Anyone can now comment on this blog even if you're not a registered user.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Erfurt Culture and Bremen

The day before May Day, the German Labor Day, there was a Walpurgisnacht celebration on Domplatz. The festival is names for Saint Walpurga because that is when she was canonized. It is said that witches hold a large festival on this night waiting for spring to arrive. Thus we lit a big bonfire after watching people in witch costumes walk through the crowd with torches.

The next day there were to be May Day demonstrations from both Nazis and anti-Nazis. Some friends and I decided to get out of town and visit Weimar again. It was not a great day in terms of weather but we were able to go to several museums and see some of the sights. We also stopped at a lovely little Italian restaurant and ate pizza (not Burger King). However, we did stop at Burger King so we could get crowns for the funny hat party that night. We all dressed up as royalty.

On May 2nd there was the annual Entenrennen or Duck Race. Thousands of rubber ducks decorated in every way imaginable were put in the river to race. Prizes went to the fastest ducks and the best decorated. It was so much fun.

In Bremen one of the first things we did was drop off our stuff at our hostel. From there we went sightseeing. We started at an area full of small shops called Schnoor. Mostly it's just a funny word to say. It was small and quaint. Then we went more into the old city and saw the sights. Later some of the girls went shopping at a really cheap store called Primark. We ran into Shane there and found out he was going to the same club as us that night. The club was fun but there were a lot of strange people there so we didn't stay long.

The next morning we went down to the harbor and saw the water. It was nice to finally see some legit water. We also walked through this alley with beautiful architecture. On the way back we had to transfer trains a lot and we had an hour stopover in Hanover. The cool thing about that though was I was able to get Pizza Hut! I also was able to see some foothills of nearby mountains as we traveled through the German countryside.

No comments:

Post a Comment