A Hanseatic Tour: Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck

Eons ago, way back in early June, I had a four day weekend because of Fronleichnam on June 11 (the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi… or as one German tried to translate for me… “something to do with a dead body”).  Joe and I had to be home Sunday morning for the last week of Sunday school, but we took Thursday, Friday and Saturday to make a tour of the northern German Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck.  The Hansa, or Hanseatic League, was a trading alliance of more-or-less independent cities from the 13th through the 17th centuries that stretched across northern Europe from London to St. Petersburg.  [Aside regarding Lufthansa Airlines:  When we first came to Germany, I was excited to recognize the first part of our airline's name as the German word for air.  On this trip, the rest of it made sense!  Maybe I am learning something about the language after all.]

Although the Hansa once encompassed more than a hundred cities, the three we visited were among the most powerful and longest standing members, and the only ones to have retained the distinction as part of their official title up through the modern age.  Bremen and Hamburg style themselves as “Free and Hanseatic Cities” which I think is why they are independent states.  The only other city-state in Germany is Berlin.  Hamburg has made a modern name for itself as the second largest city in Germany and the second largest port in Europe, but the other two peaked, so to speak, in the Middle Ages, and are now beautifully preserved old cities.

Thursday morning we took the train north to Bremen, about 3.5 hours away.  The weather in Cologne wasn’t especially nice, and it got colder and wetter as we went north toward the sea.  We found Bremen to be a charming little city, despite being cold, wet and very windy.  In honor of Joe’s dad, we had lunch at the energie cafe, a restaurant run by the local power company from the ground floor of their headquarters.  Bremen has a fantastic old town hall, decorated in the black and red bricks common to northern Germany, and several big, old churches.  One of them has a charming garden with plants mentioned in the bible and a display of mummies, naturally preserved in the crypt’s dry air and on display for tourists for the last 300 years.  There is also a very big statue of Roland the friendly knight, the fantastical Art Nouveau alley known as Böttcherstraße where we heard the ceramic bells of the Glockenspiel, and the little Schnoor district of twisted lanes and tiny fisherman’s cottages currently inhabited by art galleries and other twee establishments.

Outside Germany, Bremen is probably best known from the Grimm Brother’s fairy tale of the Bremen Town Musicians, the story of the four farm animals who run away together to become musicians in the freedom-loving city of Bremen.  Along the way, they end up scaring off some robbers and settling down in the robbers’ former house, never actually arriving in Bremen, but that doesn’t stop the good folks of Bremen’s souvenir industry from putting the animals on every conceivable trinket.  We, of course, had to get a picture in front of the statue of them.  My favorite postcard from the trip, considering the weather we had, shows the same statue of the four standing on each other’s backs and outfitted in one cleverly-contrived raincoat.  For what it’s worth, Bremen is also the hometown of Robinson Crusoe’s father.

Another hour on the train took us to Hamburg, where we had the tourist office in the train station find us a hotel room (we felt very Bill Bryson).  Thursday evening we went out for a walk near the harbor, past what has to be the world’s largest statue of Otto von Bismark, and along the Reeperbahn, the street at the center of Europe’s largest red light district and the place where the Beatles got their career started.  We weren’t very impressed with that last bit, although Joe did get himself propositioned in the minute it took me to take a photo of the fancy police station.  I hadn’t even noticed the prostitutes until then, as it was really cold and they were all wearing winter jackets.  And I don’t have a lot of prostitute-spotting experience.

On Friday, our main goal was Miniatur Wunderland, the world’s largest model train display.  And it is so much more than just trains.  Set in the Speicherstadt, the old warehouse district where the big brick buildings have been re-purposed, the exhibit is a tiny, incredible reproduction of seven different areas, including Hamburg itself (which has a miniature Miniatur Wunderland with, as in reality, a line out the door), America (highlighted, literally, by Las Vegas at night),  Scandinavia (complete with real water and fake snow), and Switzerland, among others.  There are trains, yes, but also cars and trucks moving along roads, boats, planes, and thousands of tiny people engaged in funny and interesting things.  I knew we should have gotten there early, but Joe had a bad cold and I wanted to let him sleep in a little.  We got there the middle of the morning and had to wait in line for over an hour.  The exhibit itself was insanely crowded.  Even so, it was worth seeing.

After the trains, we walked around downtown Hamburg.  We saw the old town hall there, and some more churches.  We went by St. Michael’s, the biggest and most famous church, but it was completely closed for renovation, and we opted not to pay the 2 Euro entrance fee to see the room describing the work being done.  Our favorite sight was the Nikolai church, bombed in WWII and left as a peace memorial.  I am infinitely glad that my country has never been subject to such devastation, but at the same time, I think we miss something important, not having spaces like that in the United States.  One of the churches in Lübeck was destroyed and rebuilt, but they left two huge, shattered bells in back, gouged into the floor where they fell when the steeple was hit by Allied bombs.

My guidebook described Hamburg as being as watery as Venice or Amsterdam, which I thought was an exaggeration, but actually isn’t.  With its three rivers, two lakes, and extensive system of canals, Hamburg actually has more bridges than the other two cities combined.  It’s not tiny and charming the way Bremen and Lübeck are… after all, the Hamburg metro area is home to more than 4 million people, but there is definitely enough there to draw me back (particularly the Dialogue in the Dark and Spicy’s Gewürtz (aka spice) Museum).

Late Friday afternoon we took the train up to Lübeck, which is only about ten miles from the Baltic Sea.  That, however, is going to have to wait for another blog post, or this is never going to get up.  Below are pictures from Bremen and Hamburg.  I’ll post the Miniature Wunderland pictures separately.

Joe and the Town Musicians

Town Hall of Bremen

Bible Garden

Lavender in the Bible Garden

Joe with a Mummy

Oh so Art Neuveau

Glockenspiel

The Schnoor

Amber in the Schnoor

Windmill of Bremen

The Beatles

Hamburg Harbour

Giant Otto, with me down on the left

Police station in St. Pauli

Hamburg Town Hall

Memorial Statue

One of the many bridges of Hamburg

St Michaels church