2 Best Sights in The Fairy-Tale Road, Germany

On central Osterstrasse you'll see several examples of Weser Renaissance architecture, including the Rattenfängerhaus (Rat-Catcher's House) and the Hochzeitshaus, a beautiful 17th-century sandstone building now used for city offices. From mid-May to mid-September the Hochzeitshaus terrace is the scene of two free open-air events commemorating the Pied Piper legend. From May to September, local actors and children present a half-hour reenactment each Sunday at noon, and there is also a 40-minute musical, Rats, each Wednesday at 4:30 during the same months. The carillon of the Hochzeitshaus plays tunes every day at 9:35 and 11:35, and mechanical figures enact the piper story on the west gable of the building at 1:05, 3:35, and 5:35.

Don't leave Bremen's Altstadt without strolling down this street that was once lined by coopers (barrel makers). Between 1924 and 1931 the houses were torn down and reconstructed in a style at once historically sensitive and modern by the Bremen coffee millionaire Ludwig Roselius. (He was the inventor of decaffeinated coffee and held the patent for decades.) Many of the restored houses are used as galleries for local artists. At one end are two separate museums housed in the 17th-century Ludwig Roselius-Haus, one which showcases late-medieval art and a silver treasury, and a unique collection of German and Dutch art; these pieces contrast with the paintings of Paula Modersohn-Becker, a noted early expressionist of the Worpswede art colony whose work is housed in the same building. Notice also the arch of Meissen porcelain bells at the rooftop. Except when freezing weather makes them dangerously brittle, the bells chime daily on the hour from noon to 6 from May to December (only at noon, 3, and 6 from January to April).