Bad Zwischenahn, Bremen, and the Twistringen Cemetery

On the 24th, we went into the town of Bad Zwischenahn, which is kind of a quiet little village in the wintertime and a well-visited lake/resort town in the summertime. (For those of you living in Colorado, who have been to Estes Park in both summer and wintertime, you know what we are talking about.)
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While Bad Zwischenahn is a nice town, we felt we saw the majority of it in under 30 minutes, so we took the train through Oldenburg (since we had been there the day previous), and went into the fabled town of Bremen.

If you haven’t read the story of the Bremen Town Musicians (by the Brothers Grimm), you should. It’s not the highlight of the Brothers’ Grimm’s tales, but is a fun and short read.

Here we are with the statue of the Bremen Town Musicians.

We also took a big walking tour (on our own) of Bremen.
Our intention had been to tour the Beck’s brewery (which is in Bremen), but the brewery is only open for tours on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
Because of the train strike on Thursday, we had decided to take the train to Bremen on Wednesday, so the brewery tour was unavailable to us. Should you decide to go to Bremen to do a brewery tour, just remember that the brewery tour is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
In any case, on our walking tour, we went into the schnoorviertel, which is an old part of the city of Bremen that wasn’t totally annihilated (unlike most of the city) during World War Two. The reason it’s called schnoor is because of an old German word “schnur” which means close together, and everything about this little city within the city of Bremen resembles close together (and small).
(Like this doorway.)

We also found an old “Hochzeitshaus”, which (in the 1600′s) is the house which would hold up to six people who had come into the big city from the farms to get married.

Why would it hold up to six people?
Well, the newly wedded couple would spend their wedding night together in the Hochzeitshaus, and there was also room for both parents of the couple in an adjoining room.
We love our parents, but we’re glad we live in the year 2007.
(Thanks for the hotel room after the wedding Mom and Dad!)
Bremen was also having a big street festival and so you could get all kinds of traditional German food.

Including Kartoffelpuffer (Potato puffs)

And Gluehwein

Gluehwein is something like wine mixed with mulled spices.
This wine was OH SO good, on such a cool day, that we had to go back and get a second glass.
And yes, warm wine does affect the body’s senses more quickly than cold wine, and it also warms the body up much more quickly. There’s nothing better than this on a cold day… except perhaps the small sample glass we had of warmed honey wine. That was really great too.
On our way back from Bremen, we got off the train in Oldenburg, where Joern and Sabine picked us up. We went out for some food and drinks at a restaurant on Wallstrasse (I spent a fair amount of time on Wallstrasse during my Oldenburg studies in 2001).

It was a really great day!

The following day (October 25th), we made the (short – well, supposed to be short) drive to Twistringen, where my ancestors are buried. My Oma (Grandma) has pictures of her playing in her Oma’s (My Great-Great Grandma) backyard as a little girl.
None of that is there anymore, but the cemetery still is.

It was really neat to return here with my wife, (wife is still a bit funny to say – growing into it at the moment…) and show her a place that has come to be special for me since I first visited here in 2001 (see the pictures here). It’s just a quiet place in the middle of a small wooded area. At some point we will have to correct one of the grave sites, which has a rock next to it identifying it as three Russian prisoners of war… but it’s clear that there are only two graves here, and one open burial plot. Last time I was here, the rock was simply sitting on the ground in front of the graves, but between then and now, someone cemented it in, in the place where there used to be a headstone (likely broken off during the destruction that may have happened in the cemetery during the second world war. I am under the impression that this is where the great grandparents of my Oma are buried (my great-great-great grandparents), but I’ll have to check with Oma and her brother (Uncle Walter) to know for sure.
Sabine was nice enough to allow us to use her car, which was awesome, and Carrie and I had a great afternoon driving through the German countryside on a gray afternoon, which suited the mood of the day very nicely. On the way back, we saw all sorts of colors on the changing fall leaves ranging from bright reds to yellows and some remaining green leaves, and of course fields and fields of green grass and moss.
It is fascinating to us that Carrie’s Mom’s family came from Bad Zwischenahn, and less than an hour away, in Twistringen, is where my Oma’s side of the family comes from. We rolled around the idea that thousands of years ago (maybe as recent as a couple thousand years ago), our ancestors were part of neighboring Germanic tribes, or may even have been part of the same nomadic tribe. Our spirits may have even been embodied there. It’s amazing for us in light of the fact that we met each other via German club at UNC in Northern Colorado. Sort of like we were destined to be together… And also that our choices brought our destinies together.
It was a great discussion to have on our honeymoon, and gave us a great perspective on where we’re from, as well as where we’re going together.

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