New to Bremen?

Transport in Bremen

Henning Scherf, former mayor of our Free Hanseatic City, once said: “Bremen may be a village, but it’s the village with the most beautiful tram in the world.” From this one concludes two things: on the one hand, that one is very well advised with a bicycle; on the other hand, that the main means of transport (for carless people) here is the tram (and affiliated buses). But since you can also find out such things in Wikipedia, here is just the important stuff:

The trams and buses generally run every five to twenty minutes during the day, central junctions here being the main station and Domsheide. During the week this becomes less and less frequent until midnight (if you live well until 1 o’clock), and then falls completely silent until about 4 o’clock. On weekends, on the other hand, night lines run at hourly intervals throughout the night. There is no night line surcharge in Bremen. Finally: “S-Bahn” is not an abbreviation for “Straßenbahn” (tram)!

In any case, we recommend the “FahrPlaner”, the app and website for route planning in the entire area of the Verkehrsverbund Bremen/Niedersachsen (VBN). By the way, the semester ticket is not only valid in Bremen and Lower Saxony, as you can read in detail on the related pages of the AStA (Allgemeiner Studierendenauschuss, the official permanent representation of the students of the university).

Living in Bremen

Some of you will not only start the new stage of life “studying”, but also that “living in Bremen”. For this purpose, the website of the city of Bremen offers some useful hints for finding an apartment, moving and - last but not least - for re-registering your (first) place of residence. For the latter, once you have settled in Bremen, you should not take too much time - at least if you don’t want to get a dirty look from the lords and ladies of the administration one fine day (a maximum of two weeks after moving in is official, but one to two months is generally unproblematic). Practically, this re-registration can be done right on the university campus at the bremen_service universität (bsu); a registration form for self-printing and further information can be found on the mentioned links. In addition one can place there also the request for the welcome money in such a way specified. For the state of Bremen it is worth 150€ if you move your first residence to Bremen as a student.

Furthermore, you should also change your address at the university (for this you need a confirmation of registration from the above-mentioned office or a copy of both sides of your ID with your new address), so that your semester documents are sent to your new address in the semester following your move.

Furthermore, there are some things that don’t have much to do with studying in Bremen, but which are otherwise not so easy to find out - at least that’s what happened to some people before you. Therefore, here are some useful tips:

On the website of the Bremer Entsorgungsbetriebe you can find out the collection dates for garbage, yellow bags etc..
Said yellow bags are available at various distribution stations upon presentation of a coupon. How to get these coupons and where to find the next distribution station, you can find out under: gelb-kommt-an.de