Serving Justice in Snowy Bremerhaven

I’m still working on a round-up of responses to the Masters of the Universe trailer and toy reveals, for in the past few days, my social media feeds were half footage of the terrible violence committed by ICE thugs in Minnesota (and for resources how to support the people of Minnesota, check out this excellent post by excellent author and Minnesota resident Naomi Kritzer) and half people geeking out about Masters of the Universe. Later, we also got excerpts from the Epstein files, which were just sickening.

But for now, here is a roadtrip report of a work-related trip to Bremerhaven I took last Monday:

In the past few days, we’ve had yet more snow. It’s not as bad as the last time, but we’ve still had more snow this year than we’ve had in the past five years or so. And unlike the last time, I can’t just sit at home and chill, because I had to go out – twice.

Last Friday, a week of frosty but sunny weather ended with the sudden appearance of freezing rain, which caused lots of accidents. And of course, I had an appointment on Friday afternoon in the village Lindern, at the heart of the very region most badly hit by the freezing rain. My original plans were setting out in the morning and making a day trip out of it, but in the end I only drove to Lindern and back home, which still was a 85 kilometer drive across freezing roads and Autobahnen partly blocked by trucks who had slid onto the shoulder and were stuck until heavy tow trucks could pull them out. I saw a van that was lying on its side and a truck which had somehow ended up on the shoulder facing in the wrong direction. Though thankfully I made it to Lindern and back again one piece.

The weekend was quiet, though it started to snow on Saturday afternoon, just a little bit of dusting on the ground. By Sunday morning, there was a lot more snow and I mostly stayed indoors, though I did take a photo of Skeletor riding Panthor across the frozen wasteland of my terrace.

Sometime in the early hours of Monday morning, it started to snow again. And this time, the snow just kept going all day.

A Call on a Snowy Morning

I got up at around seven, looked out of door and thought, “If I shovel the driveway now, it will only look the same two hours later, so I’ll do it around ten or eleven AM.” So I had a Greek yoghurt and made myself a pot of tea and retreated to my office for some work and writing.

At just before eight AM, when I had just settled in, my phone rang. The Bremerhaven district court urgently needed an interpeter for later that day. Could I do it?

I said “yes”, because court interpretation is good money, and quietly cursed. Because Bremerhaven is 80 kilometers away, it was still snowing and progress on the roads would be slow. Normally, it takes about an hour to get there, but with the snow and partly uncleared roads, it would be more like two hours. Plus, I needed to shower and wash my hair before setting out and my driveway still wasn’t cleared. So time was getting tight.

Regarding the driveway, I called up my neighbour Vladimir, explained the situation and asked him if he could be so kind to clear the driveway. He did it, too, though by the time I came home, there was yet more snow.

Then I showered and washed my hair, which I normally do in the evening, unless I know I have an appointment in the morning, got my things together and set out.

Four Ways to Bremerhaven

Now there are three routes to get to Bremerhaven. The first goes via Autobahn A1 to intersection Bremer Kreuz and then via Autobahn A27 to Bremerhaven. It’s the fastest and best route. However, it also means that I would have to fight my way through the neverending traffic jam before the construction zone at the bridge across the river Weser. Even under good conditions, that traffic jam adds half an hour of travel time. And the conditions weren’t good.

The second route is to use the Bundestraße B75, an elevated road that cuts through Bremen and connects the Autobahnen A28 and A27. This is the shortest route, but it’s always congested with commuters even under normal conditions, so I avoid the B75 as much as possible.

The third route and the one I took runs through the Weser marshlands along the west side of the river via two-lane roads. However, Bremerhaven is on the eastern side of the river, so you cross the river Weser via the Wesertunnel at Stotel, which is the only crossing north of Bremen that is not a ferry.  The Wesertunnel has been in planning hell for decades, until it finally opened for traffic in 2004. It has been a godsent for the entire region, since it’s a much faster connection between the busy harbours of Bremerhaven and Nordenham as well as the various harbours in the towns in the Weser marshlands.

The Wesertunnel route is longer than the other two – 95 kilometers rather than 80 – but it normally doesn’t have traffic jams. There also are several detours you can take to avoid a traffic jam, shoould there be one, or if there problem with the folding bridge across the river Hunter at Berne (and the various bridges across the river Hunte are very accident prone, since ships keep ploughing into them). The only insurmountable problem is if the Wesertunnel is closed, which is sometimes is for accidents and also when the supervisory personnel is on strike – and we are currently plagued by public sector strikes. There are still the river ferries, of course, but I’m terrified of ferries.

