July 15th- Fairy Tale Road, Part II

After a quick breakfast in the hotel and a stop at the ATM machine, we were on the Fairy Tale Road again. Like Hansel and Gretel, we pressed on into the unknown leaving nothing but a trail of breadcrumbs (and Pringles) behind us.

Our first stop this morning was at Hessisch Lichtenau, which was listed in the Fairy Tale Road brochure as “the gateway to Snow Fairy country.” It would probably have helped if we knew who the Snow Fairies were. Snow Fairy Park is supposed to have “Life size fairy tale figures.” We didn’t know what to expect or where to find it, but we did find an interesting little park that may have been the right place. In addition to having some interesting things for the girls to run around on, there was indeed a life size statue of a woman shaking a large pillow out of a window. There were even stone feathers on the ground in front of her. In addition to that, there were other objects that were on display in some interesting looking wooden pillars. Of the ten objects, we were certain that we recognized Cinderella’s slipper, Rumplestiltskin’s straw and spun gold, the golden ball from the Princess and the Frog (which we only learned about in the stories that we read yesterday), and Snow White’s apple. We had some guesses about the others. And then there were the feathers…

The Strong Museum in Rochester says that there are several stories that practically every American knows well enough to tell. (Are there 6? 7? 10? We’ll have to check on the number when we get back.) Among these are The Three Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and several others. Mother Holle is not on this list. She apparently is much better known in Germany. After leaving this park, we read her story in the Grimm collection that we bought yesterday as we drove on to the next stop. During the story, a girl falls down a well, and in a magical land meets a woman who calls herself, “Mother Holle.” The girl begins working for Mother Holle, and among her duties was shaking her bedding out of the window. The feathers that fell from her bedding became the snow the falls here in our world. That explained both the statue that we saw in the park and the feathers that were encased in the wooden monuments.

The next stop was the city of Kassel. We are really not at all happy with the way the Fairy Tale Road itself is marked, though yesterday we really stopped trying to follow the official route at all. We are also not happy with the way that major stops on it do not have signs. The city of Kassel is pretty good sized, and we had no idea where to find the Brüder Grimm Museum that was supposed to be in town. We followed signs to the middle of the town, and found a place to park. We were only a few blocks from the Rathaus where the visitor’s information center was. Coincidentally, that was only a few blocks from the museum we were looking for. We got lucky this time.

The museum was nice, but they were apparently getting ready for the opening of a new exhibit there. Both the people in the visitor’s center and the people at the museum desk told us that only a small part of it was open. Again, like the Grimm House in Steinau yesterday, all of the exhibits were in German, but we were still able to enjoy them. We saw more portraits and illustrations by Ludwig Emil Grimm, and lots of illustrations of stories from the many different editions of the stories that there have been. The new exhibit seems to be about how the Grimm stories have been used in education, and we saw a little bit of it. The museum was nice, but we preferred the one in Steinau.

We stopped at a Woolworths before leaving Kassel, and the girls bought some sandals and some sunglasses. We found our way out of Kassel, and went to Hofgeismar, which is a meaningless little town as far as our Fairy Tale Road goes, but we were getting hungry and it was early afternoon. We found a bratwurst stand and ate a few while standing on the sidewalk. We used the stop for some general shopping too. We got some snacks at the grocery store. We bought a box from the Deutsche Post office to pack with some things to ship home, and Julie bought a few shirts for Scott from a sidewalk sale where they only cost less than three Euros each.

We pushed on to Trendelburg, where the town’s castle has a large, reddish colored tower that is now a hotel and restaurant. They claim it to be the tower that Rapunzel was kept in. We haven’t seen any of the documentation for that claim. There probably is none. It’s probably just a way to get the tourism dollars from the Fairy Tale Road program, but we’re not here to criticize. We want to believe. So we took some pictures, and gathered some postcards. Really, we were only disappointed in two ways. First, we weren’t allowed to climb the tower to get to see the view from the top. Second, we called, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” and no one answered. We did read “Rapunzel” from our book as we continued down the road, though.

