Blogs from Bremen, Germany, Europe - page 3

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 ... read more

We had a wonderful night’s sleep and it took us a while to fully appreciate why. We had breakfast and packed up ready to load the car for today’s drive. Even as we loaded the boot of Cindy we still hadn’t figured out why there was no traffic noise. It couldn’t have been a pile up last night as that would have been cleared by now and anyway we would have heard sirens. It was only as we packed the last of the stuff into the car that we noticed a light truck with orange flashing lights go by in the direction we would be taking. And then minutes later the first car sped by followed by an increasing volume of vehicles. We then recalled that about 5 kilometres before we reached the lay by we ... read more

Ja, es ist wahr, ich bin wieder in Deutschland. So ganz sicher, dass es nicht alles nur ein Traum ist bin ich mir trotzdem immer noch nicht.... Seit letzte Woche Mittwoch regnet es in João Pessoa ganz viel - die Regenzeit und damit der "Winter" haben offiziell begonnen. Insofern eigentlich nicht der schlechteste Zeitpunkt zu gehen. Aber wie vermutet war der Abschied von meiner Gastfamilie ganz furchtbar, den ganzen Freitag Vormittag hat Oma geweint und ich musste mich auch schon ganz schön zusammenreißen. Wie geplant hat Maria mich noch ein bisschen aufgemöbelt, ich habe noch ein nettes Geschenk bekommen und 2 Karten, eine von Maria, Batista und Oma, die andere von meinen Gastgeschwistern plus Anhang. Hab sie erstmal nur in mein Handgepäck gepackt, weil ich wusste, dass ich in Tränen ausbrechen würde, sobald ich sie lese. ... read more

When we started planning this trip, the focus was to explore the areas from which ELISEBETH THIES and JURGEN HEITMANN emigrated to America, in 1929 and 1930 respectively. That is, Northern Germany. Guy has been very involved in the discovery of the history of his family, following genealogy charts, ships manifests, and any other available information. As we entered Germany and headed toward Bremerhaven, it became clear that emigration from the port of Bremerhaven over the years has triggered the creation of the Deutsches Auswanderer Haus, known as the emigration museum. It is an unbelievable museum realistically replicating the process that émigrés endured to sail to the New World from 1830-1974. It further demonstrated the New Germany. The area for pursuing family history research had numerous computers with internet access and staff available to assist in ... read more

Hey Guys! I am now back home for good, but I was so busy I didn't write about the last adventures I had in Germany, so I shall write them here. At the start of the week I had gone to do the last tedious tasks necessary, which meant waiting for 2 hours to tell the Germans I was leaving their country (only Germans seem to wait for hours and hours to tell their government every little bit of information about their lifes) - however as I was not going straight home it got very confusing as the lady wanted to know if I was registering in Brussels when I got there...to which I responded "No". On the Friday evening we had our Erasmus farewell party. The exchange students were all treated to some speeches and ... read more