There is a fourth way to get to Bremerhaven and that’s taking the train. The closest train station for me, Kirchweyhe, has a direct connection to Bremerhaven, though the court house is not near the central station (and Bremerhaven central station isn’t near anything of interest), so I’d have to take a city bus in Bremerhaven. I’ve done this before and this is probably what I would have done yesterday, except that the direct train connection between Kirchweyhe and Bremerhaven currently doesn’t run, because of some kind of bridge or track damage, so I would have to go into Bremen and take the train. What is more, city busses and trams tend to fail at the slightest hint of snow, so there was no guarantee I would be able to even get a bus in Bremerhaven. So the train was out and the Wesertunnel it was.

Autobahn A28

I set out just before ten AM to have plenty of time to make it to Bremerhaven. It was snowing heavily and it would continue to snow all day.

Initial progress was slow, since not only were the small local roads full of snow and sludge, but the bigger roads were still mostly uncleared as well.

Against the protests of my GPS Else, I drove onto Autobahn A28 at junction Stuhr in direction Oldenburg. Not that there is another direction, because the A28 ends at junction Stuhr, where it meets Autobahn A1.

The conditions on the A28 were okay, given the weather. The right lane was clear and the left lane mostly clear, so it was possible to go somewhere between 80 and 100 kilometers per hour. And since the speed limit on this part of the A28 is 100 kilometers per hours anyway, I was mostly going at the expected speed.

The A28 cuts through the town of Delmenhorst and then crosses the Amerland region towards Oldenburg, where it arcs around the city. Then it cuts through the Amerland again and later through East Frisia before reaching the Dutch border where it becomes Rijksweg A7. But I wasn’t going that far, since I left the A28 at exit Ganderkesee West to make my way through the Weser Marshlands.

Through the Snowy Weser Marshlands 

At exit Ganderkesee West I drove onto Bundestraße B212, which is basically the old main route west of the river Weser towards Bremerhaven. The old main route east of the river was Bundestraße B6, since mostly replaced by Autobahn A27.

I have no idea why the Autobahn exit is called Ganderkesee West BTW, because it doesn’t go to Ganderkesee at all, but to the town of Bookholzberg. The B212 goes straight through Bookholzberg, which for some reason never got a bypass. Then the B212 cuts through the marshlands in a completely straight line – and yes, the B212 beyond Bookholzberg is as straight as any road in Germany can be – towards Lemwerder on the shores of the river Weser. The long straight stretch of the B212 beyond Bookholzberg is a speeding paradise. The speed limit is 100 kilometers per hour here, but many drivers go even faster, because it’s a long straight road where you can see all the way to the horizon in every direction. As a result, there are fixed speed cameras installed here and frankly, 100 kilometers an hour is enough for a two-lane road. However, on Monday it was snowing heavily, so I drove along the long straight stretch of road beyond Bookholzberg at a speed of 70 to 80 kilometers an hour.

Just before you reach Lemwerder and the Weser, the B212 makes a sharp turn to the left to follow the river. There’s a traffic light here, probably mainly intended to slow down the cars coming of this long straight stretch of road. Since I didn’t need to go to Lemwerder, I took the left turn. And this was my mistake, because nowadays, there are actually two left turns. The first turn leads towards the town of Berne with its narrow and unpleasant main street. The second turn takes you on the B212 bypass of Berne.

Now I know the B212 very well, since I drove it every day in early 2017, when I taught German as a foreign language at the vocational school in Brake. I only stayed there for a month or so, because while the students were lovely, the staff was not and the vocational school in Brake is the most toxic place I ever worked at to the point that I have taken to calling it the Fright Zone. But more on that later.

Of course, 2017 was nine years ago.  At the time, the Berne bypass was still under construction. It has since been completed. However, when I reached the traffic light at the end of the long straight stretch of B212, I took the first turn left out of instict and muscle memory. My GPS Else did not object, since her map data is badly outdated and can’t be updated anymore.

A few kilometers further, as the no longer B212 meandered through the fields and small villages of the Weser Marshlands with their ancient timbered and thatched farmhouses covered in snow, I noticed that it seemed as if no one had bothered to clear this road at all. And they normally do at least try to clear the major Autobahnen and Bundestraßen. “Fuck,” I thought, “I took the wrong turn, didn’t I? Ah well, I’ll just drive through bloody Berne then.”

Now the town of Berne has an extremely narrow main street through which all the traffic travelling on the B212, including many trucks, had to pass back in the day. There were several occasions where I thought, “That’s it. That truck is going to hit that house or end up in that hair salon.” or “That cyclist is toast”. The people of Berne campaigned hard to finally get a bypass and pretty much everybody who regularly had to drive through Berne agreed with them, because it was just that terrible.

