Hamburg to Bremen

Negotiating your way out of German cities by bike is not straightforward. The best option is to take a compass bearing and distance to the exit road and keep going. It took me a good hour and a half to get out of the complicated road system connecting Hamburg to its sister city Harburg. A very tedious experience.
A very kind hotel owner in Otterburg just outside Bremen let me camp in her garden overnight and use the hotel showers. I had been making more of an effort with the language and it was paying off. I had a very energetic conversation over dinner in one pub with a man who thought Lobscouse was the most delicious meal ever. He had given me some very dirty looks when I entered but warmed up when I attempted some German.
The centre of Bremen is a UNESCO world heritage site, containing several excellent examples of late medieval architecture. It was heavily bombed in the war however, more so then Lubeck, and it's town centre is full of ugly post war buildings. As beautiful as the surviving medieval town is, it was another example of this tragedy, and a reminder of what might have been.
Pictured here: A Hamburg Canal 'canyon', A bridge leaving Harburg, A trompe l'oeil frieze on the outskirts of Bremen. Public sculpture in Bremen.