Blogs from Lower Saxony, Germany, Europe - page 19

I hadn't been back to Goslar since 1996 when I finished my summer job there as a student at a local recycling firm, so our decision to head back there for a quick overnight stay had me wondering whether the place would still be the sleepy little town in the Harz mountains that I remembered. We arrived at the station fairly early in the day following our journey from Koeln and were pretty knackered, especially with the heat that day. Luckily, the Tourist Info office in town quickly found us some accomodation at a very central guesthouse (thankfully not the guesthouse I'd stayed in 10 years previously, which was run by a small battleaxe of a woman who thought your every move was hers to monitor..she was, in fact, still on the Tourist Info list but ... read more

On Saturday evening, April 29, my friend Jim and I departed LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) to begin our "European Vacation." Almost 24 hours later we would reach our initial destination of Hannover, Germany. Our actual travel time, however, was only 15 hours (including a layover in London). The remaining 9 hours resulted from the jump from Los Angeles' time zone to Germany's time zone. The journey itself was fairly comfortable - the longest leg of the trip was a 10 hour flight on American Airlines from Los Angeles to London. The second leg (London to Hannover) was a really quck one. After arriving at the Hannover airport around 8:00 p.m., Jim and I picked up our rental car, checked into our hotel room, and proceeded to head over to the bug show. No time for ... read more

Hanover was our first day trip in germany, using the awesome niedersachsen ticket, 5 people 24euro anywhere in niedersachsen... ROCK ON In hannover we found some cool buildings particularly the town hall, and a couple of neat churches.. Being winter when we went it was cold and the gardens we went to see were bare, althought the leafless hedges were nice... The town hall had an interesting display, it had models showing what the city looked like in the 17 century, before WW2 after, WW2 and today. It was particularly interesting to see the extent to which the city was destroyed by allied bombing during the war. Sorry this entry isnt very long, for now you can check out the pics, and i will write up a more in depth summary of hanover soon. Moin moin.. ... read more

After learning German last year from Dennis and Sabine, my two TAs, who are actuall German students, studying abroad in the U.S., I knew that I had to go to their school and visit them. They attend Göttingen University, which, although not the oldest in Germany, has a very long and decorated history. (Something like 42 Nobel Laureates were either alumni or professors or both.). I took a long and rather dull bus ride over to Göttingen, which is in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) in former West Germany. It was my first trip to West Germany and it was interesting to compare. The landscape is more quaint, with neat little farms and towns dotting the landscape, puncutated by Germany’s army of windmills. I got to Göttingen about mid-afternoon on Friday and was picked up by Dennis at ... read more

So, nun habe ich jetzt endlich die Entscheidung gefasst, wie ich die nächsten Wochen archivieren werde. Noch ist ja alles in der finalen Planungsphase, Impfungen müssen aufgefrischt, Informationen über Thailand eingeholt, letzte Behördengänge gemacht werden und was da noch so alles zugehört. Aber in 2 Wochen geht's los, so langsam wirds spannend ;-). Heute war ein recht stressiger Tag auf Station im Oststadtkrankenhaus, viel Ärzte auf irgend so einem Kongreß, deshalb irgendwie ein bischen chaotisch, der heute zuständige Stationsarzt kannte sich auch nicht so recht mit den Patienten aus, ich schon gar nicht, war ja die ganze Woche nur im OP, naja, so alles in allem haben wir das aber schon recht gut hingekriegt. Und jetzt geht's ja erstmal ins Wochenende, Montag ist ja auch noch frei, also kann ich mich nochmal vor der letzten deutschen ... read more