Once the bypass was built, Berne banished all trucks from their city center and honestly, I don’t blame them. However, as I tried to drive through the Berne, it turned out that they are also remodelling their main street and that it’s completely closed to traffic, so I had to take a detour through some residential streets, which actually weren’t that much narrower than the main street, but they hadn’t been cleared at all, so I had to drive through ankle deep snow and sludge. I passed some guys – official municipal workers, not regular people – shovelling snow by hand, which seems rather inefficient. I guess Berne doesn’t have the budget for a snow plough.

BTW, in the 13th century, the Weser Marshlands were the site of the only Crusade on German soil, the so-called Stedinger Crusade, when the Archbishop of Bremen and his troops marched against the rebelling farmers of the Weser Marshlands. The center of the rebellion was in the modern day municipalities of Berne and Lemwerder. It all ended in blood and tears, as such affairs usually do, but the locals still remember and celebrate the Stedinger rebels. There are lots of streets, pubs and ferry boats named after them and Bookholzberg even has a massive open air theatre, where they used to perform a play about the Stedinger Crusade. Nowadays, the theatre sits abandoned, because it’s considered tainted, since the Nazis built it in one of these weird moments of cognitive dissonance where the Nazis decided to celebrate resistance movements and condemn tyrannies and didn’t even notice the irony.

I should probably do a day trip to the Weser Marshlands, when the weather is nicer, and pay a visit to the surviving sites of the Stedinger Crusade. BTW, I wholesale borrowed the story of the Stedinger peasant revolt for the Kurval story “Twelve Nooses”, mixed with the legend of the burghers of Calais.

I rejoined the B212 in pretty much the same place as back in 2017 – with two differences: a) the Berne bypass is finished now and b) the lifting bridge across the river Hunter has now been replaced by a folding bridge and the old lifting bridge from the 1950s has been demolished, which I find a pity, especially since the old bridge was a listed monument. They should have just put it permanently in the up position and left it there. Though maybe they were worried about ships hitting the old bridge.

Cause ships have the uncanny tendency to hit bridges across the river Hunte. The worst incident happened in February 2024, when a ship hit the railway bridge across the river Hunte at Elsfleth, pretty much cutting off the Weser Marshlands and Oldenburg from the German rail network and also making it difficult for ships to reach the harbour of Oldenburg. There’s the suspicion that the reason ships keep hitting bridges across the river Hunte is Russian sabotage – though note that the ship and captain who damaged the Elsfleth bridge were Dutch – because military equipment intended for Ukraine is transported across those bridges. I pretty much bit off the head of some Berlin based Green Party pro-war dude (and sadly, Green Party pro-war dude is no longer an oxymoron) on social media, when he whined about the damaged bridges (which I doubt he could even find on a map), because “we need the bridges intact to help Ukraine”, and I pointed out that the people in Oldenburg and Weser Marshlands need those bridges a lot more than Ukraine does. Especially since the Greens always want people to use public transport, which an entire region can’t do, because they were cut off from the national rail network due to idiotic ship captains or Russian sabotage triggered by Germany deciding to throw their support behind Ukraine. The German Green Party is very urban and particularly the Berlin based actively despise rural folks (and they apparently haven’t figured out that much of Ukraine is rural), which is part of the reason why I can’t stand them, even though I theoretically perfectly match their voter profile.

Elsfleth, Brake and the Fright Zone

After the Hunte bridge, the B212 continues to cut through the Weser Marshlands, until it reaches the town of Elsfleth. Elsfleth was a center of shipbuilding and shipping companies in the 19th century and early 20th century and some of that still remains. My Dad occasionally did business with a shipyard in Elsfleth. The town is also the site of nautical college, which goes back to the 19th century. In the old harbour, there is a historical tall ship, which is used by the nautical college, and the town center of Elsfleth is supposedly quite lovely. I really should do a proper day trip through the Weser Marshlands sometime.

