After my early morning run through the Schloßpark, we had a lovely breakfast with Uschi and took off around 9 am to return to Hamburg via Bremen. A happy farewell because we’ll see each other again soon, for my sister’s birthday dinner near Hamburg in less than two weeks! The plan was to take a bit of time to explore Bremen (or to revisit some fun places we’d been before) before heading back to Andrea and Peter. We stored our luggage at the train station and went for a stroll downtown to wander across the historic main plaza (which looks a lot like the ones in Brussels and Bruges because all of these cities were major trade centers during the late middle ages/early Renaissance) and checked out the main cathedral (we’d been before). I noticed that they have made an effort to recreate some of the paint on the ceiling and along the Gothic columns, and we did take a couple of photos of a Romanesque baptismal basin/font that I would be ready to swear we photographed before. But it is so unusual to find Romanesque bronze items this far North, and so strange that the figures that hold up the basin ride “lions” that we captured it again.
Because we’ve been to Bremen many times, we did not take a lot of photos–we just enjoyed wandering around the old quarter (Schnoorviertel), the parks (Wallanlagen and Bürgerpark) and having coffee in a café that pretended to be in Vienna and had Sachertorte and Weinschaumtorte, both very fancy but an excellent snack. We also took a picture of me with a sculpture inspired by a famous and eminently quotable cartoonist and comedian (Loriot) and of two other, more serious sculptures.
Then we made our way back to the train station with a couple of belegte Brötchen (sandwiches, but soooo much better) and ended up delayed by some kind of track repair. The announcements were quite humorous and you could tell how often this happens and how tired the conductors are of these. But we were in no hurry and eventually got back to Hamburg around 4 pm. The weather was not great and we were tired, so we just hung out at home for the rest of the day and got take-out for dinner.