Deutsche Marchenstraße – The Fairy Tales Route

We started the Fairy Tales Routes in Bremen. Even though the four Town Musicians of Bremen never actually made it to Bremen in the Grimms tale, there are cute symbols of the four all over town, pointing you toward an exciting square with a grande rathaus (town hall), a magnificent church, a beautiful statue of Roland, and amazingly structure old houses. A tram line cut right through the square, in front of the town hall. The random ding-dong from the tram added modern flavour to our dining when we spent the evening admiring the thousand year old town. Leaving Bremen, we drove and stopped whenever we felt like. We passed some old quiet town where, once upon a time,  all the rats (and the children) were lured away . That might actually explain the stillness. Sometimes we didn’t make enough miles because of a lingering around altstraße (old streets, phố cổ). We ended up camping in a wood on a stormy night. The thunders badly increased my wariness from the camp owner who looked like a suspicious character out of Game of Thrones. Regardless, we managed to cook pasta under the rain. It was tasty even. I told Ian it might be the evening we would never forget – like many others that we shared. On meandering roads through valleys, up some mountain forests and down to corn fields, we listened to our childhood favourite Brother Grimms tales. I remember tales like Hansel & Gretel, or The Little Red Riding Hood but am not quite sure what I took of them when I was little. Grimm Fairy Tales now seem little dark for my adult consciousness. Though they all lived happily ever after, there were plenty of jealousy, betrayal, wickedness and murders. One story told that a mouse moved in with a cat and ended up being eaten by the very cat.  That is how life turns out sometimes. How shocking! To be continue…