Bremerhaven

Tuesday A.K. decided he wanted to go to the Emigration Museum in Bremerhaven. Smooth train ride up and bus to the waterfront. The souvenir I'd really like to take back with me is the German rail system.

German Emigration Museum

I'd seen a German travel magazine spread on the modern buildings on the waterfront with the caption "a new Dubai." We took this glass walkway over the street and ship basin from a parking house/shopping center through the lobby of the climate house to the waterfront.

Glass walkway across to the waterfront and Klimahaus 

The boys were disappointed with the museum, but I liked it. We got by-now-trite pseudo-identities to follow. The woman I followed through the emigration section immigrated to New Orleans and up the Mississippi River by boat to the Red River to finally settle in Nacogdoches, Texas. The woman I followed through the immigration section immigrated from Turkey to Germany in the 70s. I thought they did a good job linking emigration with the ups and downs of German politics, unemployment, food supply, and wages. A.K. got Carl Laemmle of Laemmle theaters; he immigrated to Chicago in 1884 and sponsored 300 Jews escaping the Nazis before he died in Los Angeles in 1939.

 

We took a boat trip around the harbor. Huge ships and vast parking lots full of new cars waiting to be shipped out. We also got to see them building one of the massive new wind energy platforms. They are supposed to be 7 stories high and convert the output from the offshore windmills to high voltage electricity to send ashore through huge cables. North Sea wind energy is slated to  partially compensate for nuclear energy when they shut the nuclear plants down. Actually hot in the sun, so I was thankful for the wind generated by the boat moving through the water on an otherwise windless day.

Tour boat approaching swing bridge, Bremerhaven ship harbor 

Wind Energy Platform under construction

If Rich had been with us, we would have spent much more time wandering up and down the docks looking at old boats.

Wooden Boats

German Uboot 

No pretty doors that day, but I did find these round doilies someone had crocheted to fit the portholes.

Porthole Doilies