The Harbor Vacation, Part One

It’s 8.55am and we’re on our way to Bremerhaven, merely a three-hour drive North on the autobahn. Three hours tops. The weather sucks; the sky is grey and cloudy, this early in the morning temperatures hover at around 14° Celsius (57F) which is not much, not even for this part of the world, not in late July. But the autobahn is as free and empty as it ever gets, morning rush hour is just over and since it’s Wednesday seemingly no one has to go anywhere. This is good. We’ve had too much stress with traffic in the past.

The GPS says, one hour and thirty-six minutes left until arrival in Bremerhaven. Haven means seaport in German, although it’s an old spelling. Or, come to think of it, possibly the Dutch spelling. Didn’t the Dutch come to today’s New York and call a place there New Haven because that’s where they first landed? I may be totally wrong about this.

Bremerhaven is a seaport, though, one of the largest in the world and essential for European import and export of cars, fruits and other things. It is also popular among those fortunate enough to own a yacht or an old sailing boat.

The GPS gives up on us. Somehow, we forgot the cable to hook it up to the cigarette lighter at home and now we just have to find everything on our own. Which should be fine because people never used to use GPS systems not too long ago and they still made it.

It’s 11am and we drive into Bremerhaven, meaning the actual harbor part of the city. Everything looks incredibly new and fresh and clean and… oceany. Maritime, I suppose, is the word I’m looking for. We can’t check into our hotel before 2pm and so we just park the car and stroll around aimlessly for a while.

We walk across this lock for the first time. It is the exit and, obviously, entrance way for any boats to the new inner harbor and especially during low tide the water levels are so different that the lock is necessary. Here, slots are opened to let in water so that the stage rises. It was actually pretty cool to witness.

This is the view from our hotel’s parking lot towards the Atlantic Hotel (on the right) which is basically a replicat of the Burj Al Arab in Dubai which I think is impressive at first sight but downright impudent when you think about it. The roundish thing between the hotel and the buildings on the left is the construction site of the Klimahaus. It looks pretty impressive at first sight as well but all the high-falutin’ architectural aspirations Bremerhaven seems to chase after get on my nerves pretty soon.

We arrive at the German Emigration Center and it’s the coolest thing museum we’ve ever seen. It does have a floating globe embedded into its exterior, after all.

We stop at the museum’s restaurant for tea and rhubarb-gooseberry pie (!) which is really, really good. They also have the best designed menus I have seen in a long time, they’re basically newspapers from back in the day when all those emigrants flet Europe.

As we stand in line to get our tickets - and a fake passport of a real emigrant whose story I can follow throughout the museum - I read the neon sign over our heads. Over 7 million people departed from here to an unknown world, it reads and chills run down my back. It instantly makes me see Bremerhaven and its history in a different light. In the entrance hall they also play original films of people waving goodbye to their loved ones and the Statue of Liberty appearing in the distance as their endless journey across the Atlantic comes to an end, and then their devastation as some of them are turned away upon arrival on Ellis Island.

The whole exhibiton is absolutely fantastic, almost spooky because the atmosphere is so real. If you ever happen to be in Bremerhaven, especially if you’re from the United States, you have got to check this place out. They also have databases of all emigrants and you can trace back your ancestors; you may, in fact, find out that you’re greatgrandmother originally departed from Bremerhaven and then ended up in Kansas.

We are, however, done with the exhibition sooner than we expected and so we still have half a day ahead of us, just waiting to be filled with touristy activities. We decide to check into the hotel prior to any goofy picture taking or Wait, what bus do we have to take to get back to the boardwalk again? exclamations.

The hotel is divine. We are all beyond happy. Everything is brand-new and clean and bright and beautiful. It still smells new, for Pete’s sake! And I spot multiple pieces from a certain Swedish company combined with other customized furnishings! It is so amazing that all our moods lighten up immediately; our feet no longer hurt from walking around the museum, our stomachs feel no longer empty.

There’s a flatscreen TV that can be turned around to either face the bed or the super comfortable couch (not pictured). The couch, that stands on an amazing dark hardwood floor that I want to sleep on and make babies with. Not to forget all the low windows and the beee-autiful view onto the yacht habor, more on that later. But the television, it is sleek and black and pretty.

And it is my brother’s new best friend. He doesn’t want to leave the room, not now, not ever. We have booked a so-called junior suite for my parents and one for my brother and I and he loves the suite. And the rotatable television.

The weather is getting better and better and we decide to walk down to the harbor where dozens of old sailing boats are docked. We discuss and brood and ponder (as is always the case when this family has to make a decision on anything) and end up taking a tour through the industrial harbor, which Bremerhaven is famous for, on a typical tourist sightseeing boat similar to those on the Seine in Paris or the Thames in London.

The container ships and freighters fascinate me immediately. The guide tells us their stories, where they came from and where they’ll go back to, how much fuel they need (a lot), how many cars fit into them (all of them), how old they are and it’s all interesting but all I can think is, THESE ARE BIG BOATS. Because they are. And not just big but How many stories high is this thing? big.

The fact that the freakishly small blue thing on the bottom far left is a semi truck should give everyone some perspective. These are big boats.

To be continued…