Volume 2, Day 25
In the morning, my body wanted to wake up at 5 or 6 am, but I forced myself to stay in bed and managed to stay asleep until 7:30, at which I promptly got dressed and dashed to the kitchen to make my first cup of coffee. The hostel has a newspaper subscription and I flipped through the local paper only to realize just how small the town really is. The front page story was about the German team’s defeat in the World Cup and I couldn’t even find a section on news or world events.
I enjoyed a leisurely morning frying up two eggs and slathering two slices of toast with butter and mixed berry jam for a stretched out breakfast. I was about to settle down work the rest of the morning, but I realized I would be better served going out briefly to see the weekly flea market.
The flea market is held in the parking lot north of the train station and this was the most flea-ridden (?) of the markets I’ve seen so far. By which I mean that it was the most loosely organized and potentially authentic reselling of used goods. I do wonder how someone can have such a huge collection of CDs or bicycle parts to sell at a flea market, and given my aggravations of the previous day, my thoughts drifted towards how one simply needs to move stolen goods to a different city to offload them in a flea market. There was even someone selling some old luggage and I did my best to analyze how long I can expect my current luggage to last versus something of an unknown quality. In the end, I resolved to pick up a few items to attempt a more aggressive repair, but the stall selling superglue (which must have fallen off the back of a truck) mysteriously vanished.
I headed back to the hostel for a quick, early lunch of two grilled cheese sandwiches, then set off again to head into the old town to the south.
Bremen’s old town is the most impressive of the handful of cities I’ve visited. Every building is an architectural masterpiece and they are clustered together so tightly that photos cannot do them justice. I didn’t wonder too far because it was already noon and there was something on my secret agenda.
A group of volunteers performs a reenactment of the Bremen Town Musicians every Sunday at noon (May through September) on the plaza between the modernist Neptune fountain and the cathedral. Yes, it is for kids, but much like the flea market it is not available everyday, and therefore special and worth spending a little time. After a long introductory spiel in German, the donkey repeated it in crisp English to my surprise. Their spoken German was a little hard to understand, but I appreciated the 30 minute listening practice.
After the show, I shot over to the Bremen Kunsthalle because Sunday would be my only chance to visit a museum and of all the things listed in the Lonely Planet, art sounded the most interesting. The museum was good and I tried a new strategy of going through it twice. The modern art was very limited (thankfully, though I never thought I’d see John Cage* in a museum), and the best room was that of the French Impressionists. Nevertheless, I am starting to feel a greater understanding of German art and its superstar painters because this handful of names appears in every museum. Quite frankly, I could definitely become a fan.
The ground floor special exhibits, of course, were the most interesting with an entire gallery dedicated to the titular fairy tale. Colorful signs at eye level for short people gave children tasks to focus on the art (such as “count this” or “think about that”), but overall the exhibit was surprisingly not-child friendly. The highlight and featured work on their promotional materials was a pair of real-life recreations of the stacked musicians (donkey, dog, cat, rooster) using taxidermied animals and their skeletons. The next room had a photo series from Ukraine with nudity. The next room had a video of the artist marching down the street of his hometown in Iraq playing a harmonica. It turns into a street protest and bloody violence ensues. After finishing the loop, I found the English language pamphlet explaining the ideas behind all the works and had to give it a second pass.
Finally, there was a whole section dedicated to a contemporary artist who has a really fascinating gimmick of painting photo-realistic paintings out of focus and creating the illusion that one is viewing the scene in the painting through a lens.
Despite taking as much time as I could in the museum, I was still done relatively early. I took a brief stroll through more of the old town, admiring the section with the more bauhaus looking architecture and heroically resisting the urge to buy handmade sweets or gelato.
I wrapped up my tour of town and headed back to the hostel, where I treated myself with some coffee and toast. I killed time until the right hour for a skype call, then quickly made my dinner (which was a repeat of Saturday night). Once again, I threw a movie on the TV and watched it while eating and finishing the bottle of wine.
When I got kicked out of the lounge, I wondered to the picnic table in the front yard of the hostel, where a kid was having a smoke. I’d seen him around these days but we hadn’t really spoken yet, but we got to talking then. He was from Turkey, learning German, and about to start university classes the next day. Another fellow with dreadlocks (who had arrived that day and was in my dorm) also joined us. He was from Malaysia and on a cycling tour of Europe. It can be hard to be social, but I guess you just have to push a bit to talk to people. The conversation was really just a bit of small talk and sputtered out very quickly, but it was a welcome break from the minimal grunting of “morning” and “hello” that makes up the entirety of most conversations in a shared space.
* The John Cage installation was a large room with 32 speakers hanging from the ceiling playing different noises. I think I prefer 4’33
| Bremen Kunsthalle | 10 EUR |
| Total: | (78 RMB) (USD 11.33) |
Running Total: 9689.6 RMB (USD 1406.93)
Daily Average: 387.6 RMB (USD 56.28)