The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 7

The next morning we took our time and headed into town. We’ve been pretty frustrated with the constant cool weather we have been experiencing since we started this trek south and decided that we wanted warmer jackets or at least some rain gear. Unfortunately we couldn’t find anything that looked good, cost next to nothing and fit our needs for slightly warmer gear. We looked at our town map and found out where the statue of the frog prince was and went off to find it. After one complete circle, we could see no sign of the little green dude. As I just happened to dodge someone on the left hand side as opposed to the right as I did the first time round, I saw the extremely small statue of the frog. He wasn’t a prince anymore because someone stole (broke off) his crown.



Our final stop for the FTR was Hanau, the city where the Grim Brothers were born. We found parking just outside the city center and made our way to the tourist office. The girl was very nice and offered us suggestions on what there is to see in Hanau besides the Brother Grim’s monument. We took our pictures of the large monument of the brothers. In the market where it was located it appeared that they were just finishing cleaning up after a large food market of some kind. It turns out that it is an attraction they have during the summer in the square, very similar to any others we have visited in the past. Julie and I then found a place to sit to look over what there was to see in Hanau. Although the museum on Utensils was pretty compelling and the marionette museum was located in a pretty cool area we decided to make the 2hr drive to our first non-FTR location. The town is called Neubronn and is located somewhere between Frankfurt AM and Nuremburg. When we arrived at the stellplatz in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, we were approached by the owner and he laughed when I asked “Is this it?”. Every place we have stayed at up to this point has been a parking lot or a campsite, where this was actually a spot designated on the guys farm. We chose this stellplatz because it had free showers and was only 6 euros for the night. Once we parked, we fell in love with the location. It was quiet, beautiful and very homely. The showers were located on the first floor of one of the houses and we had to walk past the cows and chicken coup to use them. I laughed every time we walked past the cows because they always “Mooed” at us. Julie loved all the animals and especially the straggly looking dog that was always so eager to say hi to her. The couple that owned the farm was even nice enough to offer Julie and I one of their spare beds because they were worried it would be too cold for us outside that night. We declined but kept it in mind. The next morning we felt very tired, maybe it was the country air, maybe it was the huge slope we were on, or maybe it was that it was so cold over night, who knows? We had some difficulty paying for the site as we couldn’t find anyone that actually lived or worked at the farm. When we did find them, we found out that the price was doubled. This however wasn’t their fault, but ours, you see Julie’s German isn’t always 100% and mine isn’t much better. We didn’t mind though, as we really did enjoy the stay and it was such a change from what we are used to. So it is now off to Nuremburg!

The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 6

While we rested and talked about our day I discovered that we missed a pretty impressive castle in Kassel, and a huge statue of Hercules. We made the decision to go back to Kassel and visit castle Löwenberg, but to save Hercules for when we go to Greece (if it’s there). It was absolutely pouring today and we still haven’t found cheap rain gear. Julie was extremely disappointed at the distance from the castle we had to park and the cold bitter day. Backtracking is something we both hate to do but we also hate to miss something good. The only way to see the castle is by guided tour, and lucky for us the common language was English, though once again, I was the only monolingual person there. We did the tour with a German couple, an Italian family and a lady from Turkey. It was pretty interesting to hear all the languages being spoken and the constant search for words by all parties. The castle itself looks amazing and offers a pretty nice view of the city, but they mostly boast about all the original pieces of art work, armor, furniture, tapestries etc. that survived the war. Impressive, but we would have enjoyed the castle more if they didn’t survive the war. We then drove south again to the town of Neukirchen to visit the fairy tale house, but after parking and having a discussion about it, we decided to just move on and that it wasn’t worth our time or money. Alsfeld is a small town and is on the FTR for its link to the Frog Prince, another Brother Grim fairy tale. Once we parked at our stellplatz, we headed into town as we were in need of a toilet. The tourist office was closed, but like the town in Neinburg, they had a town map outside its doors. We took a look at the map and made use of the free public bathrooms. Since we were in town we decided to explore a little bit as it was only 5pm. The town hall differed from all others we have seen as it had a huge open area as its first floor. The building was perched on arches which gave it an odd look.

