Once Upon a Time…
Richard and Lisa’s Sabbatical Journey
To rediscover and renew “What makes your heart sing?”
August 18th – November 8th, 2008
Part 1 – Frankfurt to Bremen
August 18 to August 26, 2008
We’ve started this journey following the paths, places, people and stories of the Brothers’ Grimm starting in Frankfurt, Germany and now in Bremen. The Brothers were inspired to collect and tell the stories that have charmed children of all ages all over the world, and we can easily see how the spell has been cast.
Starting in Hanau where the brothers were born in the 1780’s, we walked ourselves silly finding the highlights and visiting the Philipsruhe Palace with an exhibit of the Brothers and on paper theatres. While eating lunch overlooking the palace and river, we discussed the following belief of the Brothers’ Grimm: “really great creations of human culture are not created by individual geniuses, but unconsciously created by the ‘the people’ (as in the German language, sagas and fairytales). What do you think?
We spent two magically days at Dornroeschen’s Schloss, known as the castle in Sababurg that inspired the story of Sleeping Beauty. There really wasn’t much to do here, but rest and re-read Grimm fairy tales.
Then on to Hameln, to see if we could find the children that the Pied Piper lured away…
We’re pretty sure we’re seeing childlike people all around, but the only lost ones are us. That leads in to traveling by train…
Traveling by train can be very efficient and pleasant, in the German sense of order and control (as one young man told us, “we didn’t want to join the European Union, we wanted to control it.”) We haven’t quite mastered the trains as a fine art yet, more like finger-painting. We’ve missed stops (how we ended in Mannheim neither of us know), gone the wrong direction, found out that not everybody speaks English but looking pitiful helps, and been blessed to learn that we can take it all in stride. Thank goodness we have ten weeks, enough time that being a little lost doesn’t really matter all that much.
Bremen has been a delightful town, with historic squares, passages, storytellers and musicians. We even caught glimpses of the joyfulness of the “Bremer Town Musicians.”
Next is Berlin, the end of the Brothers’ Grimm travels and on to discovering stories that brought joy and hope to the children during World War II.
