Bremen (Upper Lower Saxony)

On Friday we travelled east on the autobahn to Bremen (a large city of about 500,000 people, dated back to 789) for Liane’s Aunties 80^th birthday the next day (we went at least 150km/h with many cars passing us at a much faster speed!!!). Bremen was an old port built on the Weser River. We walked around the old part of Bremen, in and out of the tiny streets, Böttcherstraße (built in the 1920's by the person who produced the first ever decaf coffee-many specialist shops)

The Sögestrasse (an old quarter where they used to drive the pigs through the streets)

had coffee and cake, walked through the market place and listened to some Russian buskers (they come over during their school break to earn money for their studies).

Click play button to hear the buskers playing

We listened to the famous glockenspiel which had a rotating display showing the history of the merchant trading in Bremen. We looked through an old church and the ratskellar (town hall) which had a display of a huge bunker where they hid the German U-boats with walls 4-1/2 m thick!!! We found the statue of the Bremen Town Musicians and a few other versions of them as well as an impressive 10m statue of Roland (part of Bremen’s royal history). All in a couple of hours!!

We then had tea (ambrodt) at Liane’s auntie and uncle’s place and had a tour of their well- maintained garden. To finish off the evening we dropped into a local hotel for a farewell beer (with Anne and Heiner) and ate peanuts and were told to throw the shells onto the floor!!!

We stayed in a small hotel near the river. The next day was the big birthday party. It was held in an old German renovated farmhouse. We met all the relations and had Wedding Soup, red cabbage, beef and pork, vegetables, salad, potatoes and Liane’s favourite dessert - mixed berries (Rote Grutze) with custard sauce. After that we had coffee and cake (strawberry torte, bee sting cake, apple cake).

Brake

Liane’s uncle and aunt then took us to north to Brake where we stayed with Liane’s cousin Anke and her husband Stefan and their daughter Annabel. (Both of which are pastors of the local Lutheran church).

Anke preached from the high pulpit. As it was a special service she spoke on God's covering, hence the coloured umbrellas.

It seems to be that where ever we go there is some special event happening as the next morning we enjoyed a confirmation service before we were picked up by some old family friends to go to their home in Ratstede for the week.

An interesting poster that Anke and Stefan had in their house.