Bremen

One week of autumn holidays, what could I do? When I read that one of the greatest van Gogh exhibitions ever had just been opened in Bremen in the north of Germany I found my destination. The exhibition alone didn’t lure me, though, a train journey of seven hours and an expensive ticket, to say nothing of the price for the hotel, would be a bit exaggerated, even for an art buff like me. I wanted to see the north of Germany again; I had lived in a small town near Bremen for nine years and liked it there, in fact landscape-wise I’ve never liked it better anywhere else. I don’t cherish hills and mountains, I always feel they block ...

Bremen is a town of contrasts. I was there a few years ago on a training course with work for two weeks. On the outskirts there is a heavily industrialized area that is not particularly attractive. However the centre and especially the old town is full of character. My husband joined me for a weekend while I was in Bremen and we had a wonderful time just walking around the town and we also travelled to Bremerhaven by train where there is a large maritime museum. The old sector of Bremen can be deceiving - some of it is not as old as you might think. A lot of Bremen was destroyed in the war and some of the old town has been reconstructed since. This has been done so well ...