Quick! Off to Bremen!

Our luggage is here! It had arrived about 30-minutes before we went down for breakfast and the desk clerk was kind enough to not call us, knowing we were probably asleep.


Jet lagged breakfasts are not the best – the kids were loud and not really seeming all that hungry. Megan went cuckoo00 for cocoa puffs and Sophia inhaled the yogurt.

Now the reality of 4 oversized bags, 4 carry-ons and 2 children sinks in. How do we do this? Courtesy of the hotel, we were able to get a ride back to the airport where we could take the train to Bremen. Once at the airport, we managed to make it all fit on a luggage cart and headed down to level -1 for the trains.


The cashier indicated I should get on the train that leaves in 5 minutes. To Dan’s displeasure (he who is managing the luggage), I acquiesced. We made it (barely) and settled in for the ride to Brussels-Midi. At Midi, we were able to purchase tickets to Bremen but it was about 20 Euro more since we didn't pre-book. The train left shortly and we were off and running again to find the platform. We found a porter, who didn’t speak English or German, but with the ticket and lots of gesturing, we were able to communicate that we didn’t know what we were doing or where to go. He kindly led us in the right direction, and when the train arrived, helped us to find the right car. The path was a little circular – we basically went straight back the way we came, but there was no stop at the airport.

We changed trains in Cologne (Köln) and were the annoyance of the day to the impatient passengers trying to board while we were trying to exit with bags almost as wide as the door openings. Loaded up another luggage cart (having 50 cent and 1 Euro coins on hand is required to ‘rent’ the carts; you get them back when you return the cart to its station) and were grateful that our next train didn't require a massive platform change.

Got some food for the girls (Megan loved the mini brötchen) and sandwiches and coffee for Dan and myself. Had just enough time to fumble through some poor attempts at phone calls to the shipping agent in Bremerhaven and our hotel in Bremen – these two brief calls took me probably 30-minutes to make to figure out how to dial out. Success, finally. By the time I went back to the platform, it was time to load up into the next train.


In Bremen, we were able to load up a luggage cart, exit the train station and walk just under 1-block to our hotel, InterCityHotel Bremen. I'm sure to the amusment of all, we took the overloaded luggage cart straight up to the room and left it for the night. This hotel doesn’t have connecting rooms – so we had a double bed and a baby bed (portable crib). The hotel was kind enough to leave 3 bed covers on the bed – which we folded one over and had Megan sleep on the floor. We fumbled through a quick dinner of pizza and salad in town with broken German. The other German family in the bistro couldn’t help but stare at us – we did our best to blend in and speak German but it’s slow to come back for me. All is good so far - we're on the path to retrieving the RV on schedule.