We’ve been getting the hang of following the road signs and using the map, but we were pretty sure that we left Trendelburg on the wrong road when we passed a herd of authentic German camels. There may have been ten or so, including the babies, grazing in a field. Maybe they were Repunzel’s camels, we don’t know. (The story says that after she escaped from the tower, she went to live in the desert, so…)

On the road, north of Trendelburg, Anna finally got a chance to practice her fairy catching technique. Emma was being bothered by a fly in the back seat. Anastasia took out the book that she has been keeping her journal in, laid it open on her lap, and sat very still. This technique is the very one that Lady Cottington used to catch her pressed fairies in England. When the fly landed on the book, Anna slammed it shut and pressed her first “fairy.” Dad was very proud of her. However, the dead fly seemed to freak Emma out even more than the live one did, so Dad had to put the book away in the glove compartment. (We tore the page with the fly on it out and threw it out later, but not before we photographed it as a trophy.)

The next stop that we had may have been the best one, but we hadn’t originally planned to stop there. Bodenwerder is the historical home of the man who became known to the world as Baron Münchhausen. The lies that he told about his life became the type of legends that Americans might call “tall tales.” For example, he claimed to ride to the moon on a cannonball. We saw his statue riding that very cannonball, and we wanted to stop for a picture. While we were there, we saw the only logical thing to put in the Baron’s hometown-- A bobsled run! The girls had to ride (twice) and reported it to be even better than the one the rode yesterday. It had two tunnels along the way, and lots of smaller rides and playthings in and around the track. The girls particularly liked a large barrel that you could run in like a human hamster-wheel, though Emma slipped in it and got a bit of a brush burn on her arm.

If anyone is reading this blog to find information about the Fairy Tale Road and is going to be traveling with children, plan some time in Bodenwerder, with the baron. In addition to this mini-theme park centered around the bobsled run there is the Münchhausen Museum across the street. We were sorry that we arrived too late to see the inside of the museum because the gardens and surroundings were very charming. Oddly, there are not enough attractions for children along this Fairy Tale Road, but this stop is cute and fun.

Our last stop on the Fairy Tale Road was the town of Hameln (in English, Hamlin), famous for its Pied Piper. The girls said they didn’t know his story and Dad told it as best as he could remember it as we approached the town. We were hoping to see the “Figure Play”, where the story is retold on the side of the Rathaus with the clockwork glockenspiel. We found the old part of the town and ate a dinner at a Subway. Then followed a path of white mice on the sidewalk, because we figured that they would lead us to the clock. They actually led us on meandering tour through the old part of town. It is a very nice looking town, with many tall half-timbered houses. One that we passed had writing on it (in Spanish, so Scott could read it) that said that it was built the same year that Columbus went to America and the Spanish conquered the Canary Islands. It was not the oldest building in town, to be sure. Anyway, when the path of mice finally circled us back to the place where the glockenspiel is, we found out that we missed the last show. It only runs three times a day, and the last one was at 5:35. We only arrived in Hameln at about 6:00.

And so ended our journey up the Fairy Tale Road. The last official stop is Bremen, where there is a statue of the four animals that wanted to become the Bremen-Town Musicians. However, that’s further west then we want to be tomorrow, and after all, if you read the story, the Bremen-Town Musicians never actually get to Bremen. So we leave them behind as we head to other adventures elsewhere. The Fairy Tale Road has not been much different then we expected. Many of the stops were skipped simply because they had little to do with any fairy tales. We give “thumbs-down” to the signs for the road and the signs to most of its attractions. Over all, it was a lot of time in the car with the interesting sights being far between and sometimes hard to find. Since that’s what we expected, it wasn’t much of a disappointment for the adults. We made it into a scavanger hunt. The kids had other images in their minds to start with, so ironically, they may have been less satisfied with their trip with the Grimms than the adults were.

We also did some shopping in Hameln. Julie needed some clothes, because as SpongeBob says, “I ripped my pants!” She bought new pants and SpongeBob shirt (though that may ultimately become Anna’s). Anna bought a blue top and some scarves. Emma couldn’t be left out, so she got a shirt and some shorts too.

We found a little hotel over a pizza restaurant outside of Hannover, and have stopped there for the night. You can tell we’re getting into Northern Germany now, because when Julie signed in, the clerk asked if she was Danish. We suppose he thought that Cheektøväga is a place in Denmark.