However, the B212 only touches upon the edge of Elsfleth, so all you see of the town is a stretch of grocery stores and gas stations. Particularly the Elsfleth Rewe store triggers negative associations, because when I worked in the Fright Zone the Brake vocational school, I pulled into the parking lot of the Rewe store, which is the first place after Brake where you can actually stop your car, and just sat there crying in the parking lot of the fucking Rewe in Elsfleth. That was a Friday and I resigned on Monday, but I still had to work till the end of the month and was still harassed and undermined every day by the pieces of shit who worked at the Fright Zone the Brake vocational school and did such nice things as switch on the projector after my class had finished and then claimed I forgot to switch it off. The whole thing is kind of funny now, since those people were so pathetic, but for several years I couldn’t even talk about Brake. At any rate, the whole experience left my with a visceral dislike of the Elsfleth Rewe store, even though it’s hardly the store’s fault that I once cried my heart out in their parking lot, completely ignored by the good people of Elsfleth (and honestly, when I see someone crying in public, I usually at least ask if I can help). That said, it is a shitty Rewe with a shitty selection anyway.

After Elsfleth, the B212 cuts through fields and marshlands some more, before it reaches the Fright Zone itself – Brake. As with Elsfleth, the B212 mostly passes Brake by. The first sign of Brake you see is the Rehau factory which produces hoses and cables on giant drums that are stored on the premises. When I worked in the Fright Zone the Brake vocational school, I suggested trying to get internships for some of the young refugees I was teaching at Rehau, but that was noped by Shadow Weaver the coordinator and queen bee of that bloody excuse for a school. Rehau is not for refugees and neither are the various car dealerships around town. They will only accept 100% organic Germans with an Abitur certificate. No one was able to tell me why you supposedly need an Abitur to sell cars, but that was the sort of attitude that prevailed there.

And yes, I’m snarky, but I honestly no longer give a fuck. Let them all read what I think of them and their sorry excuse for a school. As for why I started calling the Brake vocational school “the Fright Zone”, I once said that the Horde in the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power cartoon was not so much a terrifying menace, but just an incredibly toxic workplace, more like the Brake vocational school than the Death Star. And then I thought of the Brake vocational school, where the headmaster locked himself in his office, clearly hiding from his own staff, just like Hordak in the 2018 She-Ra cartoon, though I doubt he had a bubbly autistic tech genius who fell in love with him in spite of everything. And I thought of the female coordinator who actually ran the place much like Shadow Weaver and had everybody under her thumb and who had her little spies reporting everything to her. And I thought, “Fuck, the Brake vocational school literally is the Fright Zone”, so I’ve started calling the place that ever since. BTW, I just checked their website and both the headmaster who locked himself in his office and Shadow Weaver are no longer listed, so I guess they retired or are spreading terror elsewhere. Only the deputy headmaster is still there and while he was also kind of awful, he wasn’t as bad as the other two. Not sure who he’d be in a She-Ra context. Grizzlor? Leech? Mantenna? And if he’s Mantenna, does mean that he gets dropped through the trap door?

There are two traffic lights where roads go into Brake proper. At the first traffic light there is a gas station. This is also the road I had to take to get to the Fright Zone the Brake vocational school. At the second traffic light, there is a bunch of grocery stores, a strip mall and yet more gas stations on the edge of town.

If you thought my feelings about the Elsfleth Rewe store were harsh, trust me, you don’t want to know my feelings about Brake, which for many years were basically “Burn that fucking town to the ground and the whole Weser Marshlands with it and salt the Earth, so it never comes back. Finish the job that the Archbishop of Bremen started in 1234 AD, since he was clearly on to something.”

However, that’s unfair, because Brake itself is actually a lovely little town. They’ve got a historical semaphore and a nautical museum and lots of old houses. I actually thought I posted some photos of Brake I took at the time on this blog, but apparently I didn’t. What is more, most of the people outside of the Fright Zone the Brake vocational school that I met in Brake were lovely whether they were store clerks, the lady who runs a small bookstore in town, a lady from the adult education organisation VHS or a gentleman from the local employment agency (and employment agency case workers are notoriously awful, so this gentleman was a huge exception). The only awful person I ever met in Brake who was not associated with the Fright Zone the Brake vocational school was the lady who crossed the street and quickened her step, clearly terrified, when I chanced to walk along that street with my flock of overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly Muslim students. And she got her comeuppance, when I deliberately crossed the street, my students trotting after me like ducklings, and approached her to ask her for the way, even though I knew it perfectly well. The women stuttered and gave me directions, her eyes constantly darting towards my students. “Oh, never mind them,” I said sweetly, “Those are my students and they’re perfectly harmless.”

