Not Lost in Bremen
2023
To bid farewell to my two years in Bremen, I led a guided tour in the city's downtown area, where tourists and I experienced the city's landmarks in our own ways. For example, we learned about the functions of the city's more than 3765 trash cans, studied how to time travel with shopping carts, crossed a bridge with eyes closed, and threw coins into the wishing suitcase on the sidewalk with a decent pool of rain in it.
Each tourist was given a brochure - a guide to life in general. (The ones who lingered till the end of the tour got a stamp on the last page.)
To accompany the tour, I made a series of very useful souvenirs for the tourists, including a calendar, a planner and a coloring book, which the tourists were welcome to buy at the end of the tour, which nobody did, partly because it was raining, which the Bremers are not unfamiliar with at all.
At last but not least, I created a Mensa Menu in English and German boasting lunch offers from my school's cafeteria, for people who crave authentic German food.
For those who are interested in why I wanted to make this tour:
Out of curiosity for Germany and Europe in general, plus a fire in my body that that yells “I want to do art full time”, I quit my job in Shanghai and arrived in Bremen in the fall of 2021 for a second master's degree. When I saw the red and white logo of HfK during the application process, I already had a feeling that I would end up here. Not surprisingly, my undergrad school Dickinson College has an exchange program with the University of Bremen. The red chairs on the lawn at Uni Bremen are symbols of their friendship.
The weather in Bremen is the origin of everything. If you think winter is from October to April, you are too naïve. In July, people also wear down jackets. The fashion in Bremen is closely connected to the weather. In Bremen, the one and only fashion is rain jackets, and people don’t use umbrellas because the rain simply smashes into your face and tastes pretty good.
In Bremen, everybody wears black, and not even white. When I first arrived, I once wore an orange hat in the city center on Obernstraße, and two women came up to me, pointed at my hat and laughed themselves away. After living here for over a year, I also started to wear black, so that I don’t get noticed on the street and can thus successfully blend into the rest of Bremen. The color black prevails in the area near the central train station, where there are all kinds of blackness – the clothes, the birds, the sky, the trash, and the haste of the people.
The people here are as gloomy as the weather. It is a custom in Bremen to smoke inside the waiting area of the tram and bus stops. I guess the Bremers have a lot of things to worry about in their lives. You can tell from the way the cigarette butts lie on the ground under the trash cans. Actually, a lot of the trash cans, among the supposedly more than 3765 of them, have a cigarette-shaped tube built into them, so that the smokers and the trash can be one.
Now that I understand how the weather shapes the people, I can totally justify the bureaucracy I have experienced. Here people love paperwork and have highly qualified patience because life doesn’t need to go on. For example, the school needs my original bachelor graduation certificate to issue me the Immatrikulationsbescheinigung, which I need to open a bank account and to register my address (Anmeldung). It took me 4 months to get my appointment for Anmeldung. By that time, I was already about to move to another apartment. Without the Anmeldungsformular, you cannot apply for a library card from the school or renew your visa. But I heard in other cities in Germany it’s even slower. So bravo, Bremen!
Finding an apartment brought me the most anxiety, if I count the anxieties I’ve had in my life. Among the 36 people (or bots) on WG-Gesucht that I contacted, 8 replied and 3 offered to meet. I guess the landlords are the most prestigious people in Bremen because they get to select who can give them money. Since I wanted to end my anxiety as soon as possible, in my first semester I chose to live in a private student apartment called FIZZ, whose rent doubles that of the rooms elsewhere. Three months after moving out, when I told them that I hadn’t received my deposit, they said they had transferred the money at the beginning of June and told me to check with my bank. I told them that I wanted to see a transfer record from them. And they said the person in charge of my case was on vacation, which I believe a lot of Germans enjoy. After several rounds of emails, they sent my deposit of 1200 Euro. If I hadn’t bombarded them with emails, I am not sure if they would ever do the transfer.
While living at FIZZ, I applied to Studentenwohnheim, the official student apartments of Bremen. After 5 months, I got assigned to my current room in Luisental, just one hour from my school. Compared to the trauma of finding apartments, the commute is really not a problem. After all, my time is worthless. I can also read on the trams and buses, or simply look at the city and its people through the dotted advertisements on the windows.
The tram is the ultimate Bremer way of transportation. At Bremen Airport, there is a sign with big fat red letters that reads “Bremen - City of Trams”. The trams run at a similar speed to that of the buses, and you press buttons to get on and off. Sometimes people hold the doors for the ones who are running towards the tram. But if you are not so lucky, the buttons won’t work. And you just have to wait for the next one with anger directed at yourself, if the next one actually comes. I have to say that while I'm fine with living one hour from school, sometimes the trams do have technical difficulties in the middle of the journey, and I had to get off and walk in the rain for another 45 minutes, which is totally normal for the Bremers who are hard-core both physically and mentally.
Life here is practical in every way. The houses and buildings are rectangular and look similarly gray. The word “fancy” doesn’t exist. In supermarkets, people shop according to handwritten shopping lists. On Sundays, all the supermarkets are closed, so Saturday became a shopping day for me, as if I would eat a lot in one day. By the way, the Döner places are usually open on Sundays. So does the flea market, where I bought things that I never used, including three wooden panels of Christian songs, and a black T-shirt saying “Adidogs”.