The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 5

Our 5th day on the FTR turned out to be more stops than planned. Our first stop was Sababurg, the castle of Sleeping Beauty. The town this was outside of was so small, and old that it still had the original town walls. The castle itself was up a small hill and the steps seemed to be original as well. The castle was true to form, as it was completely covered by vines as in the story. A lady met us at the gate entrance in full dress and provided us with an English story/brochure on the castle after we paid our 2 euro entry fee. The brochure she gave us told us the Sleeping beauty story on a guided walking tour of the castle. Julie read the story to me as we went from each metallic guide post along the route. The castle has been partly restored, some of it is used as a hotel and restaurant and the main hall is an open theatre where they still have plays. It is truly a place Julie and I would visit again, the next time in summer, we would take in a play and spend the night in one of the rooms. Kassel is a very large city on the FTR and was our second stop for the day. If we had a free place to stay we could have spent at least 2 or 3 days visiting. However, we are on a tight schedule and only visited the Brothers Grim Museum. The top two floors were dedicated to the Brothers Grim, but was only in German as were the first two floors but these were dedicated to all Fairy Tales. For the most part it was a waste of time and money but we did use their bathrooms so it wasn’t all lost. We left Kassel right after that, as we only put enough money into the parking machine for 1 hr. We did once again argue about where to park the van, as most places seemed to be reserved. The next stop had a castle that we both wanted to see but never did as we couldn’t find the tourist office to get directions to the castle. We left Gudensberg for our free stellplatz in Homberg/Efze feeling pretty drained from the long drive and many stops.

The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 4

Day 4 on the FTR found us in Hameln, where 130 children disappeared from the town in 1284 and the Brothers Grim created the Pied Piper story on this event. Every day during the summer the towns people put on a play of the Pied Piper story in the town square. Many people showed up to view this play, as well as us and we were surprised to hear the story in so many languages before the play began.



Once it was over we made our way back to the van and were pulled over by cops once we left the parking spot. We passed these cops walking back to our van, as they had set up a road block on the street. Apparently there was a large week long rock/punk concert and they were pulling everyone over that looked questionable. Julie says she saw one cop taking of a glove that was “dirty”. Anyhow, it was mostly the van we figure they suspected, but we were summoned to pull over. When they asked us where we were heading off to, I am pretty sure they had a laugh afterwards as I handed him the FTR map and pointed to the next town…. they let us pass without incident. It was off to Polle to visit Cinderella’s castle. We arrived in the town and found parking. The town was very small, I would say around 1000 people and the tourist office wasn’t open for a bit. However, it was extremely easy to see the castle ruins from pretty much anywhere in the town so we made our way up the path to visit the castle. The castle itself was pretty pathetic and we were pretty disappointed to see “Cinderella’s” castle, it did however provide great views of the surrounding area.




Ten minutes later (yeah, that’s how big the castle was) we were off to see if the tourist office was open yet as Julie wanted to pick up some info on Polle for her records. We had to wait 15 minutes still so we called home to speak with our parents. Trendelburg was our last sightseeing stop for the day and was in a very high village that contains Repunzels tower. We parked in front of a church and had no idea where or if the town had a tourist office. Before we could make our way to the tower, Julie noticed a very oddly built home. The entire front was not flat but concave. Really bizarre. Speaking of bizarre, the town was so quite, so dead. It really felt like we came across a ghost town. It was just plain creepy. The tower was pretty high, and the castle that was left is now a restaurant. The views were spectacular, but it was a shame we couldn’t climb up the tower itself, we did show up after 5, so the place was probably closed for the day. The weather today was great, it hadn’t rained all day but it did later that night, the first day for sunshine since we arrived at Bremen 5 days ago. Our last town for the day was really only for the free Stellplatz in Hofgeismar.