I really should do a road trip into the Weser Marshlands when the weather is nicer and also go into Brake itself to visit the semaphore and the nautical museum. And just for fun, I should take some Horde themed action figures along – Hordak and Shadow Weaver are a must – and take photos. If I go on a weekend, I should even be able to take some photos on the grounds of the actual Fright Zone the Brake vocational school undisturbed. Unless that bloody janitor – I guess I could call him Imp – hangs out there at the weekends, too. Maybe they permanently keep him in his little room, where he does mysterious things, but not his actual job – and heaven beware you expect that he does his actual job. Though come to think of it, he’s more Modulok, who also hangs out in his room and does mysterious experiments, than Imp. The Imp equivalent would be teacher in the classroom next door, a shitty, nasty woman who was mean to my students, too, and at one point accused native speakers of Arabic of not speaking proper Arabic.

The Wesertunnel and Autobahn A27

After you leave the horrors of the Fright Zone Brake behind, the B212 continues to cut through the fields and marshlands. The next town on route is Stadland/Rodenkirchen (Stadland is the name of the municipality, but Rodenkirchen is the actual town), but the B212 passes it by. The road also is wider here and has two lanes in places, which means I could overtake some of the slow-going trucks.

The B212 then goes on to the port city of Nordenham on the western side of the Weser estuary, but I didn’t go that far. Instead, I left the B212 at the exit Kleinensiel, headed for the Wesertunnel. The road leading to the Wesertunnel is a nice, broad four-lane road and it was also clear of snow, though it was still snowing at this point.

Directly next to the Wesertunnel is the nuclear power station Unterweser – also called nuclear power station Esensham, though Esensham is actually quite a bit away –  which was the stuff of our nightmares, since it was the closest nuclear power station to us and the one that would turn my home into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, should it ever blow up. Though come to think of it, I always assumed that the nuclear power station Unterweser was closer to my home than it actually is. I always thought it was only thirty or thirty-five kilometers away, but it’s more like sixty kilometers and even if something happened, we’d probably have been outside the exclusion zone, though bye-bye Fright Zone Brake (and Rodenkirchen and Nordenham and Stadland and Kleinensiel and Esenham and Stotel and maybe Bremerhaven, too). Nuclear power station Unterweser was decommissioned in 2011 to my and many other people’s relief, though the other nuclear power stations in North Germany – though never wanted and always hated – remained running for several more years. The nuclear power stations in Brokdorf and Grohnde were both shut down in 2021 and the nuclear power station Emsland finally as one of the last three in Germany in  April 2023, even though it hadn’t been needed for years before that, since North Germany produces more than enough renewably energy, mostly wind power. That was a very good day. And yes, when I was a kid, I was fucking terrified of even driving past nuclear power stations, which to be fair, was kind of silly. Even if one of them should happen to blow up while we were driving past it, we’d still have enough time to get away and some protection from fallout and radiation inside the car. That said, as a kid I would have been scared to drive through the Wesertunnel so close to nuclear power station Unterweser, though you can’t even see it from the road.

The Wesertunnel itself is actually pretty good as tunnels go. It has two separate tunnels with two lane in either direction and is considered one of the safest tunnels in Germany. This close to the North Sea, the Weser is broad and the tunnel is 1.6 kilometers long and its deepest point is 35 meters below sea level. Driving through the Wesertunnel was also a pleasant relief from the constant snowfall.

Beyond the Wesertunnel, the road continues as a nice wide four-lane road. There is a bridge across the river Lune, one of the many side arms of the river Weser, and a few kilometers later you join Autobahn A27 at the exit Stotel.

The next exit after Stotel is Bremerhaven South, but I still had several more exits to go. The city of Bremerhaven is situated along the eastern side of the Weser estuary and so it’s quite stretched out. Bremerhaven also isn’t really one coherent town, but more like several different ones which don’t fit together very well. There are the various ports, the touristy bits clustered around Columbus Quay, several residential neighbourhoods, the area around the central station, the area around the courthouse, etc…

I left Autobahn A27 at the exit Bremerhaven Center, though the courthouse is not actually in the city center, but quite a bit away. The snowfall had intensified and was so dense by now that I could barely see the Bremerhaven waste incineration plant through the snow, even though it is pretty much directly next to the Autobahn.

The Courthouse and the Trial 

I reached the courthouse at approximately five minutes to twelve, when the trial was supposed to start. I parked my car and got a parking ticket. Luckily, I paid for parking until four PM, even though I didn’t expect the trial would take that long, but then you never know. Good thing that I did.

I went through the metal detector, while my bag and winter jacket went through the X-ray machine. Most German courthouses don’t regularly use their metal detectors and X-ray machines, only for special high risk trials, but Bremerhaven always makes everyone go through security, even though they’re only a district court, i.e. the lowest ranking court in the German legal system. Personally, I approve, especially since violent incidents have happened not just with high risk trials, but also with run-of-the-mill divorce and custody cases. So better be safe and make everyone go through security than be sorry.

