My travel in Europe:
By train in Northern Germany, 2022

Content:

• Planning for a round trip in Northern Europe
• Day 1 to 2, from Stockholm to Rostock
• Day 3, from Rostock to Wismar and back
• Day 4, from Rostock to Warnemunde and back
• Day 5, from Rostock to Stralsund and Berlin
• Day 6, Berlin 2nd day
• Day 7, Berlin 3rd day
• Day 8, Berlin to Magdeburg
• Day 9, Magdeburg to Wernigerode
• Day 10, Wernigerode 2nd day
• Day 11, Wernigerode to Hanover, Bremen
• Day 12, Bremen 2nd day
• Day 13, Bremen to Hamburg
• Day 14, Hamburg to Schwerin
• Day 15, Schwerin 2nd day
• Day 16-17, Schwerin to Rostock and Stockholm

Day 12, Bremen 2nd day:

A new day and still in Bremen.

Here is a map of Bremen:

This second day in Bremen we where only in the inner area.

Bremen:

The name of the hotel is IBIS Budget Hotel, we can't see any "budget" about this room. Modern, clean, private bathroom. And the breakfast buffet was excelent.

As soon as we are ready at the hotel, we head out. Today we will visit a place where my mother-in-law lived as a teenager in 1949 for a month. It is a short distance out to the north of the inner city. We get there easily with the tram and it start right in front of our hotel. On the way we pass this TV tower. Just like in Berlin, it is a very tall tower and this one also seems to have a viewing point you can go up to.

Waller Herrstrasse:

The street she lived on is the Waller Herrstrasse and here we get off and start looking for the house where she lived. We don't even know if it's still there. After all, it was 73 years ago.

Here we have found the house, a brown brick house. It looks old enough to be 75 years old.

The Old Town's moat:

It's just a short visit at Waller Herrstrasse before we turn back. First, however, we go into a shop and buy a couple of bottles of water to have during the day. This day is also very hot. We take the same tram back and we get off near the old town. We go down to the city's moat and sit in the shade and enjoy the peace.

After we have rested, we cross the bridge into the old town, this is its northern part. We have read that there will be a coffee roaster at the northern part of the old town.

Kaffeerösterei, August Munchhausen:

We don't have to go far to find the coffee roaster. We thought it would be bigger, like a small factory, but this looks more like a shop. We test if the door is open and it is and we enter.

The Kaffeerösterei's door was unfortunately locked and we read on the sign that it is only open a few hours in the middle of the day. Unfortunately we arrived too late. But in the corridor they have a small exhibition that we can look at.

Here is more information about Kaffeerösterei August Munchhausen (only German):

• https://de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Kaffeerösterei August Munchhausen (Kaffeerösterei August Munchhausen, Wikipedia)

River Weser:

The next place we have on our list to visit is the river Weser. It flows past the southwestern part of the old town. The town is small so it doesn't take many minutes to walk to this place. The river is quite empty of ships, we also see that the level of the river is very low, just like it was in Berlin. From here it is 50 km to the Baltic Sea.

We have read that many of Bremen's cafes and restaurants will be located here after the river. They do too, but a lot of them are closed, why we don't understand. It's around 2pm so they should be open.

We continue walking along the river in a southerly direction while looking for somewhere to sit down and eat. Unfortunately, we cannot find anything that is both open and in the shade with a view of the river.

Finally, we sit down on a park bench in the shade and enjoy the river.

It is very dirty along this river, in the park it is full of garbage. We see children running around picking up rubbish which they collect in bags, is it just play or are they going to sell the metal from the caps? It is not a healthy environment for children and not pleasant to stay in either.

We see an old ship moored at the pier. With the tall masts it can't get past the bridges so it's not a tour boat. It appears to be a restaurant on the boat.

Here is more information about Weser:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Weser (Weser, Wikipedia)

After a while we boring at the river and move on. Now we want to go back to the alleys at Schnoor that we visited last night. It is only a few hundred meters to walk to Schnoor.

Schnoor:

Now we have entered the alleys of Schnoor, since we did not find anything to eat along the riverside restaurants, we are now looking for some nice place here. It's very hot, so a big ice cream would be a good start.

Here we sat down at this nice cafe. Something about the prices in Germany: dinners are cheaper here than we have in Sweden and Stockholm where we live. A normal dinner costs about 15 Euro and a beer 5 Euro. A cup of ice cream costs 8 Euro, a cup of cappuccino 3 Euro. At Stockholm it is at least 1.5 times more expensive.

Across the street is the alley from which we came walking.

We find a shop that sells Christmas decorations, in the middle of summer! Now we've been out walking for several hours in the heat, we need to rest. We go back to the hotel and and go out through the portal of Schnoor.

On the way to the hotel we go back over the moat again, here they sell fruit and Gunilla buys a couple of pears that we can eat at the hotel later.

We follow the moat on the other side in an easterly direction. Here are needles left by addicts on the ground. They really need to clean up all the parks, don't even think about what it's like here at night.

Passing our landmark, the Lieben Frauen Kirche. Now there is only 350 meters left to go until we arrive at our hotel.

After resting up for a couple of hours, we are again ready to go out to the old city. Gunilla has found a Spanish restaurant near the moat. It would be nice to have Spanish food so we decide to go there. We find the restaurant easily, hesitate a little as it is located after a busy road. We walk around the block to see if we can find something better. We conclude that the Spanish restaurant was the best choice for tonight and go back there.

We were very hungry and before I got to take a photo half of the dinner was finished. Before we started to eat it were Serano ham, Bruchetta, bread and Sangria to drink on the table.

Kaffemuhle, Muhle Am Wall:

Before we go back to the hotel, we want to take a closer look at the windmill across the street, we saw it from the bridge on the first day too.

It is the mill Muhle Am Wall, it has a famous history in Bremen. It has been many windmills at this place, this is the last and it was built 1898.

Here are more information about Bremen:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Am Wall Windmill (Am Wall Windmill, Wikipedia)

Here are more information about Bremen:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Bremen (Bremen, Wikipedia)

How to get home ?

We are now closing in to the end of our tour in Germany. How to come home ? Our original plan was to take a train from Hamburg to Copenhagen with one or two stops on the way. Then another train or flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm. When checking the cost for that it went up to 600 to 750 Euro and a lot of hours on the train. And even worse, there is a lot of problem with the train traffic in Denmark.

Can we do it in another way ? One alternative is to go home with the same ferry as we came with. When we check the cost it still possible to buy 56 Euro ferry tickets for both of us. The train cost is already included in our 9 Euro tickets. What we need is a two day stop somewhere. The hotels have got difficult to find the last days and they are expensive too. We decided to book one hotel at Hamburg and two nights in Schwerin. After that take the train to Rostock and wait for the ferry. Total cost 350 included two day at hotel and ferry tickets. We saved at least 300 to 400 Euro and get much more comfort on the ferry compare to the very long train travel.