All of the fairytales written by the Brothers Grimm are rooted in some element of fact, including the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Some of them are more fantastically elaborated upon than others, but regardless, the legend of the Pied Piper is alive and well in today’s Hamelin.

The facts: On (what is thought to be) June 26, 1284, 130 children disappeared from the town of Hamelin. Was there actually a rat infestation in Hamelin? Probably…considering the Plague and all. Did the city of Hamelin fail to pay their debt to the rat-exterminator? Probably…what governmental body doesn’t have unpaid debts? Was there a weirdly dressed man acting strange in the street? Probably…those have existed since the beginning of time. Did all of these events happen simultaneously? Doubtful.

Regardless, Hamelin has found its ‘schtick’ and is stickin’ to it! Everywhere you look there is testimony to the tale (or tail, whichever!).

Watching over the Weser River, where the rats and maybe even the children were lead, is a golden homage to them all.

The story plays out twice a day during the Glockenspiel, complete with the piper, rats, children, and even the two kids that got left behind and lived to tell the tale.

Bungelosenstraβe is reportedly the last place where the children were seen, and supposedly music and dancing are still prohibited here to this day.

Moral of the fairy tale: Pay your service providers as contracted and there won’t be any problems!

Bremen: “home” to the Grimm brother’s “Town Musicians of Bremen”. I say “home” because the four animals never actually made it to Bremen, but you can’t stand anywhere in Bremen today without being within spitting distance of some sign, statue, or souvenir marked with the iconic organisms. We asked a cute old German couple to take our picture and she thoughtfully informed us that holding onto the ass’s feet with only one hand would actually turn each of us into one, so we should be sure to use both hands. Danke sehr, old lady. Honestly, we were probably doomed either way, because if she was lying we followed her directions explicitly, just like two tourist asses!

We visited Bremen’s Münster as well, but it has already blurred together with the hundred other churches we have seen in the past few years. Except for what’s stored in the basement….mummies! This guy, one of six beneath St. Peter’s Cathedral in Bremen, is a student who presumably died of the wounds inflicted to his arm during a brawl.

No trip to Germany’s oldest brewing town is complete without a tour of Beck’s. I can’t say that either one of us are bigger Beck’s fans now, after having tried it directly from the source, but it was fun to walk around the brewery wearing reflective orange vests!

Unbeknownst to us, Bremen was celebrating a fest-weekend while we were there! The Aldstadt was filled with a Medievalmarkt and directly across from our hotel was the Freimarkt, one of the oldest Volksfests in Germany. The best part about the north? They serve Glühwein before Advent starts! Score!

I’ll never grow tired of drinking Bier and Glühwein at fests amongst old (looking) buildings in quaint Fuβgängerzonen. The Germans do it best!

Bremerhaven makes a triangle with Hamburg and Bremen and was an important port-city with key access to the North Sea. Between 1830 and 1974, 7.2 million people departed from the Bremerhaven harbor, emigrating from Europe and looking for a new life.

We came to Bremerhaven to visit the Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Center). It is the largest exhibition on emigration in Europe, and stands on the exact location where so many people said goodbye to their families and their countries forever.

The museum recreates the journey from Europe across the Atlantic for visitors, even giving you the name of an emigrant that you track throughout the voyage. There are so many mannequins and “real-life” displays that while I was standing and waiting for Joe, an old German guy asked me, “Sind Sie echt oder Puppe?” (Are you real or a puppet?!) His eyesight was obviously on the way out!

A recreation of the Harbor in Bremerhaven.

At the end of the journey, you actually “arrive” at Ellis Island and then make your way to Grand Central Terminal. In the 19^th century, 90% of the people emigrating from Bremerhaven departed for the US and 70% of those arrived through Ellis Island. There was a map in the museum, which I found really interesting and quite surprising.

If you can’t read it from the picture, the title of the map is “Descendants of U.S. Immigrants in 2000”. Green is the overwhelming color. Guess what green represents: a majority of the descendants in these states come from Germany. Crazy huh?!