Day: August 31, 2008

Today we started the morning off with a hearty breakfast then we prepared to go to church at Matthaus in Stuhr. As we approached the church in the car you could hear the bells ringing, calling everyone to church. The building dates from the 1960’s (I believe) and is currently being added to due to the size of the growing church. Even as a 60’s building it is still quite stylish and very functional. There was no need to worry about not understanding the service as headphones were available with translators on hand for english, turkish and I am not sure what other languages. This was incredibly useful however it was obvious at times that the minister was getting really excited and speaking so fast that sometimes the translator couldn’t keep up. They do a wonderful job and you get the general feel for what is being said so that is fine. It must be a very difficult job to do. The sermon was on Pauls advice on a good life based around Thess 5 14-24.

After church we had a cup of coffee and meet some members of the congregation including someone who knew Steve’s dad at school. One couple we meet lived in Taunton near to us in Bristol and have provided the name of church we might like to look at. They were all very friendly and helpful people here.

We then headed home and while Ulla prepared lunch Friedhelm took us for a bicycle tour of the area to one of his swimming spots. North Germany is very flat and cycle paths dot the roadsides in abundance. It was a great way to exercise without having to worry about cars, pollution, dogs or bored children welding baseball bats such as we have here in Bristol. We were quite hungry by the time we got back so we had a delicious lunch before a driving tour of Bremen. The plan was on Monday for Steve and I to take the tram into Bremen by ourselves so Friedhelm and Ulla showed us where the tram stops where etc. They drove us into Bremen and we had a look at some key areas as an overview. We were quite glad of this as the next day we would not have managed to get to everything we wanted to see.

A very interesting spot we visited was a street with many art houses and handicraft shops (Bottcherstrasse). We took in the statute of the Bremen Musicians, Roland Statue, Rathaus (Town Hall), St Peters Dome, the market place, places where Friedhelm and Ulla lived in the city, where Friedhelm had worked and finally another walk along the bank of the Weser. Thankfully the weather held off from raining while we wandered the streets.

Bottcherstrasse is a magnificent street to look at. We learnt a lot from Ulla and Friedhelm about its history and in particular Ludwig Roselius who had his company Kaffee HAG there (founder of decaf coffee). The street also has a glockenspiel that plays a stunning melody on its thirty Meissen porcelain bells. You can hear the magnificent tune at this link. http://www.boettcherstrasse.de/EN/Architecture-Houses/House-of-the-Glockenspiel.html

Also on this street look out for the house and fountain of the 7 lazy brothers based on a fable. If you are after art deco design, elaborate designer handicrafts, paintings, antiques etc this area is for you.

So much we have seen and it is only day 2!

Friday we left Bristol and headed for London Stansted. At the time of booking it had seemed easier and cheaper to fly out from Stansted via RyanAir. When I realised that the flight departed at 6.25am on the Saturday morning I had to take stock of my idea again. An overnight stay plus 9 days car parking later it probably didn’t turn out to be any cheaper doing it from London. However, we did have the benefit of staying in the Raddisson SAS hotel which is not only a deluxe looking hotel with car parking included in the package, it is also connected to the airport so it was only a 2 minute walk across to the terminal in the morning.

The Raddisson has a unique wine tower as its center piece and “Wine Angels” that are suspended by wire inside the tower. The put on an acrobatic display as well as have the dual use of collecting your (in my opinion) overpriced wine bottles.

Saturday morning we were up early and hitting the tarmac via RyanAir direct to Bremen. Thankfully it was only just over 1 hour flying time as the seats are very cramped and we managed to get two very obnoxious 20+ year old Australians sitting behind us. All they could talk about was how much beer they were going to drink in Germany and when they could buy beer on the flight. Having then purchased their 2 cans each they proceeded to burp their way to Germany. They only needed to start scratching and farting and they would have been snapped up by a museum looking for neanderthal examples.

When we arrived in Bremen we quickly exited the plane before the (now intoxicated) Australians managed to get off. Strangely we never saw them again queuing to collect baggage so we only hope that the stern looking german passport controller took them away somewhere to sober up.

Friedhelm and Ulla were waiting to collect us and since having arrived at their home we have been treated to fabulous cooking, comfortable surroundings with a huge bedroom and bathroom to ourselves and a friendly home to stay in. How are we ever going to go home to shared house accommodation and England after this? Fabulous.

After having a hearty breakfast we went on a driving tour of the area with Friedhelm in search of a book binder or restorer. Steve has a lovely old book that he would like to investigate getting restored. The first lady was a bookbinder and incredibly helpful yet honest in saying that she could make the book useable again but it would not be as pleasing as restoration. Friedhelm did some more research and found a book restorator about an hour from Stuhr. We visited her in a little gallery hidden off the side of the road. She was wonderful in her knowledge, expertise and helpful in the choices available to us. However, as she is a very well known and talented restorer we can only get Steve’s book in for restoration by January next year. The “master” she studied under that taught her the art of restoration was Henrik Petersen and she is displaying his private collection of books that he produced over many years that document the changing styles of book binding through the ages. The collection and all his tools were passed to her when he passed away in the late nineties. We were fortunate to get to see some of the 16th century books she is currently restoring for a bibliotek. On our driving tour to get there we noticed many windmills (that we found out that they are all over the countryside and off the coast). They look fantastic!

Finally for the day, we also had the priviledge of attending a german wedding at Friedhelm and Ulla’s church. For us, traditionally the bride is always late (well all the weddings I have been to including my own) however at 1.30pm the wedding had already started, on time, when we arrived. The bride and groom in their spare time are both in different choirs so we were treated to a number of songs by each choir and a joint song as the finale. After the ceremony everyone queued to congratulate the bridge and groom then we all sat down for some cake and coffee. There was a huge number of cakes and they all looked magnificent. I thought they had all been bought at a bakery or store but this was not correct. The majority were made by all the ladies and friends of the church. I have never seen such incredible home made cakes before. Magnificent. It was a pity that we forgot to take a photo. We even met a lady in the church who went to school with Steve’s dad.

So, a very full and exciting day at the start of our holiday in Germany filled with sights and experiences new to us.