Fairy tales in Germany

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We spent the morning in Bremen which is the origin of the story of the Town Musicians of Bremen and the start of the Grimm Brothers fairytale route through Germany. We found a Park’n’Ride station then caught the tram into city. In true Been There, Licked Thattradition, Em decided the tram windows looked tasty… despite us trying break her of the habit it seems the title is still appropriate.

Walking around old city centre, a huge cathedral is one of the most imposing buildings. The first church to be built on this site dates back to about 700AD. This burnt down around 1000AD, was rebuilt and burnt down again around 1600AD before they built the current cathedral (this time out of stone!). The markt (no ‘e’) square and statue of local hero Roland, are overlooked by the town hall which dates from the middle ages. Much of the rest of the town had to be rebuilt after WW2 as it was destroyed by the bombings. Reading the story of the town musicians, it is quite similar to Room on the Broom, the story by Julia Donaldson.

As we had booked accommodation further down the road, we headed back to the car and moved on to Polle near Hameln. Driving into the hills, we found some very narrow and winding back roads with beautiful views. We arrived in the right street but did not have a street number so Mel remembered the house from the photo on AirBnB and took a lucky guess at the right house. She got it first time and it turned out to be a beautiful self-contained apartment above our host, Margarete. This is a small village where apparently everyone knows everyone else so we had the local kids looking at us and our strange car in their street.

Inside, Em discovered the bidet and we had to explain how the ‘bum wash’ works. She also learnt how to play UNO and we discovered she is actually pretty good at it!

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