I found the time to go the bathroom and than headed to the courtroom. The trial took place at one of the two big courtrooms at the Bremerhaven courthouse. The other courtrooms are smaller and look more like classrooms. Most likely, they used the big courtroom, because there were two lay judges in addition to the regular judge. The German legal system does not have juries in the Anglo-American sense, but we have lay judges – literally laymen and -women supporting a full-time professional judge to offer a different perspective. I have interpreted in trials with lay judges before, but they’re not super common.

In addition to the judge and the two lay judges, there was the prosecutor, the defendant and his lawyer, a court recorder, myself as well as three young women I took to be law students or legal interns in the audience. There are almost always law students or legal interns sitting in the audience of court cases open to the public (i.e. all cases except those involving juveniles), sometimes journalists and very few others.

Going to the courthouse to witness a trial is a standard part of the curriculum in German schools – and amazingly one of the more useful things I ever did in school – but so far I’ve never seen a school group in the audience of a trial. The trial we went to see was actually pretty interesting – attempted manslaughter. The entire class decided that the alleged victim was lying and actually guilty and that defendant was innocent passed around notes to that effect. Then one kid, the class troublemaker, passed that note on to the prosecutor and we got in trouble for daring to have opinions. I strongly suspect that the kid did it deliberately to let the prosecutor know that absolutely no one was buying the alleged victim’s story.

When I’m asked to interpret in a court case, I never know what the case is about. All I have is a file reference and a single line like “criminal case against X”, “civil suit X vs. Y” or “custody case regarding the custody for Z”. Nor do I know whether I’m supposed to interpret for the defendant, the plaintiff or a witness or whether I’m asked to translate text messages or forum posts on the fly. In short, you go into these cases with zero preparation.

I knew that Monday’s case was a criminal case and I knew the name of the defendant, but that was all. And a criminal case can be anything from benefit fraud and possession of illegal fireworks (and yes, I actually interpreted in an illegal fireworks case once) to rape and murder (neither of which I have thankfully had yet).

As for Monday’s case, it was shoplifting. More precisely, it was shoplifting deodorant and insect repellent from a drugstore. The total value of the stolen products was less than twenty Euros and since they couldn’t prove the defendant had tried to steal the insect repellent due what I suspect is a problem with the drugstore’s inventory system, the defendant was convicted of stealing two deodorant sticks woth 6.90 Euros. Note that other theft or fraud cases where I have interpreted involved good worth hundreds of Euros, usually brandname clothing or alcohol.

In fact, minor shoplifting cases like this one mostly never go to trial at all. In the vast majority of cases, the shoplifter gets a lifetime ban from the store – which quite a few of them ignore – and if the police get involved, the shoplifter gets a fine and that’s it. As for why such a minor case went to trial, the defendant apparently got angry and agitated, started yelling and may or may not have tried to push a drugstore employee, which counts as assault and turned a simple shoplifting case into attempted robbery. That fact that the defendant had a criminal record didn’t help either.

Pretty much everybody involved in the case – the judge, the lay judges, the prosecutor, the lawyer – seemed to privately think that the whole thing was somewhat overblown, though they gave it their all. First, there was a debate whether to postpone the trial, since the defendant had found a neighbour dead in his flat the evening before and was notably upset. I even offered the defendant a tissue – not the first time I’ve had to offer a tissue to a crying person in a courtroom. I tried to find out more about the dead neighbour via the local press BTW, but apparently people being found dead happens more often in Bremerhaven than you’d think. When it was decided to go ahead with the trial, three witnesses were called – two drugstore employees and the defendant’s lover. A fourth witness, the first police officer on scene, did not appear, which to my surprise did not seem to overly bother the court.

Then there was video evidence from the CCTV cameras of the drugstore. The courtroom was equipped with a nice large screen – much better than what I used to have when I was teaching – where the CCTV footage was reviewed. In the end, the footage from four different CCTV cameras didn’t prove anything except that the defendant was in the store – which we already knew – that they had a deodorant stick in their hand – which again we already knew – and that they left the store without paying, which once again we already knew. The altercation outside the store was not captured by any CCTV camera, because there are none outside the store, which seems like an oversight. A particular highlight was several minutes of watching footage of the mostly deserted decorations and candles aisle at the back of the store. Even the prosecutor wondered whether we really needed to watch all that. Fun fact: I’m pretty sure I spotted two other shoplifting incidents committed by two completely different people in the same store at the same time in the CCTV footage.

