Bremen

By the town hall's west wall, a bronze of donkey, dog, cat and rooster stacked up has stood since 1953. People grip the donkey's forelegs in both hands to wish, so only those are worn to gold. Drop a coin into a hole in the square nearby to hear the four call.

A stone knight set up in 1404, facing the town hall as guardian of the city's freedoms. The gap between his knees was Bremen's old unit of length, the ell, and the measure is cut into the base. UNESCO listed him along with the hall in 2004.

Coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius paid in the 1920s to rebuild this lane in red-brick Expressionist style. Meissen porcelain bells hung between roofs chime at fixed hours by day, as wooden panels in the tower beside turn to show people who crossed the Atlantic.

Bremen's oldest quarter is named for the word string, as its tiny houses line up like beads on a thread. Some lanes are so narrow your shoulders brush the walls, and each ground floor holds a workshop or tearoom. At dusk tour groups leave and it goes quiet.

A wine cellar under the town hall pouring since 1405, and it still serves German wine only. In the inner Rose Cellar sits a cask of 1653 Rudesheimer, counted as the oldest cask wine in Germany. The booths between the huge barrels need booking ahead.

The old cargo quay along the Weser is now a riverside walk with beer gardens and restaurants stretching close to a kilometre. Several old ships tied up at the bank serve as bars, and on summer evenings the riverside seats are taken fast.

A clam-shaped building clad in stainless steel scales holds hands-on science exhibits. Open since 2000, it has a garden outside dotted with devices for playing with sound and water. It sits by the university, a tram ride from the centre.

A museum at the port of Bremerhaven to the north, from which more than seven million people sailed for the New World after 1830. At the door you get a boarding pass bearing a real emigrant's name, and you trace that person's story through the exhibits.

In a cellar beside the cathedral, several mummified bodies lie in coffins with no glass over them. Dry air is the usual explanation for why they never decayed, and the cellar has its own ticket apart from the cathedral. Many winter days it stays shut.

A moorland village north-east of Bremen where painters gathered from 1889 to form an artists' colony. Paula Modersohn-Becker worked here, and painters' houses and galleries dot the village. In summer, ride a black-sailed peat barge along the moor canals.

A Gothic hall given its Weser Renaissance front in the early 1600s. Above the upper hall hang models of the warships that escorted Bremen's merchant fleets against pirates. Entry is on guided tours only; check times at the tourist office.

Still run by the art society citizens founded in 1823. Buying Van Gogh's Poppy Field in 1911 set off a fierce quarrel among German artists over money spent on foreign painting, and the canvas still hangs here. The rampart park lies right outside.

A big park behind the main station, created from the 1860s on citizens' donations and still largely paid for by gifts and a lottery. You can rent a rowing boat on the lake, and woodland paths run far. It is close enough on foot to fill a wait between trains.

Opened in 1896 beside the main station, pairing the nature and peoples of lands across the sea. Glass-roofed courts hold full-size South Pacific houses and boats among tropical plants. It is Bremen's best rainy-day refuge.

Opened in 2009 on the Bremerhaven waterfront, it leads visitors around the globe along longitude 8 degrees east, zone by climate zone. The desert room is hot and the Antarctic one truly below zero, so carry a jacket. Allow three or four hours.

First held, it is said, in 1035, one of Germany's oldest fairs, filling two-plus weeks from mid-October with rides and stalls. People greet each other with the dialect cry Ischa Freimaak. On the middle Saturday a big parade passes through town.

Early in the 1800s the old town's ramparts were razed, leaving the moat as parkland. A crescent of paths follows the water, and a large windmill stands on one mound. The mill now houses a restaurant whose window tables look down over the moat.