I am a bit poorly sick. Guess when it started … Correct! The first day of my holiday. My General Malaise, as we called it, went up and down – sometimes hour to hour – and ultimately turned into a sinus infection, for which I’m now taking antibiotics. It pleases me that the tablets are my old school colours of burgundy and gold. Even if I can feel UK people looking at me sideways, thinking “dear, you’ve been out of school for *cough* years, maybe it’s time to have a different go-to comparison?” However, I know that meanwhile my American peeps are all “hell yeah, alma mater, go bears!” and things like that. Only with us it would have been “go oak trees!” Until our headteacher went on a trip to Canada that is and came back all “go maple leafs!” and inexplicably changed the school emblem from a bunch of oak trees (you know, like the ones growing on the school field and all over the county) to a maple leaf (you know, like the ones she saw on holiday). I left soon afterwards. Partly as a sign of protest, partly because the people around me were all “you’ve done your A Levels, you have to go now, please”.

I variously suffered with aching, sensitive limbs, an inability to control my own temperature, throbbing headaches, non-productive coughing (all the more galling because all it did was jar my head) and so on. The flight back with my stuffed up, heavy head and the changing air pressure in the aeroplane cabin was awful. Dreadful pain in my head and face that I couldn’t remedy (even holding the cold packet of caesar salad dressing from the dinner tray – the mere thought of which made my stomach churn – against my eyebrow did nothing!) and whistles and rumbles were coming from cavities in my head that I didn’t even know existed, while my eyes were producing enough sleep for the whole plane.

When we finally stopped ascending and reached 40,000 feet things eased off and I was able to stop wondering when to expect my brain to start leaking out of my ears and whether there was a special button the cabin crew could press to change the air pressure and the feeling that my head was going to break in two. Our descent six or seven hours later was horrible too, but not to the extent that the ascent had been. I feel like I should have been presented with at least a kidney stone, if not a baby at the end of it for all that pain.

So here is my advice if you have a head cold and need to fly:

1. Don’t.

or

2. Ask the Captain if it’s possible for you join the flight once he’s reached cruising altitude and leave before he starts the descent at the end of the journey.

Taking some kick-ass drugs will help some as well, but according to my involuntary research, I’d say that those two options above are really the best.

Lily and Anya are up on their feet now and with varying degrees of skill and success can walk along holding onto someone’s fingers. I bought the girls a highly technical walker for Christmas – it has a phone! – and their Nannie and Grandpa bought them a traditional wooden walker for their birthday – it has no phone! – just like one I had when I was a toddler.

Once she’d worked out how to unwrap it, Lily was keen to try out the new walker and was soon toddling up and down the sitting room with increasing speed. Her sister then joined her, holding onto Sam’s fingers at first, before finding the other walker, and they paraded up and down the room, stopping only for a quick gleeful giggle with each other.

To continue the transport theme, the birthday present from Nanna and Grandad was a couple of trikes that can be adapted as the girls grow. They start off like pushchairs, with the parents pushing and the girls firmly encased and end up as trikes that the girls can pedal themselves. I foresee a whole lot of fun for them in the big garden of their new house. And since it will be a while before the girls reach the pedalling stage, their Dad has plenty of time to design and construct them a race course.

Böttcherstrasse is one of those tourist attractions that is quite possibly full of tourists wondering what it is they’re meant to be looking at exactly, but there are signs pointing you into the street and everyone else is going that way, so you follow them. That’s not to say there aren’t things to look at, it is an attractive street, full of odd architecture and a golden “Bringer of Light” draws you in.

The brickwork looks so inviting to climb, but there are notices everywhere warning you of the presence of CCTV, so I imagine climbing the historic walls is probably considered to be somewhat taboo.

The town musicians of course are fairly omnipresent in Bremen and the animals can be found by the fountain of the 7 Lazy Brothers outside a sweet shop. In a dark corner of the street, you’ll also find a plaque marking the point where a donkey’s leg bone was found in the cellar of a painter’s house during renovation works, thus proving that the donkey, dog, cat and rooster did in fact make it all the way to Bremen to become musicians.

We split the present-unwrapping either side of birthday tea, as Lily and Anya are not yet too well versed in how to unwrap presents and so take their sweet time grabbing at bits of paper and then being distracted because someone in the room happened to mention Jessie Cat from the Sing and Sign DVDs and oh-my-God-Jessie-cat-where-is-Jessie-cat-THERE-SHE-IS!

The girls are gradually learning words and Anya performs right on cue to the words “waving” and “clapping”. John tells me that “snack” and “storybook” are now recognised too, which will please no doubt please Suzy and Mum respectively. They’re also beginning to pick up on their names and might give you their attention when you call them. Or not. Whatever.

