HANNOVER
An ideal city for walking
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Although Leipzig is considered to be the musical capital of Germany, we chose Hannover, the capital of Lower Saxony, for our musical journey. It turned out to be an ideal combination for A-ha's concert schedule and the inexpensive price of a low-cost low-cost carrier from Kiev. We have already told about the concert itself on the pages of the blog, those who haven't read it - you can find the report at this link.
And in this article we will show Hannover itself, as we managed to see it during the weekend. The main “life” of the city is concentrated near the train station. Above the station square there is an equestrian statue of the King of Hannover Ernst August, who was born in the family of the King of Great Britain, inherited Hannover and moved here from London. He was much loved by his subjects, who erected such a monument to him. Hanoverian “couples” often meet “under the tail”, i.e. at the foot of the royal horse.
The equestrian statue faces the entrance to the underground shopping gallery, where all kinds of stores are located. From here you can also enter the station's dungeons, where there are supermarkets, pharmacies and restaurants. On Sunday, when we suddenly discovered that all commerce in Hannover had gone on holiday, it was the train station with its cafes and supermarkets that became a real salvation for us.
To give you an idea of the level of activity in the station's underground galleries, we took a photo of the traffic density on Saturday afternoon.
To complete the station theme, I will show you the food sold in cafes and restaurants in the underground gallery of Hannover railway station. All the German classics: from knuckles to sausages.
There are two city halls in Hannover: the old one with its sharp and refined spires was built in 1230(!!!), but after some modifications, its appearance in the spirit of the Italian Romanticism of the 15th century has come down to us.
The large-scale building of the new city hall was erected in 1913 and since then the Hannover City Hall has been located here.
At the entrance to the new town hall you are greeted by lions. One of the lions is on the edge of the photo.
Hannover's city food market stands right in front of the old town hall. At its entrance you can see a monument to a grandmother who bought two baskets of groceries here.
We go inside and make a detour through the rows of vendors. The fruit and vegetable sellers pose cordially for us when we take photos of their products.
While the perimeter of the market is reserved for stalls and stores, the central part is given over to various cafes. The Hannover Market is not really a place of trade, but a hangout where hundreds of locals come to chat, eat freshly cooked food, drink beer and wine.
After the market, we set off to explore the neighborhood. Our feet, quite by accident, led us to the Red Light District, where affordable love beckons to strollers with brightly colored billboards inviting them to visit.
Even though it was the middle of the day, the neighborhood was not empty. We saw visitors coming in and out of the doors of establishments with loud names. The next photo shows the Titty Twister, a bar with a name we all remember from the famous movie From Dusk Till Dawn starring George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino.
The walk through the Hanover's hot quarter was calm and did not arouse emotions like those we got near the northern station of Brussels, when we wandered into a similar area of the Belgian capital. There we thought only about how we could get our feet away as soon as possible.
If you haven't read about it, here's a link.
After walking around the streets of Hannover for a while longer, we came across a McDonald's and decided to have a coffee in its warm walls. Earlier we heard that in many countries of the world where McDonald's is represented, it is usually an inexpensive eatery. But here we have its format, for some reason transformed almost into a restaurant. Hannover McDonald's, if not shocked us, then surprised us very much. At a neighboring table sat schoolchildren who talked very loudly, and sometimes, for fun, threw fried potatoes at each other. Visitors, after tasting the burgers, took a very long time to balance their empty boxes and glasses as they placed them on the pyramids of the same garbage. There was no cleaning of the halls at all, and incoming customers had to clear a place to eat by simply moving their trays of containers and leftovers to another table. This is what the hall looked like where we tried to drink coffee.
After McDonald's we went to the river, which bears the name of Lyne. I agree that it sounds a bit double in Ukrainian, but on Saturdays on the bank of this river there is a flea market. A walk among the offered goods of various eras - we liked it.
The vendors of this market are surrounded by very unusual sculptures. Their shapes and colors stir the imagination and brighten up the gray, dank weather.
There is a real mix of times and epochs here: 19th century jewelry is next to Nazi party cards, and dishes from noble palaces are on the same shelf with diplomas and medals of the DDR. If you're a history buff, at least one Saturday in your life is worth spending here. 😉
Here, for example, are several lots from one seller. There is a fashionable armchair and old children's chairs, some kind of tub from a bathhouse, a book, a carpet, a sign, a leather case and a sculpture of an angel. You can just stand there and think about how all these goods ended up in this particular spot on earth today, what their history is, what brought them here...
And in the next photo - a German railway, the unattainable dream of any Soviet schoolchild. None of my friends had such a treasure in their yard. And it is still for sale at the Hanover flea market. 😊😊😊
Hannover is a city of parks. We managed to visit several and were very impressed.
A variety of sculptures makes walks in the parks more interesting and meaningful.
Perhaps the reservoirs in the photographs do not look very bright, but the season is clearly not summer.
There are swans walking around in the park behind the new town hall. The one to my right is very cheeky, constantly trying to pinch passers-by. While taking this photo, I had to constantly look at it so as not to miss the moment of a possible attack. 😁😁😁
In some places, due to the height and shagginess of the trees, it was difficult to tell whether this was a park or whether we had already entered some kind of forest.
Artworks in parks can be found almost everywhere. Four fauns were captured right at the gates of one of the city parks.
A playground in Hannover Park where parents bring their children for a walk.
The leader of the pack of wooden boars looks very brutal.
I posted this photo earlier on my Instagram (don't forget to subscribe to it) . A forgotten, little yellow and blue dog is waiting for its owner on a bench in the park among huge dense trees. We thought this picture looked very cute and touching.
Having breathed in the forest air of the Hannover parks, we returned to the city and continued exploring it. We visited the famous market church.
The doors of the temple contained several scenes, some of which seemed a little strange to us.
Once inside, we found ourselves at a chamber concert, which we listened to with pleasure.
Afterwards we went to have coffee in an art cafe, whose interior consisted of posters of past and future concerts and performances in Hannover. And next to it was "Mom's Bench", from where we sent a photo greeting to our children.
Then we wandered around the colorful ruins. In the arch behind me in the photo hangs a Japanese bell, with the ringing of which the city's residents commemorate the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We came across an unusual monument on the streets of old Hannover. Most likely, this composition of two steel balls should add courage and self-confidence. 🤣🤣🤣
The famous scientist Leibniz lived and worked in Hannover. Well, of course, you remember the famous Newton-Leibniz formula about the relationship between the operations of taking a definite integral and calculating an antiderivative. By the way, Leibniz published it before Newton, and the latter said that he had already discovered this formula a long time ago, he just hadn’t published this discovery anywhere yet. And Leibniz was very cool: he created combinatorics as a science, laid the foundations of mathematical logic, and also described the binary system of calculation on which modern computers work. Not far from the opera house in Hanover there is a monument to the scientist in the form of his recognizable profile, and the house where Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz lived for 18 years is one of the main attractions of Hannover.
Not far from the market square there are several blocks built in the famous German half-timbered architectural style. Walking around these places you are imbued with German history.
There are not only historical works in the city, but also funny ones. Such as a man with a cold lying on a bed in the street, somewhat similar to Mr. Bean. Or a worm that can be "starved" in the gallery.
An example of modern architecture is the Aegi Theatre, whose cubic and glass forms are located next to the new town hall of Hannover.
In this city you can find both the old and the new. Ancient church spires stand next to the Volkswagen Tower.
Street artists carefully draw their characters on the tiles with chalk.
And we, once again seeing my initials on the signboard, as we had done in Vienna, Austria, considered it a good sign. Apparently Hannover doesn't mind us coming here again.
