| We
arrived pretty early on Sunday morning, which means all the streets were
dead. Good for us, because then it wasn't so embarrassing to be taking
photos in the middle of the street or in otherwise crowded places. After
hijacking one of the touristy Bremen magazines (which were printed in English,
thank goodness) and peppering the ladies at the Tourist Information Centre
with questions, we were off. First we walked through downtown Bremen and
took some pictures of the Windmill at Am Wall, of Sögerstraße
where the bronze pigs were, then some of the St. Petri-dom which was still
closed and finally some of Knight Roland, this stone statue standing in
the middle of the Marktplatz. We found the Catholic church and I went to
the remaining half of the mass and followed along with my English Sunday
Missal which I brought from home. After that we checked out the Schlachte,
took some lunch (yet another type of wurst which I tried with the curry
ketchup/catsup and this excellent hot mustard) and headed for Beck's Brewery.
However, we were 1.5 hours too early since apparently the English tours
of the brewery started at 1:30 p.m. instead of 12:00 noon. So we walked
back to the other side of the bridge and watched people walk the banks
of the Weser river. When we got back to the brewery, we saw 5 of the guys
from UBC (the two Dereks, Tim, Robin and Curtis). The brewery tour was
a bit cheesy with two films spouting how Beck's uses only the best ingredients
of hops, yeast, malt, barley and water from this pure underground river.
The films showed the brewmasters sniffing a lot of ingredients, sniffing
the beer while it was fermenting, sniffing the final product and sniffing
the cleaned bottles. So, future brewmasters take note, a large part of
the job involves sniffing so take good care of your noses. We saw the old
equipment they used to bottle and fill beer, and we saw the Clydesdale
horses that the brewery uses to deliver Beck's beer to Bremen and after
that was the beer test. They gave us 3 glasses of beer and we had to chug
those and tell them which was non-alcoholic, which was Beck's beer and
which was Haake-Beck's. I downed the non-alcoholic pretty fast (even if
it smelled suspiciously like another yellow liquid, if you know what I
mean), and I was able to finish the Beck's but the Haake-Beck's was super
bitter, I could only drink half. Then I ordered a Coke. Hehehe... I wimped
out in the end and only had 2.5 rounds of alcohol out of a possible 5.
Oh well, not bad for a first try. After the beer test, we were off to find
the statue of the Bremen Stadtmusikanten (the Bremen Town Musicians of
the fairy tale). We found it in the Marktplatz by the side of the Rathaus
but these kids were climbing all over it so we went into the Petri-dom
first, explored the inside and took a couple of pictures. It was really
pretty inside with the medieval paintings, headstones of a couple of knights
who lives at least 400 or 500 years ago, and the old carved pulpit. We
didn't see the mummies though. Too bad. When we got out the kids were gone
so we snapped a couple of quick photos of the statue and went to find Böttcherstraße,
a narrow artsy street that was pictured in the cheap postcards that we
bought. We took a couple of pictures there then slowly headed back to the
Hauptbahnhof. We had a couple of detours though, to take pictures at the
Windmill again and to check out the Asian exhibit at the Übersee Museum
next to the Hauptbahnhof. We got back on the train and thus endeth our
weekend. |
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| Highlights.
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Lots of churches.
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More walking and EVEN more photo opportunities.
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Lots of history, cool buildings and a giant stone knight in the middle
of the Marktplatz.
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A very generous beer taste test and a tour of Beck's Brewery.
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And the best part of all... lots of these handy blue signposts that show
you exactly where the touristy places are!! I've got to say, I love those
signposts. Bremen is a very tourist-friendly city. |
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