Ratskellar (no, not rats in the cellar, but the town hall brewery!)

This is us in a private booth where persons who had no other privacy could make trade agreements with secrecy. However in order to close the doors on either side of the table you must be more than three persons, so that one may act as a witness for any neferious deeds. This is still the law today.

Our tour of Bremen began with a trip through their 600 year old Ratskellar or wine cellar and is located directly beneath city hall or Rathaus. I must warn you reader that I enjoyed this tour immensely and consequently this entry is extremely detailed... We started off with the restaurant portion, which is filled to the brim with tables, but also four giant barrels of wine, covered in decoration. Each barrel had a different theme, lions, monkeys, dolphins and dragons, but the artists had never seen any of these things so they all looked remarkably similar, still gorgeous. There is no longer wine in any of the barrels as it would leak out due to the barrels age, but to just imagine them full...wow.

We then toured the back of the restaurant or where in “former times (my favorite German saying)” the wine bottling would take place. This Ratskellar would obtain wine from all over the region and it would all arrive in barrels. This (what seems to me) small operation would then bottle and label everything by hand. As we walked along there were many reminders of the superstitions people had regarding the prosperity of grapes for the year. As you can see we have Father Rhine (Father Rhine, the river married Mother Mosel, the region of grapes) and also Bacchus or Dionysus watching over all aspects of production.



The tour guide took a deep breath after our tour of the former bottling section and invited us past huge wooden doors that used to be the opening doors of the wine cellar saying it was a special place. Directly after the doors was a deep tunnel awash with little floor lights flickering. As the tunnel widened and I waited for my eyes to adjust I noted the pervasive smell of wine filling the air. I finally saw what so special for about 500 feet all you could see in the gloom was wine barrels. At the end of the tunnel was a blue light and a large ornately decorated cell. This was the Treasure Room where they keep all the most precious bottles of wine. Even the staff are not allowed to open it without the Master of Wine present. There is a bottle of wine in there from the 1700s (a small bottle of wine) that is 1,500 Euros to purchase. It was gorgeous and right in front of this spectacular site they opened a lovely bottle of sekts for us (which to all of us is German champagne for lack of a better word). Hey it was only 10 ‘o clock, but it was a gift, right, so you can’t say no...hmmm.

As we headed back to the front with the restaurant I thought the tour was over and began to thank our guide for an entertaining visit when she stopped and adopted a somber expression. She said, “as you enter here, feel free to not speak and simply enjoy the atmosphere.” She unlocked a gate inset in the wall that I had walked right past not noticing. Inside it was completely dark with only candles set every 4 feet at about shoulder level. Each candle sat on top of a barrel of wine and now I had to rethink my idea of smell of wine. This room was old, far older than the treasure room. The air felt heavy with wine, like you could cut it. I imagine if you stayed down there long enough you would be light headed very soon. As the tour guide spoke about the barrels of wine in the Apostle Room (which is what they called the cellar). There were 12 barrels of wine and each had an apostle’s name engraved on the front. Only one barrel had ever been tapped and that is the 1,500 bottle that I mentioned earlier. That barrel is named Judas. I know...amazing isn’t it? The next room had three barrels of wine in it (the Rose Cellar) and we shared another bottle of wine with accompanying chocolate. One of the barrels in this room was from 4 years after the 30 years war. There is no way to know if the grapes survived that war to be barreled, but it was an interesting thought that this was a survivor of that tumultuous time. It was incredible. I must say that this Ratskellar has their work cut out for them because they are an official UNESCO world heritage site, so they are not able to update their operation at all. All the old wine that they have they cannot tap due to this designation, but being a world heritage site is relatively new so perhaps it will all work out in the end. I must say that I was suitably impressed and very happy to recommend this tour to many others. I realize our tour was more in depth than probably a layman’s tour, but still it would be worth it :)


After our tour we sampled a little lunch and then met back at the statue of Roland (the city of Bremen’s national symbol) with our guide Eva for the tour of the city of Bremen. We heard the story of the animals that were let go from their farms because of old age, blindness and who found each other on the way to Bremen and made their own home together. We all touched the statue for good luck :) We explored the centuries old Rathouse or town hall and toured the Schnoor Strasse, where we found the smallest hotel, one room that they call the wedding suite (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). We visited the cathedral of Bremen that was just gorgeous with such decorations that I thought it was all made of marble. Those artisans were clever and simply painted wood to resemble marble (tricky). We also met the oldest church mouse in existence. Can you find him in the picture? The artisans thought it would protect the church from rats to have a mouse within the architecture.

Our last day in Bremen finished with a wonderful meal at the Ratskellar with Michael our coord for Bremen and Herr Pfieffer the Bremen Rotary president. A great meal, good company and good night’s sleep was all that one could ask for our last full day together.