This sums up my everyday life in Bremen. It rains a lot; it doesn’t boast many sources of excitement; there are not a lot of people, let alone the friendly ones. But it’s life in its true form – a life whose meaning can manifest only if I grant it one. And that’s how I came up with the idea of my Masterarbeit – to find romance, or deliberate non-purpose in Bremen through guided tour, where I introduce places of interest according to my observations, and at the same time connect with the people who I am destined to meet and yet would never see again once I leave. Preparing for the tour also gives me a chance to learn more about the city and experience it with an open heart, although at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if I love or hate it here. I need to continue living and find peace with the surroundings and myself wherever I go.
Out of curiosity for Germany and Europe in general, plus a fire in my body that that yells “I want to do art full time”, I quit my job in Shanghai and arrived in Bremen in the fall of 2021 for a second master's degree. When I saw the red and white logo of HfK during the application process, I already had a feeling that I would end up here. Not surprisingly, my undergrad school Dickinson College has an exchange program with the University of Bremen. The red chairs on the lawn at Uni Bremen are symbols of their friendship.
The weather in Bremen is the origin of everything. If you think winter is from October to April, you are too naïve. In July, people also wear down jackets. The fashion in Bremen is closely connected to the weather. In Bremen, the one and only fashion is rain jackets, and people don’t use umbrellas because the rain simply smashes into your face and tastes pretty good.
In Bremen, everybody wears black, and not even white. When I first arrived, I once wore an orange hat in the city center on Obernstraße, and two women came up to me, pointed at my hat and laughed themselves away. After living here for over a year, I also started to wear black, so that I don’t get noticed on the street and can thus successfully blend into the rest of Bremen. The color black prevails in the area near the central train station, where there are all kinds of blackness – the clothes, the birds, the sky, the trash, and the haste of the people.
The people here are as gloomy as the weather. It is a custom in Bremen to smoke inside the waiting area of the tram and bus stops. I guess the Bremers have a lot of things to worry about in their lives. You can tell from the way the cigarette butts lie on the ground under the trash cans. Actually, a lot of the trash cans, among the supposedly more than 3765 of them, have a cigarette-shaped tube built into them, so that the smokers and the trash can be one.
Now that I understand how the weather shapes the people, I can totally justify the bureaucracy I have experienced. Here people love paperwork and have highly qualified patience because life doesn’t need to go on. For example, the school needs my original bachelor graduation certificate to issue me the Immatrikulationsbescheinigung, which I need to open a bank account and to register my address (Anmeldung). It took me 4 months to get my appointment for Anmeldung. By that time, I was already about to move to another apartment. Without the Anmeldungsformular, you cannot apply for a library card from the school or renew your visa. But I heard in other cities in Germany it’s even slower. So bravo, Bremen!
Finding an apartment brought me the most anxiety, if I count the anxieties I’ve had in my life. Among the 36 people (or bots) on WG-Gesucht that I contacted, 8 replied and 3 offered to meet. I guess the landlords are the most prestigious people in Bremen because they get to select who can give them money. Since I wanted to end my anxiety as soon as possible, in my first semester I chose to live in a private student apartment called FIZZ, whose rent doubles that of the rooms elsewhere. Three months after moving out, when I told them that I hadn’t received my deposit, they said they had transferred the money at the beginning of June and told me to check with my bank. I told them that I wanted to see a transfer record from them. And they said the person in charge of my case was on vacation, which I believe a lot of Germans enjoy. After several rounds of emails, they sent my deposit of 1200 Euro. If I hadn’t bombarded them with emails, I am not sure if they would ever do the transfer.
While living at FIZZ, I applied to Studentenwohnheim, the official student apartments of Bremen. After 5 months, I got assigned to my current room in Luisental, just one hour from my school. Compared to the trauma of finding apartments, the commute is really not a problem. After all, my time is worthless. I can also read on the trams and buses, or simply look at the city and its people through the dotted advertisements on the windows.
The tram is the ultimate Bremer way of transportation. At Bremen Airport, there is a sign with big fat red letters that reads “Bremen - City of Trams”. The trams run at a similar speed to that of the buses, and you press buttons to get on and off. Sometimes people hold the doors for the ones who are running towards the tram. But if you are not so lucky, the buttons won’t work. And you just have to wait for the next one with anger directed at yourself, if the next one actually comes. I have to say that while I'm fine with living one hour from school, sometimes the trams do have technical difficulties in the middle of the journey, and I had to get off and walk in the rain for another 45 minutes, which is totally normal for the Bremers who are hard-core both physically and mentally.
Life here is practical in every way. The houses and buildings are rectangular and look similarly gray. The word “fancy” doesn’t exist. In supermarkets, people shop according to handwritten shopping lists. On Sundays, all the supermarkets are closed, so Saturday became a shopping day for me, as if I would eat a lot in one day. By the way, the Döner places are usually open on Sundays. So does the flea market, where I bought things that I never used, including three wooden panels of Christian songs, and a black T-shirt saying “Adidogs”.
This sums up my everyday life in Bremen. It rains a lot; it doesn’t boast many sources of excitement; there are not a lot of people, let alone the friendly ones. But it’s life in its true form – a life whose meaning can manifest only if I grant it one. And that’s how I came up with the idea of my Masterarbeit – to find romance, or deliberate non-purpose in Bremen through guided tour, where I introduce places of interest according to my observations, and at the same time connect with the people who I am destined to meet and yet would never see again once I leave. Preparing for the tour also gives me a chance to learn more about the city and experience it with an open heart, although at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if I love or hate it here. I need to continue living and find peace with the surroundings and myself wherever I go.