Only twice in the past forty years did I not feel like moving to Bremen. In 1972 I was reluctant to leave the cosy yet rebellious university town of Tübingen after my studies and head for the cold north, simply because I regarded the people there as dour and unapproachable. Later, after a oneyear stay in Rome, I was unwilling to return to Germany. Each time, it took me a while to get accustomed to Bremen again. Since then, I have never regretted it.

Anyone who comes to this Hanseatic city as a tourist can just as easily depart again after an hour and a half, the time it takes to complete the city tour: from the wonderful Market Square with the towering cathedral, the stony, defiant Roland and the almost bashfully concealed statue of the City Musicians by the sculptor Gerhard Marcks, through Böttchergasse, designed by Bernhard Hoetger, along the river Weser, through a tunnel to the Schnorr, the oldest, 16th century part of the city with its squat artisans’ and fishermen’s dwellings, up to the so-called cultural mile with the Goethe Theatre, the Kunsthalle and the new central library in the former police headquarters.

And that’s about it. I can take people on the tour of old Bremen in five different languages, and all my international writer colleagues are full of praise for the place. Such a compact, varied city. Wunderbar. Marvellous. Maravilhoso, Stupendo. Magnifico. Who would have thought it? Many of them even fail to find Bremen on the map of Europe. And most people from Bremen, when they are asked, say their city lies south of Hamburg. As if that were some excuse for it being constantly overlooked. Bremen is not even included on the weather map used during the evening news programme on German television stations.