Bremen

Trip Start Feb 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Germany Bremen, Germany
Monday, March 10, 2008

We placed our feet on German soil first in central Bremen, happy to be in Germany, I had felt impotent in France with my lack of Frence language but now Paz and myself had a basic understanding of German and could comunicate without the excessive body language or key words.

We found ourselves in a internet cafe near Haptbannhof (Central station) and began to search the listing for Bremen. After a few cigs and an hour later (smoking inside still :) we arrived at Chaminder's profile page and I made the call.

Timing once again took a turn for the best, just catching Chami as he arrived from work (a cycle courier). We jumped the tram to get to his place, over Bremen's bridges on the south side of the city. Chami also lives with Katharina who we met too, both of them are wonderful people who have hosted us for nearly a week now!

rolling

We started the first night with the last of my favorate chilli sauce (garlic and sweet chilli) and a stir fry which I cooked for everyone. Then got to know each other over food, conversation and the odd joint (well we had just come from Holland!)

Gaffiti outside Chami's

The campest vamipre!

local park, read - Money problems

The first day (and all the following nearly) started with a typical German breakfast, bread/cheese/salami and of course the most critical of all.....Coffee (Proper, not instant....mmmm....) We walked the city, using me as the mobile GPS for the group, and by the time of writing I would claim I know Bremen quite well now :)

The Musical

Bremen is fameous for its music there is some form of tale about a chicken, pig, cat and dog traveling to Bremen playing music or some such

This is from the folk story, wiki it!

(wiki it) and on a level we can all connect to, it is also the home of Becks Beer, a fact we of course did not slip and sampled the local brew. Deceptivly in a massive tall glass although closer inspection shows its less than a pint (500ml vs 565ml for the pint) anyway thats the English drinking culture coming through :P

Bremen

Main square Bremen

instresting horsemen

Paz and I decided to walk the city and connect to the underground, and after a while stumbled across a info shop, these are shops or rather shop like buildings which act as local activist information points and meeting area's. We sat down and spoke to the people running it, trying to see what was going on locally while we were staying.

Bremen central square

The people running the shop made us a great coffee, and we relaxed while chatting and finding out about events in town etc. That evening we were told, was a meal for a couple of Euros in a squat on Sielwall street. We treked back to the house to pick up Cimi and see if Chami and Kathi would want to join us, from where we were in Bremen everything was walking distance between 10-30mins away.

Cimi, Paz and myself left for the squat for the meal, once again the cooking was great! A carrot (and unknown other) soup, followed by noodles and stir fried veg. The last course was a desert, an apple crumble with custard.
Yum! The meal was topped with a beer and joint in the squat and everyone was satisfied :)

Bremen at night

Chami told us that the next day activists in Bremen had organised a critical mass demo, and he tried to organise bikes for the three of us. By the following morning we had collected one bike from a Irish friend, Mike living in Bremen and had Chami's spare bike. With only two bikes Cimi decided to stay inside for the day, leaving Paz and myself free to attend the critical mass. If your not familiar with it, critical mass is a cycle protest, designed to draw attention away from cars as a primary form of transport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass) although we did'nt have the numbers of other citys masses, we were able to then pin point critical juntions and even evade the police by taking a shortcut through the park :)

I should add that both Paz and myself had prior to leaving the house to cycle around Bremen had ingested about 35grams of Thai shrooms bought from a "smart shop" in Holland which we had been keeping for a nature park, although having been in the bag for a few day (since Rotterdam) we thought it best to have them then.

In retro-spect perhaps not the best of idea's when cycling but still, very enjoyable! The bike we were using were city bikes i imagine, since they had no gears, and relativly small tires. The one thing that seems a little silly and took a while to get used to was the braking system, the pedals were connected to the brakes/gear, so when you back pedaled you stopped the bike, the only other brake I had use of was a slightly weak front brake!
We cycled through the old city to the start point, already feeling effects :) and met with the protest before we all set out. Chami, Kathi, Paz and myself met with the main group of about 45-60 people and after a slight delay headed out to our first stop en-mass!

We cycled north to B�ger park and a large roundabout in front of it, then began the protest, at first I thought we were cycling around and back down towards the city, but insead we circled the roundabout for over 5 mins! A great sight, we had cycles passing in a massive circle completely blocking all the roads into and out of the roundabout! After a time, we turned and headed into the city at a slow pace.

