Bremen good, laundry bad

Today we visited two more German cities. We hopped on the train to Cloppenburg this morning, and saw Bremen in the afternoon. Cloppenburg is a small bedroom community not much larger than Neenah, but we went to see an open-air museum consisting of ancient rural buildings brought in from all over Lower Saxony, in order to preserve a piece of the region's agricultural past. The museum (which was all in German, with no English guide available) did a wonderful job of detailing peasant life from the late medieval era through the industrial revolution. We spent a few hours in Cloppenburg, and were greeted by a terrific thunderstorm right at the end.

Typical view of a three-room home that provided living space to a family as well as their herd.

This silo was built 12 years before Christopher Columbus added half the world to the map.





After we left the museum, we boarded the train and continued on to Bremen. This is a large, vibrant city of a size equivalent to Pittsburgh or Denver. Because it was not bombed as heavily as some other German cities during the second world war, many of its historic buildings still stand. The city’s big claim to fame is a restored medieval quarter of the city, called Der Schnoor. In this quarter, the houses still face one another across a street that is only 2 meters wide. The back alleyways are even smaller, including one where both my shoulders touch the buildings to either side. In the postwar period the city realized what a gem they had in this still-existent neighborhood, and underwent a revitalization and restoration period similar to what happened at Williamsburg, VA, to bring the original character and feel back to the area. It is now used to house restaurants, bars (of course), and tourist shops.

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I really enjoyed Bremen. It was large, but not overly so. Everyone there was very friendly, and I even conducted conversations with several shopkeepers who spoke no English. That for me was the biggest victory for today! We had around three hours in town to do some sightseeing, shopping, and get dinner. The weather turned on us once again right at the end, and I got absolutely drenched walking back to the Hauptbonhauf (train station), but once again it held just long enough for us to get a very positive experience out of the visit. 

We got back to the hotel around 10. I packed up my laundry and hiked down to the nearest laundromat, maybe a mile and a half down the road. The controls were fairly intimidating, as it doesn’t work quite like a typical laundromat in the U.S., and there was nobody else there to help. I got it figured out though, and spent an hour reading while waiting for the wash. While I am pleased to have clean clothes, I am unhappy to report the following: the laundry has severed the zipper on my favorite sweater, the door closed on my favorite shirt and could not be re-opened, causing the shirt to roll into a huge wrinkly mess, and It somehow got a black stain on my white dress shirt that I have not been able to remove. All things in their proper stride, however, and if I need replacement clothes you can barely go anywhere here without seeing an H&M on the horizon. 

Tomorrow is our last day in Niedersachsen- we’ll be doing a day trip of Hamburg.