Marienburg Castle, Hannover, Germany

Over the weekend Ben and I took a drive to Marienburg Castle (Schloss Marienburg), being that this was my first visit to a real castle I was pretty excited actually.
Naturally as is customary on any weekend excursion we first stopped and had some lunch and a beer at the restaurant in the courtyard (reasonably priced and excellent food)
After lunch we took a stroll to the top of one of the towers to take some photos, and then we took the proper guided tour of the castle itself.
Unfortunately you cannot just wander about, and no photography is allowed inside the castle so you will really just have to make do with some photos from outside this time.

I will however outline some of the interesting points from the tour.

The castle was originally given as a gift by King George V of Hannover to his wife Marie as a 39th birthday present in 1857, at the time he gave her the hill which the castle was later to be built on, as well as the plans for the castle itself.  Because he was blind he had the architects create a model of the castle in cork so that he could "see" it himself, both George and his wife Marie were lovers of the arts and music, and it was envisioned that the castle would eventually become a cultural centre for these things.

In 1866 the war with the Prussians forced King George to flee and live in exile, however because Marie owned the land outright the Prussians could not claim it directly, and so she lived there for quite awhile anyway (which I found really cool, she was obviously a pretty hardcore lady), eventually she re-joined her husband in Austria.

Another interesting point are the ties to the English throne, since the House of Hannover actually had many kings who were kings of the United Kingdom, as well as of Hannover, and of course Queen Victoria was part of the family, feel free to read the links at the bottom for more information on that.

Another interesting fact was that the castle used a revolutionary form of underfloor heating which runs through most of the rooms, though it is not enough warmth to heat the larger rooms, it was really quite ahead of its time when the castle was built, and shows that the King and his architects were quite forward thinking.

This is the view from on top of the tower, looking down on the clock in the courtyard.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_V_of_Hanover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_of_Saxe-Altenburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hanover
http://www.reiseland-niedersachsen.de/en/marienburg-castle-1

Schützenfest, Hannover, Germany

So here we are again, the blog post that I should have had finished weeks ago which has been repeatedly delayed by my obsessive editing of an ebook collection instead of productive writing time!

So a few weeks ago now, I went to the Hannover Schützenfest with Ben and Steffi, I guess the first thing I should attempt to explain is what a "Schützenfest" actually is.
Many moons ago, when the city required such a thing there were the town guard, and of course as times moved on the town guard eventually became riflemen.
Each year they would hold a marksmens festival or "Schützenfest" and prizes would be awarded to the competitors, and of course beer and nice foods would be on offer.
Nowadays the festival is basically a giant fair with beer gardens, food tents, rides and attractions.

There are still certain elements of the original concept alive however, there is the "Marksmans Parade" which is where each of the contestants, several bands, and a bunch of festival carriages form a parade.

I don't believe there is ever a bad time to have your picture taken with a dangerously plagiarized mouse

The festival includes most of the usual rides, this was from a haunted house...

The next few shots are from atop the giant ferris wheel we rode on

We also rode the rollercoaster pictured below, it was fantastic, it had loops which basically form the Olympic rings, so it basically started by throwing you through each of those, and then really rather calmed down after it, quite intense for a local funfair though

 I included this next one just because it had a bunch of German flags flying

From the top of the ferris wheel, so you can see we are right near the new Town hall which is in one of the first blog posts

Steffi and I were down for a log ride since it was disturbingly hot out that day, Ben hung out and took this awful picture, I swear I was much more calm in reality

And that wraps it up for this week kids, tomorrow we are going to one of the local castles, so I will take more pictures there!
A lot more information can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzenfesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanover_Sch%C3%BCtzenfest

BONUS! Also, as a little follow up on my piece about the zoo, this local news article was quite funny:
https://www.thelocal.de/20120712/43705/

Hannover Zoo, Hannover, Germany

This post should be a little more fun, my day began by wandering into the city to complete some of my residence paperwork and to be fingerprinted by the foreigners department, once all of that was out of the way I was so cheerful that I thought I might visit a beer garden properly.
Along the way I was speaking to a friend on the phone and spotted a sign that said Zoo... the general consensus was that I immediately head to the Zoo.

As it turns out it was really fun! And there was still a beer garden where I sneaked a few drinks before heading home.  The price of an adult ticket is 23 euros, very much worth it, and there were numerous souvenir shops, ice cream, coffee etc along the way

It was a disturbingly hot day, and I was experimenting a little with my telephoto lens since most of the animals were not particularly excited to come right up to within decent photo range.

Eingang! One of the few German words I already know which means entry (for pedestrians) if this was for cars it would be an Einfahrt.  The opposite is an Ausgang (for pedestrians) and an Ausfahrt for cars.... see education happens all the time!

This creature is awesome, he kinda reminded me of E.T

And I really liked these things, just chilling out upside down snacking on stuff and being cute

I assure you this wolf is not dead, it was just such a hot day it was incapable of much beyond lying on the ground panting and occasionally flailing about

These are not meerkats!

You might remember this bird from such other internet pictures as "O RLY?"

The guinea pig town was a harsh reminder just how close humankind is to total eradication at the hands of small rodents... I forgot to get pictures of the rest of their town, but they had shops and houses too, fairly soon they will begin using tools and when they do, we are all in trouble

And lastly, my favourite creatures on earth....

Historiches Museum, Hannover, Germany

*NOTE* This post will be a little shorter simply for the fact that a lot of my photos did not work out that well this time, must learn how to take a stable and accurate shot without flash (for museums and certain nightshots)

We decided to visit the Museum of History since it was a very rainy day, and that eliminated our first choice which was to visit some spectacular gardens and a fun park, however the museum turned out to be really quite fascinating.  Even though it is a fairly unassuming small building located within Hannovers old town area, it still manages to be home to some really interesting exhibits, and for a 5 euro entry fee it really was quite special.

Our first stop was the "Life on the Land" area, this basically showed life in Hannover in the very early years, when farming and agriculture were more important, as well as some of the implements and routines required to live in those days.

Some scale models of houses and their methods of construction

And also one which showed the layout of a general farm

And what stroll through the history of farming would be complete without an awesome looking scythe!

Next was kind of a mish-mash of era's as well as pieces significant to them... I suspect we walked through this backwards, so in the interests of preserving my own stupidity... we start with the 50's and all of the amazing advertising which came with it, as you can see German advertisements were much the same as their American counterparts, if you have watched a lot of Mad Men the style should be quite familiar to you.

This jukebox contained most of the standard tracks of those years, I think it had some Chubby Checker on it, classy!

And the German lounge circa 1955, doesn't look too far from most other lounges of the era

BMW.... they really have come a very very long way

Since we were going back to front, we then encountered the WW2 area, this first picture was actually really interesting, this is the formal dissolution of the Nazi party. If you view this at full size, you should be able to read that it actually specifies all of the different organisations under the Nazi party which must also be dissolved etc

Various currency and food stamps of the time

This poster reads "Youth serves the Fuhrer"

This poster reads, "Our last hope Hitler"

Next we visited an area which I guess would be best described as "Local history" it contained various items of interest to Hannover specifically.

And I think for now that will actually do... I may do a second post of the few scattered other cool things there, but this post is already longer than I had really intended any single post to be.

Much love... Abigail