Bremerhaven

(trip to Bremen, con'td).








On Saturday, we went to Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven has a bit of a unique status in Germany. There are sixteen Bundesländer in Germany (states). Three of them are cities: Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. Bremen does not have a coast, so a long time ago, the ruler of Bremen bought the town of Bremerhaven from the surrounding territories. The two are not connected by land, but belong to one government. It takes about an hour on the train to get to Bremerhaven.

We went to Bremerhaven to visit the Deutsche Auswanderer Haus (German Emigration House). Bremerhaven is sort of the opposite of Ellis Island in New York. A huge amount of the immigrants to the United States from all over Europe went through Bremerhaven on their way to the New World. The museum was incredibly well done. It was designed to let you see what it was like to travel on board a steamer. Each exhibition room was redone to look like different parts of the boat. At the end, you could research any of your ancestors that may have immigrated to the United States. Unfortunately, I didn't know we were going to go to the museum beforehand so I didn't get to look anything up about our family.