The train from Berlin to Hamburg was straightforward enough. We passed lots of nice countryside, woodland, and tiny hamlets by the side of the railway line. The odd urban area that we passed through had more “refugees welcome” graffiti, just like Berlin. I saw a power line that terminated in a building about the same size (both height and ground area) as a normal pylon, painted yellow and complete with a lone door at its base. Many of the fields we passed had another kind of tower — a wooden lookout, one story off the ground, with a ladder and a roof.
My German isn’t good enough to buy things if the person at the till says anything other than “yes” or naming a price, which forces me to revert to English. This is frustrating.
By the time I had arrived, Hamburg had run out of (affordable) hotels, the only things that remained were over €200 per night. Thanks to the flexible travel power of my Interrail Pass, I was able to go straight onward to Hannover without worrying about an extra ticket. I don’t get the feeling I’m missing much, the path of the railway makes the city of Hamburg look far more British than Berlin had, with only a few bits of interesting people-friendly architecture to shield against the post industrial wasteland that reminds me so much of Portsmouth and Southampton on the south coast of the UK.
The first train station book store that I looked at in Hamburg had language guides for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and what looked like Romanian. There were tourists maps to Denmark. That made me almost sad I had decided not to go to Denmark this time, but as Denmark hasn’t joined the Euro, as Euros were the only cash I had, and as I had been advised to make sure I had some form of backup payment (which later turned out to be very useful), Denmark really wasn’t going to happen on this trip.
On the train, the next station was announced as “Hamburg Hamburg”. A later stop was announced as something like “Bad Bressen”, but a Google search doesn’t show any place with that name. The “Bad” prefix is common on Germany, it means “Bath” in the same sense as the British city of Bath.
Hannover seemed much nicer than Hamburg even at first glance. I did wonder how much of that was the weather, how much is the lesser crowding (Hamburg station was very crowded), how much was it’s familiar layout, and how much was the fact that the nearest hotel to Hannover train station is a third of the price of the cheapest available in the entire city when I checked at Hamburg? (Of course, by the time I had set up WiFi in the Hannover hotel room and was able to double check, I got a different and much cheaper answer from the price comparison website than had been offered a few hours earlier 😛 ).
The first night was little more than: chill, relax, and go to the local supermarket — a windowless affair on two floors of a building fairly close to the hotel. It gave me the most bizarrely artificial feeling; not malicious like the artifice of a casino, but alien, soulless, creepy, efficient. The upper floor was accessed by a moving walkway in the middle rather than the edge, making the place feel almost endless.
The next day, I started exploring Hannover properly. The hotel has another new-to-me kind of toilet, this time the flush mechanism needs to be switched off manually once you’ve decided enough water has gone through.
After just one minute on the other side of the train station to my hotel, I realised the place wasn’t just familiar, I had passed through the city years ago, going between an airport and Magdeburg. I’d even bought pizza from the very pizza place under the station that had seemed familiar the night before. To the south (ish) is a church with a giant inverted pentagram on the tower, and a multilevel pedestrianised shopping district that was disappointingly similar to British ones. The zone has a “Euro shop” where everything costs €1 (and has slightly better stuff than a British £1 shop despite the exchange rates), and there is also a sex district in one run-down corner (I guessed lap dances and similar, but my German isn’t that good and it later turned out that continental Europe is much more relaxed about this sort of thing than the UK).
There is a lot of cycling here. I’ve not seen any beggars so far. Pedestrians seem more likely to obey the red lights on crossings than in the UK, but that may just be because the roads with explicit pedestrian crossings are wider than typical British streets (one lane each way is common in the UK, but these are all multi-lane). Berlin had no litter that I saw, but I didn’t realise that until I got to Hannover and found myself automatically picking up random litter and taking it to the next bin I passed (something I often do in the UK, a habit my mum gave me probably by accident when she got me to help her clear out a stream strewn with litter in my home town as a young child).
There is a vast lake in Hannover — at least, vast by the standards I’m used to, it’s nothing compared to the Great Lakes or even Lake Zurich, but I don’t recall anything this size in a British city. I saw more graffiti and more litter as I walked around the lake. At the far end of it I saw an older lady with grey hair riding a bicycle and wearing an “XCOM the enemy unknown” T-shirt. At the south end, I decided to go away from the lake to get more of a feel for the built-up parts of the city, and that took me along a foot-and-cycle route that keeps pedestrians on the North and cyclists on the South, separated by a small hedge, which is a nice touch (British foot-and-cycle routes are often separated by a white line, and sometimes not even that).
