Bremen

[selenak]

I visited Bremen today; the weather kept changing from sunshine to clouds and back, and in between, I was reminded of how beautiful this old Hanse town can be. (Also I met diotimah which was great.)



En route from the train station to the old city centre, you're greeted with this site:





Who says you have to go to Holland to find them?

Here's the Frauenkirche, or, Our Lady's:



Seen from the other side, across the old market:



Speaking of the old market:



And here's the new one, in front of the city hall:



Its signature piece is a statue of Roland (nephew of Charlemagne). Supposedly, as long as it stands, the city will remain free.





It guards the market as well as the old city hall:



Said old city hall is really something to behold:



Here's the square from a distance, and you can see the cathedral behind it:



The cathedral:







One of its wings:





Here, you can see a little mouse carved next to the foot of the column, which is something of an emblem:



But of course the most famous animals in connection with Bremen are these guys:



I always loved the tale of the musicians of Bremen. Which other fairy tale starts with one of the characters saying "you can find something better than death everywhere"?

The city hall has as most city halls do a restaurant. With some famous old barrels:







There's a small former social and now artist's quarter diotimah showed me, the Schnorre:







And of course, being a Hanse town, Bremen has a river and ships. Here are two reconstructed ones to finish the short trip:

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I love these picspams! That statue and all the stonework is amazing, and the flat-fronted houses always look so strange to my eyes. Here, the only houses that have shallow eaves and unshaded windows like that are cheap, nasty concrete slab constructions that waste tremendous amounts of energy on cooling; but here is the environment to which they are actually suited.

[selenak]

They're very typical for northern Germany; the style is a bit different in the south where I come from. But if you've read Thomas Mann, these kind of houses are where his characters would live in.