Hannover adventuring.

Finally, an out-of-Hamburg adventure! A couple of us were trying to figure out SOMETHING we could do this weekend to fight off cabin fever, and it was decided to spend an afternoon exploring the beautiful city of Hannover. So! Five Smithies hopped on a train on Saturday morning in the bright sunshine and pulled into Hannover two hours later... in the rain (in good northern German fashion). In reading up on the city the night before, we were pleased to learn about a red line painted on the sidewalk connecting all of the "big sites" to be seen in the city. It sure made our job as tourists a lot easier.

I thought the city was beeeaaauuutiful. There were lots of winding cobblestone streets, 13th century churches, colorful Germanic architecture, flea markets along the river, etc. It felt wonderful to walk around and breathe fresh air, even if we did get cold and cranky after a while. Have a look!

(This one's my favorite of the batch.)

I thought this was a prime example of pre-bombing and post-bombing architecture. You can guess which is which.

Click on this picture to see the wonderful carved faces in the bridge. Most wonderful.

Our longest stop was in the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall). It was a spectacular building with just the right amount of ornamentation to be impressive and classy without being gaudy and snobbish.


Here in the main hall you can see four miniatures of the city during four different time periods. First we looked at Hannover today, Hannover in 1937, and Hannover in 1640-something.

Here's Hannover in 1937. (Picture's blurry, bad lighting.) Click for a larger view. When I got to the 4th diagram, I was expecting something in the middle time frame.

Hannover in 1945. Look at this up close. It literally took my breath away.

After that little shock, I got my spirits back up by taking artistic pictures of the fun staircases from below and above.

The coolest part of the building by far was the cupola, or rather, the transportation to get to the tippy top of it. If you look back at the big Rathaus picture, you'll notice that the cupola is on top of a rather large and nifty dome. As the dome in the main hall pretty well corresponds to the outer dome, it doesn't leave much space in between to get up to the top of the roof. Therefore, one must ride in Germany's ONLY DIAGONAL ELEVATOR! SO COOL! It's a small elevator with a slanted floor and glass ceiling that goes up in an arch. The shifting angle really threw me off spatially. It was great! ...And, of course, the view from the top was also great.


Check out the crazy funky glass building in this one. We didn't go in so I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was big and shiny and had amazing angles, so who cares.

If you click on this one, you can better see the church in the middle. Like Hamburg and Berlin, Hannover also has a bombed out church serving as a memorial to the victims of the war. We went there next.

This church wasn't as large or elaborately restored with historical information like the other two I'd seen, but there was something about the emptiness and stillness inside it that struck me more than the others. Inside the entrance where the people are standing is a large bell that was given to Hannover by the city of Hiroshima.

The Altar was bare, the ivy was climbing, and the windows were simply ornamented by colorful glass plates held in place by barbed wire. Before the alter is a large stone in the ground that reads "OUR DEAD." The plaque on the wall speaks more about the horrors of the war and of its victims.



After that visit, we followed the red-painted line slowly back to the Hauptbahnhof (central station) and tried to figure out what to do next. After much indecision, we decided to go play in the Museum of the History of Energy on the other side of the town. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we made our way back again. In order to get warm, we walked around a big shopping center for a while and marveled at all the elaborate advent calendars that are suddenly for sale everywhere. I'm not talking about little sheets of cardstock with picture doors that you open every day, but advent calendar boxes with a piece of delux chocolate hidden in a drawer for each day, Playmobil advent calendars with a little playmobil figure for each day, or STAR WARS advent calendar boxes where each day reveals a new sort of action figure, to name a few. Happy Advent, kids!

Later adventures involved sitting in a coffee shop getting warm and then running to catch an earlier train home. All in all, it was a good day.

I am also delighted to report that Kassia and I will be spending the weekend of the 20th exploring Bremen, and I am even more delighted to report that late lastnight I found and purchased cheap cheap train tickets to Prague for the following weekend, where I will get to visit with my darling Hana. Take THAT, cabin fever!