I walked past the Stadtfriedhof Engesohde, a very pretty graveyard. I’ve not seen any that nice in the UK.
The next road, Hildesheimer Str., is green but fairly samey. I realised on that road that Apotheke, Bibliothike, Spielotheke, all shared a root word. Also, Kindergarten is literally “Kid(s?) Garden”.
There was more sexually explicit imagery on public display; this time a magazine, visible outside the shop selling it, showing multiple naked breasts on the front cover. It’s odd how ladies’ breasts are seen as sexual, while men’s are not, but there we are.
Through its window, Hannover city library looks just like any British library.
I finally encountered some beggars! They seem better off than the ones in Berlin. Enough to be scary, actually. But I didn’t take enough notes to remind myself why when I wrote this up over a month later.
The next day, I explored to the North-east of my hotel. There’s an enormous inner-city woodland in the far corner of the Hannover-Mitte quarter of the city. It was very pleasant, but had a slight feeling of familiarity that confused me. I know I visited Germany as a kid, did my mum take me to Hannover at some point in that? I don’t know. Regardless, it’s wonderful to have a large peaceful area with many benches in which to sit down and read. It made me wish that British cities had more large patches of dense woodland within them.
For all the German reputation for loving meat, they have a lot of vegetarian and vegan food stores. Some of it good, some of it mediocre — just like the UK. I recall the British have the nickname “Roastbeef” in France, yet the British also have many good options for vegetarian and vegan food, so perhaps meaty stereotypes are over-stated and out-dated.
I finally saw a single cyclist jumping a red light! He checked it was safe, then crossed the road. Up until this point, everyone else — pedestrian and cyclist alike — has been fastidiously obedient of the lights, and there are an enormous number of cyclists in Germany (by British standards) and the clearly labeled cycle paths go everywhere that I had gone on foot.
Hannover, like Berlin, has both a metro and an underground system. I’ve not used either, but the rails of the former and the entrances to the latter are easily seen. The combination of good public transport and good cycle infrastructure is probably one of the main reasons why German cities feel so much nicer than British ones (the graffiti and beggar problems appear to be worse in Germany than the UK, while the litter is roughly the same, so it’s certainly not any of those things).
The city, like many British cities, contains a ruined church. Presumably a burned out wreck from the second world war.
I saw more beggars, including a the first Muslim woman beggar; and one man slumped and stationary against a wall, lighter and tobacco bag in hand. He might well have been dead, but I didn’t want to investigate, either possibility may have been traumatic.
That evening, music poured through my bedroom window. First it was Indian, then a marching band, jazz, then many more pieces whose genres I don’t recognise.
Sunday morning. Hannover is covered in thick cloud, and it’s raining. So dark and gloomy it feels like twilight even though sunrise was just over 5 hours ago, at 05:06. It’s good for me that the rain has coincided with my feet’s need to recover, unfortunately more rain is forecast for tomorrow. The music I first heard last night has continued today, a quick venture into town for food suggests it’s a cultural festival in Andreas-Hermes-Platz. I have no idea if it will still be there tomorrow, my last day in Hannover (a half day at that) before I journey to Frankfurt.
My next trip had me wandering Hannover in a new direction, to the North west and past the university, past the aquarium and Herrenhausen Palace before I turned back. I saw fly-posted stickers on streetlights advertising a Facebook group for LGBT refugees. In English rather than German or Arabic. I’m so lucky my native language is the lingua-Franca of the world.
There were more erotic stores. The outside of these shops are like the inside of British adult stores, which makes me wonder what the insides are like, but this isn’t the time to check them out.
I also saw the first German pedestrian jumping a red light.
There are cigarette vending machines on the footpaths. Well, one of them at least. And a small tractor driving down the street — I’m used to that in small countryside villages in England, but this is near a major city centre.
Ooh, a German flag! First time I’ve seen one flying here, I think. For any Americans surprised by my surprise, Europe doesn’t seem to fly national flags anything like as much as you do. Most of the British would only care about flag burning because of the smoke, although I wouldn’t dare assume anything either way about the rest of the continent.
Walking further along the route, I passed some more flags that I don’t recognise, then another German flag. All were in what might be allotments, but there are many of what look like single room cottages — too big to be sheds, too small to be real homes. Student houses, perhaps?
I found Quorn for sale! But not in every supermarket. “Rewe” has it, I’m not sure what Rewe would be the equivalent of in the UK.
I never did check Andreas-Hermes-Platz in the end. Next stop, Frankfurt.
Travelling Curious 