Excursions from Bremen: Hannover

Hi!

As I said in the article about transport in Bremen, the Semesterticket allows you to get a large number of regional trains for free. This allows you to get around this whole region in Germany, getting to really know some of the most important cities in the country, such as Hamburg or Hannover, without spending anything.

The latter city was the destination for our first trip of this kind, which we went on at the beginning of October. Hannover is about 120km away from Bremen, a distance which the train covers in an hour and 20 minutes. With half a million inhabitants, it's the capital of the federal state of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), a region which completely surrounds the city-state of Bremen.

My parents had told me about Hannover and their trip there in 1984, when they were driving to Berlin by car (yes, from Spain). The thing that surprised them the most about the city was the presence of a red line painted on the floor, that ran through the whole old part of the city showing all the most interesting places for tourists.

In effect, there I was following the Roter Faden thirty years later. Just outside the Hauptbanhof we found it, so we decided to follow it and it guided us around Hannover, starting at the Opera or "Niedersächsische Staatsoper".

The next place of interest that we found was the Aegidienkirche, an old church that was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War, after which, they decided not to rebuild it and left it as a memorial to the victims of the war.

After that, we went towards the Neues Rathaus (New city hall), this impressive building from the beginning of the 20th century, in front of which, two of my flatmates posed. The miniatures of the city which you could find in the lobby, were actually quite interesting (and it was free to get in). What wasn't free was the climb up to the tower, from which, we were told there was beautiful views of the roofs of Hannover. However, the queue and the fact that we had to pay meant that we decided not to go up the tower.

What was quite beautiful was the park at the back of this building, which was called Maschpark. Despite it being cold, we enjoyed a little bit of the sun by the edge of the lake.

From here, we ventured towards the historical centre of the city, trying to find somewhere to eat at the same time. We stumbled upon a street which had a cool Flohmarkt (second hand market), located in an area covered in trees on the banks of a small river. I have to say that in Germany, they have a lot of consciousness for the benefits of recycling and of buying and selling things second hand; these types of markets are very popular (in Bremen they have these markets every Sunday). Also, it's very common to find furniture and other essentials in the streets, where people have left them for someone else who may want them. Without having to go too far, we found a few chairs on our street, which are now in our kitchen.

After wandering around the most central streets in Hannover, which had a very commercial feel, and after eating in a McDonalds, we stayed with a friend of one of my flatmates, a Spanish guy who had come to study his course in this city. He told us that during the dates we were in Hannover, they were also celebrating Oktoberfest, which despite originating in the south of Germany, is also celebrated in some isolated parts of the north.

Although it was fairly big, because of the early hour that we went, we didn't get to see the authentic atmosphere of Oktoberfest. What we did see was a strange interpretation of churros that were sold at one of the stalls, which had a very Iberian setting.

From here, we went to Machsee, a gigantic man-made lake where they practice different kinds of water sports.

From there, we returned to Hauptbanhof, where we discovered that some trains which were going towards Bremen had been cancelled because of some sort of rail problem, so we had to wait a long time before we could return home.

The truth is that, although it ended up being interesting (and very cheap) to visit this city, it didn't seem to me like it had anything special. It's a beautiful city and, from what the guy who studied there quite calmly told us, there's nothing out of the ordinary there. From my point of view, it's worth the visit if you have some spare time and if you feel like moving around the area a little bit, but if you have to choose somewhere to go, Hamburg is a lot more recommendable.

Until the next time!

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