The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 3

The route for the FTR has towns marked every 10-30 km from each other, so making it to our next stop, Bad Oeynhausen, wasn’t stressful or complicated. Finding the tourist office however was. We strolled through the town; we saw a fountain with pigs, and another one with a lady lying down before we found the entrance to the park that contained many gorgeous buildings built by the Romans and the massive tourist office. This park was quite nice with many huge fountains, a large pond and many walking paths. There was a lot going on too. It seemed like there was some kind of wine fest going on and a couple getting their wedding pictures taken. The tourist office was in a huge building and we missed it because we didn’t tilt our heads up high enough to see the huge red flag bearing the information logo. The young lady that was helping us didn’t speak any English and knew nothing of the FTR. She did her best, even calling a co-worker that spoke some English; it took us well over an hour to finally learn that there was a fairy tale museum. We made our way to the museum and I’m sure if we lived here we would love the 2 hour lunch breaks, but since we are traveling here, it was not nice to learn the museum was closed for lunch. It was a pretty small building (might have been a house originally), we didn’t think they had English translations so we left the town thinking if the rest of the towns turn out to be this useless is it worth the drive to the others? Our new goal is now trying to find free internet to translate our map and visit the town’s tourist office website to see what they offer before we visit them. The next town we went to was again on the map, but they didn’t know it (Rinteln). We saw some pretty cool buildings, fountains and strange statues, one statue of a night watch man and one of a glass blower. This town did have a stellplatz, but we just used it to park for our trip into town. Our last stop had to be better, but turned out to be a dud too. We were unable to find the tourist office in Hessich Oldendorf so we spent most of our time walking up and down the market only to stumble on a VW touring club. We saw many nice VW’s and took some photos too. It was here that we also stumbled on a wine festival, they had a pretty large stage and a dance floor set up, but it was clear the party hadn’t started yet. After we had our fill of the town we went back to our van and proceeded to look for the Stellplatz. It was here, in this small town that had nothing to do with the FTR that we finally had free internet access. The Fairy Tale Road has its own website, and we were able to learn all about the road and the towns mentioned. The list went from 59 (60 including Bremen) stops to 11 and we opted to only do 10, as one stop was on the other side of the river and only mentioned that you might run into Puss and Boots.

The Fairy Tale Road… Backwards (Bremen to Hanau) DAY 2

We had three stops to make today, but only managed to make 2. Neither towns tourist office knew they were mentioned as a stop on the Fairy Tale Road. The first town, Verden, did have a theme park (Magic Parc), but it was aimed at kids so we passed. We did however stop at an Ice Cream shop. It is not our intention to spend money like this. The only reason we went into the Ice Cream store in the first place was to use their toilets, honest. Many of the town proprietors offer free use of their bathrooms; the tourist office has a sticker that marks them, because they have to meet a certain quality level. Julie and I felt a bit odd not buying anything and since we were hungry, as it was around lunch time, we shared a Hazelnut Ice cream desert and I had my second coffee of the day (Julie surprised me by buying me one to go at the campsite, what a sweetie eh?). We decided to skip our second to last stop (once again no info on the town) and headed for one we knew had a famous statue because of the picture on the FTR (Fairy Tale Road) map. It was pretty late when we arrived at the last town, Nienburg. This town also had a free spot for us to park for the night. It rained most of the day, and we arrived in this town as it began to stop. We took this opportunity to rush to the tourist office and find out about this town. We caught the office just before they closed and were able to get a map in English telling us the statues significance and all the other “sites” to see in town. Yeah, they only had the statue, but we did stay for free at the Stellplatz. Although we were ushered out of one parking lot to a neighboring lot by other campers, we aren’t sure why. The statue turned out to be the perfect Nienburg Girl, and was not that impressive but we were glad to have visited the town that night because we now knew we could leave early the next morning to our next stop. Julie told me much later (about 2 weeks) that if you touch a certain part of the statue you get good luck. Any guesses?

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.