Fairy Tale Road

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a small green frog flagged us down on a German road and asked, "Do you know the way to Bremen?" "Why sure," I said. "Come with us to Bremen!" I opened the door. "Hop in." And that is how the three of us began our trip down the Fairy Tale Road.

We began near Hanau where the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in 1785 and 1786. Over the rivers and through the woods we drove to Lauterbach and Alsfeld; small medieval towns complete with half-timbered houses, castles and cobblestone town squares surrounded by archways, alleyways, beer gardens, old post boxes, and each with an ancient town hall.

Through Schrecksbach and Schwalmstadt we acted like wild huntsmen and ventured deep into the heart of the big bad woods. We kept an ear out for wolves that night. Luckily none of us met the fate that little Red's Grannie did so long ago.

In the morning the forest gave way to rolling farm land and fields of golden rapeseed. We were on our way to Kassel. When we arrived, we nearly spun our tires into straw threads driving down every road in town looking for the Brother's Grimm Museum. But finally we found it, and through a bit weak on history and information, it was fun seeing all the original collections and illustrations of the Grimm brother's tales. Alas, reading any of them was out; although their works have been translated into 140 languages, nothing in the museum was in English. But Fargo didn't let that bother him. He set to work on his own fairy tale. He promised it would be done by the time we got to Bremen.

After our museum adventure, John was hungry, Fargo was grumpy; I was sleepy. A quick bite was in order. Our sandwiches on brown German bread were just what we needed to give us the energy to look for a good place to nap. Fargo tossed the bread crumbs out the window as John pulled away from the curb.

Down the road a spell, we found Sababurg. What better town to have a nap in, and what better place than the Sababurg Castle, after all Sleeping Beauty rested quite comfortably there. But I'll bet she never dreamed her castle would one day house a restaurant.

We toured the grounds, napped for a very, very long time and were just about ready to leave when Fargo yelled "Well, Well." He had spotted a distant cousin. A reunion was in order, so naturally we stopped to snap a few 'prince' of them together (though they hardly look liked cousins to me. Fargo and his cousin went back and forth over who had actually rescued the Princess' golden ball. "Cousin Leroy had the Hollywood image," Fargo told me, "but he could never make the swim team." In the end they shock 'Hans' and re-greteled that they hadn't kept in touch.

The town of Hoxter was our next stop. It was here and in the neighboring villages that the Brothers Grimm collected almost all of their tales in low German from the brothers and sisters von Haxthausen. Many of the tales they recorded were told to them by the storyteller Dorothea Viehmann.

We didn't hear any stories while we were in town, but we did hear a rock-n'-roll band in the town square. I think Jacob and Wilhelm would have enjoyed drinking beer while rocking around the clock.

Hameln was next, a Weser Renaissance city. I'm sure it looks a bit different today than when the Pied Piper played his magic flute there on June 26, 1284. And we didn't see any rats either. Nonetheless, Fargo kept out of sight. "Rats eat frogs don't they?"

Bremen, the Golden Egg of our journey lay just ahead. But Nienburg and Hess Oldendorf were along the way, so we stopped for a quiet walk around these quaint little towns, one a moated city, the other surrounded by a medieval stone wall.

The excitement grew as we approached the Free Hanseatic city of Bremen. When we pulled into a parking lot, Fargo leapt from the van. "Is this Bremen? Is this Bremen?" We followed him down the narrow lanes of Bottcherstrasse, through Am Market to the Rathaus, to the giant bronze statues and fountains in the square. "Yes Fargo, this is it!"