BREMEN DAY TRIP
It had been recommended to me to visit Bremen whilst in Hamburg, which I did and was very pleasantly surprised with just how lovely a place it was.
On entering the city it immediately struck me as much more well kept than Hamburg, in terms of the condition of roads, the amount of graffiti, etc. It also felt more orderly that Hamburg and gave me the impression that it had vaster and lusher green spaces than Hamburg which you caught glimpses of as you walked through the city. Additionally, en route to the infamous Schnoor, the abundance of beautiful historic architecture in the city became at once apparent too.
The Schnoor {old town of Bremen} was indeed a very magical area of closely nestled cobbled streets filled with picturesque, cottage like architecture. It emitted a fairy-tale like quality making it such a joy to explore its streets and discover little lanes and quaint shops like a sweet shop and an antique toy shop as well as tea rooms, pubs and restaurants. One restaurant, the Kleiner Olymp, had an absolutely gorgeous, characteristic, art nouveau door featured in its elevation of the period. I dined there and noticed a wonderful detail in its interior décor – an old stand made of a vertical support bar and strings used to hook newspapers {with giant clips} and peg leaflets on. A tea room that I went to afterwards also displayed a lovely interior décor feature - an ornate, antique cash register. One is enchanted with so much charm here one does not want to leave!
But something else that I really loved when exploring the wondrous, mythical world of the medieval quarter, was the fact that there was much art and design implemented into the architectural fabric. This ranged from the early 17th century sandstone carvings of the elevation of Schnoor 37, which constitute mainly of shallow, geometric voids colourfully painted creating a rhythmic relief design ascending the building’s surface. Another example was that of Spolia on a 1960s red-brick building where salvaged early 17th century sandstone carvings from former buildings were integrated into the elevation creating a horizontal frieze, where the red brick design is a transformative response to these historical fragments creating waves, arches and coils in the fragments’ peripheral areas. The result is a sense of punctuated, flowing movement. And finally another post-war building that boasted a series of cast concrete balconies created by sculptor Manfred Lohrengel in 1970. I’d never seen a building like this before, where entire balconies were sculptures. I was very impressed with the boldness of it and loved the whole notion of it as it seemed to bridge the world of architecture and art, where the boundary between the two fields was very much merged.
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