I gave the girls a wooden puzzle to share (I’d looked at a variety of toys and those popular hammer-the-shapes-into-the-right-holes games are fine when there’s one baby, but when there’s two, you’re basically just arming one of them) and a couple of pairs of shoes each. A local company called My Twinkle Toe Shoes sells the most beautiful soft leather and suede shoes and sandals, just right for the girls’ first steps.

We tried them on Anya before we left (Lily was too busy walking around) to see which size was needed and she was entirely perplexed by the weird things on her feet. They weren’t socks and they wouldn’t come off, they were pretty and felt funny … what on earth could they be?

Anya in particular has the most hysterical laugh that seems to come from deep within her and makes everyone around her laugh too. It comes from Lily too and to hear them both laugh is so much fun. Seeing Lily give the video camera a special cheesy grin when she clocks it pointed her way also cracks me up every time.

Bremen has its very own Grimm’s fairytale: The Town Musicians of Bremen. A statue of the four animals of the story, a rooster, cat, dog and donkey stands by the town hall and the front feet of the donkey are shiny from thousands of people touching them to make their wishes come true. Just like with the Wall Street bull in New York, all the tourists want to take their picture with the statue and simply politely wait while everyone takes their turn.

There’s another set of bronze statues in the town, one of which is evidently also hoped to bring luck …

As far as the town musicians of Bremen are concerned though, I still haven’t found out exactly what the story is. I bought a kid’s book of the story at the airport on our way home, but haven’t done more than flick through it. The four animals are uncared for in their homes and head for Bremen to make their living as musicians … and now I’ve got to find out what happened next … on their way to Bremen they come across a house in which are four robbers. The animals stand on each other’s backs, they decided to perform for the robbers to win food. Instead they unintentionally scare off the men and spend the evening in the house. The robbers later return and one re-enters the house to investigate. In the darkness the cat scratches his face, the dog bites his leg, the donkey kicks him and the rooster crows and chases him out of the house. The robber tells his cohorts that he was scratched by a witch, knifed by an ogre, clubbed by a giant and a judge screamed from the rooftop. The men abandon the house and the animals happily spend the rest of their days there.

I really must read that book.

Another figure by the Town Hall is Roland. We had actually first heard about Roland from Hubert the night before. In one of his new songs he invokes a whole bevy of saints, his favourite being Saint Rita, who makes the impossible possible. To add a little local colour at each of the concerts, he also mentions the local saint during this invocation. Roland isn’t a saint, but he is protector of the city and as long as he stands, it is said that Bremen will remain free and independent. He was paladin of the first Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne as well as a military hero. The 10-metre-high statue has stood in the market square since 1404 and Roland carries a sword of justice – which just so happens to be my favourite kind of sword.

We took a break from present-opening / box-thumping / wrapping paper-waving for afternoon tea, with finger sandwiches for the girls and bigger sandwiches for the adults. It’s good to see that Marmite is already on the menu and being enjoyed.

It’s quite something to watch these girls eat, or rather to have watched them develop from helpless little mites who just drank milk to girls who now sit at the table, carefully picking up their food in their perfected pincer grasp and helping themselves to water from their sippy cups – though we’re evidently still working on the idea of getting the spout at the bottom, rather than the top for best results. Not a scrap of food is wasted, as anything that is dropped into their bibs is found again with tiny searching fingers and popped straight into their mouth. Even if it is completely soaked from the water that has also collected in the bib. Clearly they’re going to be on board with the notion of dunking biscuits into their coffee.

Sam and John had commissioned two Waybuloo cakes for the girls – De Li in pink for Anya and Lau Lau in lilac for Lily. (I’ve seen a little of Waybuloo, but not enough to have known the characters names without Wikipedia’s help.) The girls were presented with their cakes, each with one candle burning and we all sang them Happy Birthday.

One cake was sponge and one was carrot cake, the desire for and divvying up of which nearly ended up in a brawl at the far end of the table between the twins’ Nanna and Auntie Vanessa. I stayed down the composed end of the table and ate my sponge cake.

It was while sorting through this particular set of photos that it dawned on me why I was finding it difficult to cut the set down any further: there’s two of them; I’m dealing with twice the number of birthday babies that most people have, double the smushy faces that most have to photograph. It feels as though Anya and Lily have always been here and having twins is just the normal thing. We always say that we can’t imagine how people get by with just one baby in the family – how do you share them for starters? There’s just more smushiness to go round with two of them.