Tree's breathing, (on shrooms)

We picked up a police escort about 1/2 way through the demo, not that we needed protection though :0 and as we turned back into the old town again we all turned off the road for a quick dash through the park and out to the other side, losing the police to traffic and having fun at the same time! It was a great feeling being part of this critical mass, you could disolve yourself into the group, we were like water passing around stones, flowing around the cars and roads, setting our own speed and momentum.

Just before the end of the demo, Paz and I decided to turn off and head back to B�ger park, making full use of the cycles while we had them. I should add, i loved cycling around Bremen, there are cycle paths everywhere and the bikes give you a great freedom of movment, you feel you could get anywhere fast in Bremen very easyly.

We cycled back to Chami's and spent the night watching bob marly docu's while I prepared to cook again, no not a stir fry! but jurk turkey and thanks to Clara's tips some egg fried rice which came out nicely!

Chami had told us of some friends of his who had started their own group, Natural Parliament and also created the iness Projekt

myspace.com/naturalparliament
myspace.com/inessprojekt

please have a listen, but im sure you can tell they are great musicans! Later on Chami and Kathi took us to Naloa's house who is part of both projects, and also a great person (now I think about it, i dont think we have met anyone who isnt wonderful or in myway of understating, very nice)

We spent the night at Naloa's and enjoyed his company, music and hospitality making improv music with all of us sitting around in a circle on the floor. Later in the morning, Naloa invited us back to record some songs over beats he had created, so we made a plan to meet the next day and set out back to Chami's house.

Katharina had left in the morning of the same day to south Germany, and we missed saying goodbye and thanks to her since we arrived back at the house later in the afternoon, (Thank you!!!) We spent the day at Chami's till he returned from work at 6pm. We had planned to attend an infomation everning with the activist community of Bremen, some Japanese activists were traveling Germany hosting info nights regarding the upcoming G8, which we had assumed was tuesday night, but infact was monday...not knowing what to do, since Paz had left alone to walk around the city, we stayed in and met lepat and his friend, members of iness projekt and also an acomplished artist!
Lepat had earlyer invited us to his house too, but his wife was ill at that time, so he kindly sent over a homecooked chicken curry, which was great tasting!

Paz arrived later, with news, he had met a person in the info point who told him about the planned G8 meeting and had attended himself. He had met with the Japanese activists, whom we had hoped were driving around Germany giving these talks and we could get a ride with them. Although as it turned out they took the train (makes sense really). Needless of this, Paz had made contact with them, and is now waiting for a email about possible routes to japan, it seems a overland carravan of activists is leaving Germany at somepoint and if we time it right, may be able to hitch with them :)

The next day once again we left for Naloa's house and after a walk through the town (stopping at times in shops etc) we arrived. For the rest of the day we each recorded samples to layer over the tracks he had already produced, even I wrote a few and recorded some lirics, although more of a narrative rather than singing sections.
We should have copys of this music at some point once Naloa has arranged the tracks and added some reverbs :0
After a relativly long session we had about 3-4 tracks done and set out for Chami's again.

I had planned to cook again, and once again not a stir fry but a mash (sweet potato/parsnip/carrot) stuffed red peppers with rice, cheese, chilli and garlic and salad on the side. Stealing Andrea's idea of oven roasted banana's topped with suger and icecream for desert. It seems once we started this trip we have been eatting nearly all home cooked meals and healthy food, not a bad thing at all eh?

We spent the last night the four of us (Cimi,Paz,Chami and myself) eatting around the table in the living room, while Chami showed us pictures of Sri Lanka when he had last visted. A place of amazing beauty and full of history, although not without troubles as Chami told us.

now, im sure I have missed out alot in this, its hard to convey feelings and emotions via this text, not to mention that i may have forgotten moments, but I hope you get a picture of what kind of experience we are having! anyway, at the moment I am still sitting at Chami's house, supposed to have left much earlyer in the day (its now 4pm) it takes ages to write all this, and I guess we will run out of light before we arrive at the hitching spot we picked to exit Bremen. Still, we are going to ask Chami if we can crash a single night more, and leave early next time!

(mm this seems to happen in nearly all citys we stay in....although not bad methinks!)

the plan after Bremen is to try making it to Berlin, to the east, then after that, south I assume...although the details are always unknown untill we are in the moment, but thats part of the fun eh!

Untill next time, Peace!

Edited - Added some extra photo's sent over email from Chami later on...and so in no specific order, here we go..