the Germans locked the door thru which they had entered themselves initially and why the cleaner didn’t call me, remains a mystery. I would have told them how to get in.

Why the French, however, weren’t fussed over the state of the house and its cleanliness is pretty clear to me now. People have different standards and concepts of what is clean.

But more tomorrow.