Another beautiful day in Hanover. The high today is 15°C but windy. I started the day with my dear hubby by having the breakfast buffet in our hotel. They do serve the most lovely breakfast (see my last post.) And, the beauty of eating here is that my gut can take the bread here. I found out today that GMOs are illegal here like they are in Italy as well – and may be illegal in all of Europe. Is the issue GMOs? I wonder even though Canadian flour at home is marked non-GMO – so, then I wonder, is it really non-GMO? And if it’s not the bread flour, then what else is it that messes with the gut? Any baking shop I see here also seems to do their very own baking – artisan baking – and it’s wonderful. This will likely be the only time I can enjoy breads and pastries because I cannot eat them in Canada without gut discomfort and bloating, and I have to admit, I overdid it in the bread department today – and no issues. Bliss!
The hubby took off to the Convention which I opted out of today. After I saw him off, I got myself a second cappuccino to enjoy in our room – such a great way to drink coffee, truly. I then opened up my blog and finished writing yesterday’s adventures and then went on foot, window shopping my way to Hanover Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) which is their major train station. Again, it’s a weekday and I cannot believe how many people are in the square. I people-watched today and noticed more of the homeless people. They seem to gravitate to the area around the train station and they seem to have an amazing knack for spotting the tourist.
I checked out the H&M store here and I am pretty sure we get different stuff in Canada with this store. The H&M store here had really nice things that I don’t think we are offered in Canada and they weren’t all wrinkled on the hangers either. I did make a purchase while in the store. The clerk spoke English and asked me where I was from – I told him Canada, and he told me how he would like to go there one day. I find that when they find out you are Canadian, they are a little warmer toward you as a foreigner.
As I was walking around in the area I happened upon some street performing and heard a guy singing and so walked over to listen to him – he sang “A Time to Say Goodbye” – not an easy piece to sing. I video-ed the guy as I thought he was quite good, but will need to update my account to include the video. I am always amazed how music seems universal, like math. It can be sung in many languages without being weird … like this being sung in what sounds like Italian. I then also saw a group of five older fellas playing music as well – string instruments including a cello and an accordion. I video-ed a bit of them as well. Music is such a delight to the soul.
There is a lot of shopping on the different levels at Hanover Central Station – there are many stores here that can be found in Canada, so it was kind of a boring shopping spree, but there were a few independents. I think I will save my shopping for Berlin as I would like to purchase things authentic to Germany. Inside the train station there are pigeons flying around inside of it and no one seems bothered by it. I saw signs that prohibit feeding them here. While at the station I noticed a little grocery store and noticed that they sold instant cappuccino so I bought some for our room. I am so thankful that some goods in the store have both Deutsch and English on them.
Little grocery stores and small pharmacies are all over the place. It is so convenient and I love how so much is within walking distance. It probably explains how you rarely see overweight people here – so much is within walking distance. Hanover is a city that doesn’t have to change to be one of those 15-minute cities that are the talk in Canada and other nations these days. In Alberta, Canada, our major city’s mayors have signed up Edmonton and Calgary to be 15-minute cities – I don’t know how they will implement that when I see ’15-minute’ cities here and we are nowhere close to being that. A lot of changes and re-zoning have to be made in our cities to be able to pull that off.
Furthermore, the city of Hanover is well-planned for trains, buses, private vehicles and cyclists – at least from what I could see in the small area we are staying in. There are so many cyclists here! And they have bike lanes on sidewalks – where they should be in my opinion. Very few bike lanes are on the roadways. At the crosswalks, you can see the crosswalks divided – a red strip of crosswalk on the roadway is for cyclists in the left side of the photo and right beside it (on the right) is another crosswalk which is bordered by white lines across the roadway which is for pedestrians. When the light goes green to walk, it shows a person and a bicycle in green. The bike lanes on sidewalks are a dark grey with red brick usually outlining the lanes. It only took me a few blocks of walking, since arriving, to figure that out but before I did, I was almost collided into by cyclists … twice! You do have to be conscious of cyclists, many of which do not have bells to warn pedestrians so you are looking both ways for cyclists and vehicles. All over the place you also see rentable scooters. I watched how it works – they have an app on their phone and it looks like they scan a code of some kind to unlock it to ride it to their destination. The city of Edmonton in Alberta has implemented this same thing with scooters and bicycles. I told the hubby that I have to learn ‘sorry’ in Deutsch which I think might be ‘entschuldigen sei‘ (which translates as ‘my apologies’).
On my way back to the hotel there was a kiosk selling fresh pretzels – sugar coated and cinnamon sugar coated, along with salted ones and ones with cheese – and they were huge! There was no way to resist them and so I bought a few salted ones to take back to our room – I hope they stay fresh enough for the hubby to try later.
As I walked across the park to go back to the hotel, the other thing I noticed is that with the green grass here, you should see dandelions by now, but you don’t – instead you see wild daisies growing instead. I wish we had a daisy problem in Canada instead of a dandelion problem.
As I sit at my laptop typing this, it’s about 6pm and you can hear church bells in the distance. Many people in the park, some with their dogs, and I see young boys playing soccer. So nice to see so many people wandering about.
The hubby got back to the hotel around 6:30pm or so and we went out for supper right away – we went to a restaurant just up the street from the hotel – couldn’t read the menu as it was in Deutsch only, but I spotted the words spanakopita and souvlaki and figured out it was a Greek restaurant whose name we couldn’t pronounce. Because the menu was just in Deutsch – when the server came out to take our order – we pointed and went with whatever surprise we got. We had no idea what we were ordering. We were surprised with slices of french roll and a salad starter and then our entree was french fries with hamburger steak that was stuffed with goat cheese and seasoned with Mediterranean spices – it was quite tasty. This is another adventure for us – we have never ordered food from a restaurant menu this way. We were done eating shortly before 8pm and decided to go for a stroll. We strolled down to Central Station and back again where I took a photo of this statue on our evening walk – Friedrich von Schiller – he was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher who lived from 1759 to 1805. He was friends with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
When we got back to the hotel, guess what I made us?? … you guessed it! Cappuccinos!! A great way to end a day.
Risé Brette
The Weary Traveller 