Anya’s very cute and she will lull you into a false sense of security with eskimo kisses and cheesy grins.

Then her magic index finger will be all up in your business. And by your business, I mean your nose or your mouth.

Nanna’s nose is picked.

Cousin Darcie’s face is tweaked.

Nanna Joyce’s lip gets pulled.
Nobody is safe.

Because, dear Lily, I took lots of photos last weekend and I’m trying to choose a selection. Also, there are videos. And I’ve been catching up on Bremen blogging as well. And working.

And watching Youtube.

Set back from the Domhof, the cathedral square in Bremen, stands the Liebfrauenkirche, the Church of Our Lady, which is a good bit smaller than the cathedral. I have absolutely no memory of deciding to go in, or of crossing the threshold, only of exploring the inside of the building, so it’s quite possible that it also has some kind of vacuum set up at its door that the cathedral does not.

The stained glass windows date from the 11th century and cast pretty colours on to the stone floor. I wasn’t quite sure of the etiquette when it came to photographing inside the church or not, but noticed another photographer getting ready to take a shot of the large window above the altar. So I waited for him to take his photo and when he was neither struck by lightning, nor reprimanded by the volunteer by the door, I took a few photos too.

When we do these somewhat lackadaisical sightseeing jaunts, I take pictures imagining that a bit of research online once I’m home will uncover what it is we saw, not least because everyone else will have taken pretty much the same photos. And yes, there are a stack of photos out there of this pretty fountain outside the church, around which stand a number of cherubs various holding instruments or, it would seem, fish or the like, yet nobody has a name for the fountain. So we shall assume it is of no great significance. Either that, or it hiding state secrets in plain sight.

Similarly, I don’t know what those green doors are for, way up in the roof, but I think every building should have a set.

I took only hand luggage to Bremen in March, so I was trying to keep weight to a minimum. This meant that as in Saarbrücken, I took only the 24-70mm f2.8 lens for my camera, the lens that I would need for concert photography. While it’s just the thing for concerts, it’s not quite so good for sightseeing photography. 24mm isn’t all that wide compared to the 18mm of my kit lens, or the 10mm of my fisheye, so huge things usually end up being photographed in bits. So let’s just agree it was intentional.

On our second and last day in Bremen we took a taxi into the old town and walked into the market square, where we were faced with the impressive facade of the Town Hall. The front of the building is covered with all kinds of characters, including the Kaiser and seven electoral princes. When looking for reviews of the concert in the local press when I was back home, I read that the facade celebrates its 400th anniversary this summer. A little diagram in the paper showed the carvings representing vigilance, prudence, work, generosity and the separation of church and state, but all I’d managed to photograph was the whimsical end of the building, where they’d obviously run out of important words and turned instead to the carving of naked people larking about.

The east portal of the town hall is guarded by a couple of horsemen, given to the city in 1901.

I do like all the ornate rooftops you find in the older parts of German and Austrian towns. There should be more pointy bits and gilding in general. I took a couple of photos of this building having no clue as to what it was; I tend not to plan our flying visits in quite the detail that I do if we’re going somewhere for a proper holiday. There’s always Wikipedia waiting to help me out and so I know now that this is Schütting, the old merchants’ house. The writing above the entrance says “Buten un binnen, wagen un winnen”, which is Low German for “draußen und drinnen, wagen und gewinnen”, “outside and inside, risk and win”.

Bremen cathedral was of course one of the things that didn’t fit in my viewfinder in one piece – at least not without me walking to the other end of the square and that seemed like a lot of hard work. The two towers are 99m/325′ high and along with the whole building have been rebuilt and restored on many occasions in centuries past. Here at home you sometimes see evidence of the window tax of the 18th and 19th centuries in old buildings, where spaces that should be windows were bricked up instead to save money. Looking at the front of the cathedral, clearly all those insets in the brickwork are meant to be like that, but I couldn’t help smiling to myself at the idea that there was a whole lot of window tax avoidance going on.

We wandered all around the outside of the town hall and the Saturday market, where you could buy plants and food. We stopped for a bite to eat at a sausage stand, thus not exactly fulfilling the second of Sonja’s two instructions to us. We’d been instructed to have a pretzel for Noah – and one had been thrust upon us at the concert the night before – and a Nordsee Wikinger for her, which turns out to be like a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, but we didn’t know that at the time and so just assumed that since Sonja’s German, she was telling us to eat Bratwurst, so we did that and were presented with long thin sausages about three times the length of the bun in which they were served. While the sachet of curry ketchup cost an extra 20 cents, there was no additional charge for the expectant pigeons that gathered at our feet while we ate.