Treat your nose to a tour of Bremen

As you leave the motorway going into towards Bremen you are greeted by the enchanting aroma of coffee being roasted nearby at the Jacobs coffee business. Further along in Überseestadt district as you pass the Kellogg's factory you might pick up the scent of freshly roasted corn flakes. In the Neustadt district you are bound to be delighted by intensive chocolate aromas. Finally, as you cross the Weserbrücke - especially in the morning - you might encounter the characteristic savory smell of fermenting mash. This will be drifting in along the river from the Beck's brewery, where one of Germany's best known beers is brewed.

Bremen is both a Hanseatic city and a German state. Its inhabitants take great pride in both, even though it is the smallest and poorest of all German states. More than 650,000 people live in Bremen and Bremerhaven. Unemployment is nearly twice as high as the national German average.

Yet it seems whoever chooses to live here is happy. A survey looking at how content people in Germany are, found that Bremen along with Lower Saxony, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein came out on top of their list.

Coffee capital Bremen

Christian Ritschel is one of those content people. He came to the city some 50 years ago, and since 2005 he has been the master roaster for the traditional Bremen coffee business Llyod Caffee.

"I made my passion my profession," the 57-year-old said, sipping a cappuccino. He and six colleagues he roast some 40 tons of coffee a year. That's not much compared to the giants of the industry like Jacobs or Melitta. But it's not quantity that interests him most, Ritschel said. For him it's all about the quality, and he only buys coffee from small plantations.

In the early 1960s, there were over 100 coffee roasting houses in Bremen. Today that number has shrunk to just about a handful. Lloyd Caffee was founded in 1930, and is one of the oldest remaining businesses in the city that still uses traditional methods. One reason for such an unusually high density of coffee roasting houses was probably the close vicinity to the harbor. Coffee has arrived here directly from the producing countries for generations.

Decaffeinated coffee becomes an export hit

In 2009, Llyod Caffee moved into the former premises of Kaffee HAG, a company that became famous for its decaffeinated coffee. Ludwig Roselius founded the business in 1906, which for the past 30 years has been part of an American company. A lasting legacy of Roselius can be found in the historic town center: the Böttcherstraße which the coffee merchant had architecturally designed in an expressionistic style. It still ranks among the city's main attractions.

When Ritschel first stepped foot into the HAG-building in the Bremen Holzhafen harbor on his search for a new location for his coffee roasting business, he knew immediately that this is where wanted to roast and sell coffee. He was particularly impressed by the marble hall, which Roselius had built in 1914 for official functions:"I wanted the scent of coffee to return to this place."

Ritschel regularly gives coffee lectures here - which all start with the visitors being lead into the hall. That is where he explains how Roselius with his Kaffee HAG company applied impressive and clever marketing strategies that led to his business dominating the market. He also invites guests to sample the coffee. There is the Bremen blend - consisting of a mix of three different coffees from Latin America. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts through the room. Following his talk on coffee growing countries, harvest methods and quality criteria you get to enter the inner sanctum: the roasting room.

The machine sucks coffee beans through a funnel, which are then roasted for around 20 minutes at a temperature of 200 degrees Celsius. It should not be any hotter, because that would harm the aroma. Through a small window Ritschel watches the beans. He sees how they transform from green to a deep brown color. During the roasting process it smells of hay, wheat, briefly of freshly baked bread and finally of coffee. He pushes a lever down and the coffee beans rattle into a sieve, where they are rotated and allowed to cool down.

Latte macchiato with Konrad Adenauer

Bremen is also a wonderful place to enjoy a cup of coffee. Even though there are no classic coffee houses like you might find in Vienna, you can find some very cozy cafés. "Das Amt" or "The Office" is tucked away in a small alley right in the middle of the historic town center. What makes it so special: the first floor of the café has been decorated to look like a 1950s style public authority office. Guests while sipping cappuccino can sit at desks with old typewriters, surrounded by old telephones and filing cabinets. On the wall there is a portrait of former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Anyone who after all this coffee fancies a cool beer will find a myriad of choices of bars and taverns in the Viertel district - very much the fashionable part of the Hanseatic city. And anyone who spends an evening here will very quickly appreciate why it is that people from Bremen are so happy and content.