Travels with Spaniels: The Schleswig-Holstein Question...and massive motorhomes

The Rathouse in Bremen

Gelsenkirchen provided the chance for a lovely walk with the spaniels in a nearby wooded park, albeit the large lake in the centre would have been rather too attractive for Max had he not been on a lead. We then set off northwards aiming for Bremen. Our progress was not as swift as we had hoped due to a string of roadworks which brought back fond memories of the M6. Apparently when the original highways were built in the 1980s, it was decided to save money by reducing the dual carriageway to single lanes over bridges. Roll forward 30 years and engineers are frantically widening every single bridge on the system.

We parked up in Bremen on a Stellplatz on an island in the middle of the River Weser and decided to walk into the old town with the spaniels. What a revelation that was. Böttcherstraße, is a street that, in medieval times was the home of coopers' workshops. It was transformed in the 1920s into what is described as a mixture of expressionist style. It is now lined with high class shops, bars and workshops.

At the end of the street is the Market Square containing the Rathaus that was constructed between 1405 and 1410 in the Gothic style. Around 140 years later a surge of prosperity in the city saw the front of the building altered to a Renaissance style which it still retains. Only the heroic efforts of firefighters, and the decision to board up the facade with heavy planks, prevented the building from being destroyed during Allied bombing during WWII. More than 60% of the city as a whole was flattened.

The zig-zag moat in Bremen

Souvenir shops are full of tat relating to the Grimm Brother's fairy tale concerning a donkey, a dog, a cat and a cockerel who set off to become musicians in Bremen. In the event they didn't actually get there but their images appear on a wide variety of merchandise, much like the Cock of Barcelos dominates the city in Portugal.
https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm027.html

The next morning we took the little ferry that links the island with the main part of the city and walked around the remains of the city walls, which are more of a moat set in lovely parkland. We liked Bremen, which has lovely green spaces and is very pedestrian friendly.

One thing we have noticed on this trip is what seems to be the preference here for huge motorhomes. Eight metre behemoths shuffle onto the site and their owners decant a quantity of equipment that would have taken a 19th century explorer across Africa. Do they have a ballroom inside we wonder, or maybe a five-a side football pitch? We often notice them travelling in convoys on the autobahn and think that they would have no chance if they brought them to the UK and attempted to negotiate the

Böttcherstraße, Bremen

Lake District or the lanes of rural Cornwall.

After negotiating an over-engineered toilet cassette disposal machine (what's wrong with the normal British hole in the ground?) we set off for our next stop which was planned to be Hamburg with the idea that we would visit the area around the Reeperbahn and look at some of the places where The Beatles played before they broke through in the UK. However this endeavour was foiled when we discovered the motorhome stopover we had planned to use was full. This only after twice attempting a convoluted one-way system in order to get to it and nearly having the front of the van knocked off by a speeding driver in a black car. BMW obviously.

We decided to forget Hamburg, it was Friday afternoon to be fair so no wonder it was busy, and head back into the countryside where we feel more at home. Tonight we are on a lovely little Stellplatz at Neumunster, one of the larger municipalities in the German province of Schleswig-Holstein.

Which brings me to the Schleswig Holstein Question, a complex set of diplomatic issues arising from 19th century disputes between The Duchy of Schleswig and the Duchy of Holstein, both claimed by Denmark but eventually merged into the new federal Germany created by Bismark. Quite what the argument was no one really knew. But the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerstone summed it up as follows. "Only three people have ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein business. The Prince Consort, who is dead, a German professor who has gone mad and I, who have forgotten all about it."