At approx. two thirty PM, the judge adjourned the court for a forty-five minute break. I was quite hungry by now, because I hadn’t eaten anything except for a Greek yoghurt in the morning. Forty-five minutes should theoretically be enough time for a snack, except that there is absolutely no place to find anything to eat within reasonable distance of the Bremerhaven courthouse. There are no restaurants, no cafés, no döner kebap shops, no bakeries, no grocery stores, though oddly enough there is a tabletop gaming store. The Bremerhaven courthouse doesn’t even have a coffee machine, at least not one that’s publicly accessible. I considered going for a walk, but though it was still snowing, the temperature was just above freezing and so the streets and sidewalks were full of sludge. The neighbourhood also isn’t particularly interesting, since there really is nothing of interest near the courthouse except maybe that gaming store. So I retreated to my car and munched my emergency chocolate, while checking my phone for food options on the way home.

I did take a few photos of snowy Bremerhaven.

At about five past three PM, I went back into the courthouse. I had to go through security again. The guard on duty asked me, “How far have they progressed up there?”, most likely because office hours were over and ours was the only trial still going on and once the trial finished, he could go home. “They’ll announce the verdict and sentencing next,” I replied, “The judge said we’re probably finished by three thirty PM.”

I went to the bathroom once more and than back to the courtroom. Everybody else also returned – only the judge and the two lay judges were still missing. However, they were clearly having an animated discussion in the judge’s private chamber, since you could hear them arguing even in the courtroom. And courthouses normally have padded doors.

The judge and lay judges finally returned, the verdict, the reasoning behind it and the sentence were read out. Personally, I found the sentence a tad harsh, especially since I have interpreted in other theft and shoplifting cases where the value of the goods stolen was much higher and yet the sentence more lenient. I guess the “may have tried to shove a store employee” thing and the defendant’s previous criminal record were part of the reason for the harsher sentence.

The trial was finished by three thirty PM, so I and everybody else could go home. So I returned to my car and drove off.

The Quest for Something to Eat 

As mentioned above, there’s absolutely no place to eat anything or even have a coffee near the Bremerhaven courthouse. So normally, whenever I’m interpreting at the Bremerhaven courthouse, I head for the fishing port afterwards, where there are plenty of good food options. However, it was three thirty PM, the sun would set at four forty-five PM, it was still snowing and I had a two hour drive home ahead of me, so I wanted to get something to eat on the way home instead of driving all the way to the fishing port.

I initially decided that I would stop at Autohof Wulsdorf on the A27, since there’s a döner/pizza/sausage place there. Not gourmet food, but warm and filling and often remarkably good. So I drove back onto Autobahn A27, fully determined to leave again at the exit Bremerhaven-Wulsdorf. There was only one problem. The Wulsdorf exit is currently closed for construction work and the signs instructed drivers to take the next exit Bremerhaven South instead. Unfortunately, Bremerhaven South does not have an Autohof or any other dining options, but it one of those Autobahn exits that just spit you out in the middle of nowhere.

The next exit is Stotel, where I had leave Autobahn A27 to drive through the Wesertunnel again. Stotel is a town, but there are no food options, at least none that were open in the afternoon. A lot of restaurants in villages and small towns closed in recent years, so the dining options are often terrible outside the larger towns.

On the other side of the Wesertunnel, the next town on route is Stadland/Rodenkirchen, where the situation is pretty much the same. Very few dining options and none that are open in the afternoon.

So I drove past Stadland/Rodenkirchen to – yes, the bloody Fright Zone a.k.a. Brake. Because Brake is the biggest town in the Weser Marshlands next to Nordenham and there would be food there.

Crepes in the Fright Zone

As I mentioned above, there is a stretch of grocery stores and gas station at the edge of Brake. And in addition to getting something to eat, I also wanted to grab some groceries on the way home, since I was on the road anyway. Now there are several grocery stores on route: That Rewe store in Elsfleth, where I once cried in the parking lot and whose doorstep I never want to darken again, three different inkoop stores (regional chain – my Dad always called tham Stinkekoop – Stenchbuy), one in Bookholzberg and two in Delmenhorst, a very good Edeka that requires driving into Delmenhorst, two Kaufland stores at exits Delmenhorst-Stickgras and Groß-Mackenstedt and a Famila store in Brake plus several discounter supermarkets which weren’t what I wanted due to their limited selection.

Now I like Famila, since their offerings are better than Rewe, Stinkekoop inkoop and Kaufland. I also knew that the Brake Famila store was part of a small mall called Famila Center (Famila stores often anchor malls), which has several fast food type places where you could eat something. So I took a left turn into Brake and headed for the Fright Zone Famila.

