August 3

Today was a scheduled tour at the German Emigration Museum in Bremerhaven. This museum was one of the things I was most looking forward to on the trip, so I was very excited about taking the train to Bremen, switching trains, and ending up in Bremerhaven. Unfortunately, we got a bit delayed because our train out of Hamburg arrived to Bremen late, making us miss our train and forcing us to take the next one. That was a 50 minute wait. There was some serious shopping to get done in that time! I had no idea what I was going to find, but it didn't stop me from looking! It's funny how fast 50 minutes flies by when you have some unexpected unstructured time!

We had another hour or so on the train from Bremen to Bremerhaven. As each minute ticked by, I could feel myself getting more and more excited. I truly was looking forward to this museum! It won the Best Museum in Europe award in 2007 - and there are a LOT of museums over here! In the lobby I was about ready to lose it - I'm crazy in museums! We were given a card that corresponded with a different emigrant, and as we moved through the museum, we could see how our emigrant did, if they were allowed passage, what happened to that person on the passage, and if they were finally allowed into the country to which they had emigrated. My emigrant was Justina Tubbe, who, rest assured, finally made it to the United States in 1835 and ended up settling in Texas. We had another guided tour, which lasted around two hours or so, which was just enough time to scratch the surface. I SOOOO wish that we would have had longer here. I was fascinated by this place - lots of interactive exhibits for visitors, a place to do research on your own family at the end, and very informative signs throughout the museum in both English and German. I even managed to have my picture taken as an emigrant (unfortunately the machine was out of ink so they are supposed to mail the picture to me - we'll see!). I wanted to take pictures, but once again this was a museum where you had to pay to take pictures and I thought I would console myself by buying the museum book in the gift shop. Guess what they were out of? They are supposed to e-mail me when the new book is available. I was utterly fascinated by this place. We had to move on, though. I was hoping that I could have used my remaining time in Bremerhaven to explore the museum more (we were scheduled to spend the afternoon in Bremerhaven at our choice of museums, but something happened - a vote or something that I didn't take part in) but we were headed back to Bremen. I was a little disappointed here. Bremerhaven had this amazing sea breeze, and even if I just spent another hour there, I was looking forward to walking around Bremerhaven and just enjoying the city. Not spending time in Bremerhaven has been one of the lows for me on the trip so far, and it was made that much worse due to the fact that there was apparently a vote to determine what we were doing and I didn't get to take part for some reason. I think I had just built so much up around this part of the trip that when it didn't work out I was just really bummed. Bremen was a nice city, and I got to see the statue of the Bremen musicians, which was cool, but I still remained a little bummed about how the day turned out. I knew I couldn't pout - this is, after all, a trip that I am not paying for - so I put a smile on my face and tried to deal with it the best that I could. I did get a little souvenir shopping done in Bremen, so not all was lost!

Dinner that night was at a Chinese restaurant. Britta knew the owner, and called ahead to have the food ready when we arrived as it was getting late. This was a feast! We sat at two large tables with lazy susans, and food just kept coming out of the kitchen every time you turned around. It seemed as if we ate forever, but in reality I think we just bombarded with enough food that it seemed that we ate more than what we actually did. And what did I have to drink? Apfelshörle!!!

Back to the hotel for another great night's sleep in anticipation of tomorrow!