The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 1

It is said that this route was created by the tourist board to offer a more exciting drive north, but since we were already north and heading to the last town on the route anyway, we decided to take the Fairytale road south. There are 59 towns listed on the map all following the Wesser River, and our original idea was to visit them all before we headed to Regensburg for Anna’s belated Birthday party. We didn’t stop at all of them though. All the info we had was in German so we couldn’t tell what each town had to offer, that is until we had internet access and dropped it to around 10 stops. Bremen is one of Germany’s oldest seaports, probably most famous for the “Town Musicians of Bremen” fairytale (what the guide book said) or to me, the home of Beck’s Beer. We chose to go to Bremen because of the write up (charming town, back alley’s reward wanderers, lots to see, etc) and it was suggested as an alternative over the larger (and sleazy) Hamburg. The campsite we stayed at in Bremen had to be the most expensive to date (53 euros for two days). It was very modern, had plenty of showers, bathrooms and sinks. It also had a separate area for cooking and washing dishes which we used in order to save propane (we ran out the morning we left the campsite). It also had a separate area for laundry, probably the best setup we will see. It was a nice campsite, but as we need to do this cheap, we are probably not going to visit a campsite until we head over to Regensburg. Stellplatz tend to be free or around 5-6 euro/night. If I haven’t mentioned what a stellplatz is, I will now (sorry if I already have), they are parking spots designated for Campervans only, no tents or caravans. Sometimes they are gated, and have all the amenities a campground would, or sometimes they are just a spot in a parking lot. During our drive on the Fairy Tale Road, we were able to camp for free the entire time using stellplatzes. Back to Bremen; we spent our first day doing laundry, dishes and cleaning up the van and empting our toilet. It was cold and rained most of the day which didn’t help us dry our clothes. The following day was much nicer, sunny and warm. We headed into town which was around a 6 km walk. Like usual, we spotted most of the landmarks before we even found the tourist information office for a map of the town. The first site we saw was the Dom, which was large and pretty much in the center of two markets. Right next to the Dom was the defender of Bremen, Roland (a guy on a horse) and in front of him was the towns most famous statue, The Town Musicians of Bremen. This statue has the rooster atop the cat, perched on the dog, on the shoulders of the donkey. They stood like this to scare away robbers in a house; the fairy tale was written by the Brothers Grim. It took us some time to actually find the tourist office that we stumbled upon Böttcherstrasse, a street mentioned in our guide book as being unique. I suppose it was considered unique because of the Glockenspiel (A column rotated around to reveal a scene, it was pretty cool), but it might have been the use of red brick, as we mostly see half timbered homes in old town areas. It was an hour after our search that we found the cleverly hidden tourist office, we walked past it 3 times. During our search Julie bought a Canadian flag to hang in our van as we are constantly mistaken for being Dutch (our license plate says NL, we need bumper stickers of Canadian Flags), we ate at McDonald’s and used their free bathrooms. The tourist office did have the actual map of the Fairy Tale road and a booklet to go along with it (but as mentioned above, in German) so we actually now knew the route to take south and which towns to visit. Our European camping book only mentioned 5 of the 59 stops and we knew there were more because we find our camping guide pretty useless when compared to the Shoestrings guide or even Fromers. We explored more of the city and tried to log onto free internet but had no luck. There was another street to have a peak at in Bremen called Schnoorviertel, so we decided to make the hike and see this street. The street first housed the sailors, then it was the red light district and is now the home of many small shops selling useless stuff. It was not as nice as Böttcherstrasse or the two markets but it was fun to see some strange statues and fountains. It was cold and getting late so we made our way back to the van and on the way we stopped to pick up some much needed groceries at Plus. Carrying 6L of juice and the rest of the groceries 6 KM is not ideal, and it had to rain on us too. It didn’t ruin our moods, but all we wanted was to get warm and stop walking. The night before we left I went to boil some water for Hot Chocolate in our van and was unable to light the stove; we were out of propane for the first time and decided to ask the campsite employee’s where to buy some. They did have propane on site, however none left in our size, 5kg, so the lady gave us very vague directions and we took off in search of the propane dealer. We (Julie says I) gave up within a few minutes of searching, the street it was on was going under some changes and certain parts were one-way, where it used to be a two-way street. I wasn’t concerned with finding propane as I have seen many gas stations selling them. It was on the way to our next stop that Julie spotted the store we were looking for, so I pulled the van over. We saved 2 euros buying from them as opposed to buying it from the campsite so we were pretty happy.