The parking lot of the Brake Famila Center was covered in ankle deep sludge, which did not make me more positively inclined towards the city. The food options on site are a bakery, a self-service restaurant, a snackbar, a fish shop, which offers fish rolls among other things, a Turkish deli counter, an Asian restaurant (run by Vietnamese people, but the menu is mainly westernised Chinese food) and an ice cream parlour/café. I would probably have opted for the Asian restaurant, but the ice cream parlour also offers hot food, both sweet and savoury. So instead of not-so-great Asian food, I opted for the ice cream parlour and crepes with baked apples, cinnamon and vanilla ice cream. Crepes with apples are sometimes called Crepe Normande and I remember really loving them as a teenager, when the late lamented La Sirena restaurant in Antwerp used to serve them for dessert. So I decided to be very decadent and have Crepe Normande in lieu of lunch, because it was just that kind of day and besides, it was after four PM by now and too late for lunch anyway.

After enjoying delicious crepes and coffee, I checked out the toy section at the Müller drugstore at the Famila Center. Nothing of interest for me, though I did see that Optimus Prime armour He-Man figure from the Masters of the Universe/Transformers crossover line for the first time in person. The Masters of the Universe/Transformers crossover figures are sold online via Mattel Creations, but for some reason Müller has them in stock. And no, I didn’t buy him, because I’m not a huge fan of the crossover lines in general and the Transformers crossover doesn’t work at all IMO.

Then I went into the Famila supermarket for some grocery shopping. By the time, I left the Famila Center, it was dark outside, since the sun had set in the meantime. It was also still snowing.

That’s also why I didn’t get to take any photos of the Weser Marshlands covered in snow. I didn’t want to stop to take photos in the morning, because I wanted to be at the courthouse on time and had no idea how long the trip would take, given the weather conditions. And on the way back, it was mostly dark.

Driving Home in the Dark and through the Snow

After leaving the Fright Zone Brake behind, I realised that my water was empty. I should have bought a bottle of water at the Famila supermarket, but I didn’t, so I stopped once more on the way home at a gas station in Elsfleth, because Elsfleth is the next town on route after Brake and the only town you actually drive through until Bookholzberg.

Of course, I could have gone into the Elsfleth Rewe market to buy water as well, but I really don’t want to see that place ever again. Besides, I don’t have to queue at the gas station shop, but I can just get a bottle of water, walk up to the counter, pay and leave.

From the parking lot of the gas station in Elsfleth, I also called my neighbour Vladimir to ask him, if he could take my garbage can outside, since it would be another hour or so until I was home. Then I drove off again along Bundesstraße B212 towards Bookholzberg and beyond.

Though it was still snowing, the going was somewhat better than it had been in the morning, because the roads had been cleared by now. I also did not have to drive through Berne again, because accidentally taking the wrong turn is a lot harder from this direction.

I finally made it home at about half past seven PM and did a double take, when I saw what looked like a ghost hovering next to my neighbour’s driveway. Upon closer inspection, the “ghost” turned out to be an oddly shaped snowman someone – possibly the neighbours’ young niece – had built on top of the pillar next to the neighbour’s driveway. Here’s a photo I took the following day:

The Neverending Winter

That was last week and since then the frost hasn’t stopped and the snow hasn’t melted. On the contrary, we even had more snow a few times as well as freezing rain, which turned my driveway and terrace into an ice-skating rink.

As a result, I only left the house when I absolutely had to – to go grocery shopping or take a letter to the mailbox or pick up a package at the post office, for of course that package had to be delivered while I was in Bremerhaven and for some reason, I could not instruct the mail person to leave it on my doorstep or deliver it to a parcel station instead or deliver it another day. No, I had to go in person to the post office to pick it up. I’d show you what’s inside, except that I didn’t open the parcel yet, because I can’t safely get to my garbage cans and I already have enough trash piling up inside the house as a result that I don’t want to add more.

In the past, my Dad and I went hiking in the woods, when we had snow. But hiking in the woods alone is too risky for my taste, especially since the snow has frozen over and the risk of slipping and falling is very high. So all the snow photos I can offer you are these two pictures of snow covered fields in the village of Wulfhoop:

I’m beginning to experience cabin fever, because being locked in your own home with even taking out the trash being a logistical challenge is frustrating.

The temperatures are about to go above freezing and I hope that I will be able to outside tomorrow and run some errands, if it’s safe to drive. And on Sunday, I want to attend the annual memorial ceremony for the defenders of the Bremen Soviet Republic, since my Great-Uncle Nick was one of them.