On our last day in Germany, we decided to take the train to Hannover and walk around for a bit. It was a little rainy and lots of things were closed because it was Sunday, but it was still nice to see the town.
Our main destination was the Rathaus (town hall), which was pretty impressive.
It’s not easy to capture its grandeur of the inside, but here are a couple of shots.
They had a great display of the city at different times in history. Here’s an overall photo.
And closeups of each one, showing its growth, destruction and eventual regrowth.
The building has an observation platform in the dome, so we decided to try it. We didn’t realize what a crazy Willy Wonka like elevator we’d have to take to get there. Here’s a photo from the Wikipedia page that shows its path.
I was kind of freaked out — it’s a tiny, crowded compartment going at an odd angle — but I managed to get a couple of photos. Here’s the elevator shaft.
And here’s one of the viewing window in the floor.
I was not crazy about this part of our adventure at all. There was also a spiral staircase to contend with.
However, the payoff was the view. Even on a dreary day, it was spectacular.
After we made our way back down the staircase and the crazy lift, we left the Rathaus and went to Aegidienkirche, a bombed out church that was not rebuilt, but rather kept as a memorial. It was quite striking.
Before taking the train back to Nienburg, we stopped for lunch at an Irish pub which had decent food and a very kind English-speaking waitress.
Later, we had a quiet dinner with Jokke and Merja (Turkish takeout — delicious!) and spent the rest of the evening packing up for our flight to Finland the next day.
Here’s a slideshow of all of my photos from this day.