A Day Over in Hanover

Whenever we got lost in Hanover,
we looked for the "Witch Church' to orient ourselves.

Cities in Northern Germany are studies in contradictions.

Bremen is a blue-collared, working class city, where beer brewers and factory workers rub shoulders with students and artists. That strange mixture gives you a city that's grounded and unpretentious, yet still artistic and surprising. My kind of city.

Hamburg is a sprawl of sailors, refugees, drifters, musicians, bankers, ship owners, and old money at the mouth of the Elbe River. It's a city of work ethic and debauchery, with a worldliness that accepts everything and anything, because there are better things to do than judge someone for who they are or what they do – like make money or party.

To the south of these fine towns is Hanover, a mid-sized city that's a little tougher to pin down.

Every region in Germany speaks German a little different, from the rocks-in-your-mouth dialect in Cologne to the Bavarians' take on the language, which the rest of Germany unjustifiably snickers at. I've been told the German that Hanoverians speak is as close as you can get to the original High German. I'm no expert, but the German I heard in Hanover was definitely clearer and easier to understand for the slow-learning, novice German-speaker.

Hanover is a city that wears its white collar stiffly, but unlike other German cities, Hanover is not a city of bankers or chemists or engineers. It's a city of culture. There are theatres everywhere, an opera house with a packed schedule, and enough museums and art galleries to please every artistic inclination.

And yet, our only full day in the city was a Monday, so every museum in the city was closed. The Sprengel and its collection of 20th centuries masterpieces was off limits. The Kestnergesellschaft was a no go. The edgy, ultra-modern KUBUS was not edgy enough to be not closed for the day.

And since this is February, the Botanical Gardens and the gardens around the Schloss Herrenhaus would have been a dreary, cold walks. The giant forest in the middle of the city would have been nice, but barren. 

But this is turning into a blog post about what we didn't do, let's get down to what we did do.

We wandered around Hanover's lovely old town. We ate pizza at an amazing Italian place – by the way, the best Italian food I've eaten has been at Italian-owned restaurants in Germany, not tourist traps in Italy. We froze walking around the old city hall and the local man-made lake. We warmed up over kaffee and kuchen. We even did a little window shopping.

Clearly visiting on a Museum Monday in February meant what we didn't get a complete sense of the city's culture or its big cityforest. So a return trip with better weather on any day other than a Monday might in order. Even with 36 hours in the city, Hanover showed it's depth, we just need to time it better.

"Papers, Please"

Some, but not all, of my papers. In Germany, you are nothing without your papers.
You need papers to do stuff and you get papers for doing stuff.
Save them all. 

Long ago there was blog that showed flat lay photos of objects people would grab from their home if it was on fire. They photographed their most important, prized possessions – the things they couldn't live without. 

They were mostly designers, so the items they'd save were typically designer-ish: sunglasses, laptops, and hard drives. An awful lot of handguns appeared in the careful arrangements because, well, it was an American blog.

Put in the same situation in Germany, I would grab people before possessions and then I would grab my papers, all my important papers, because you are nobody in Germany without your papers.

When you arrive to Germany, you must register at the city's civil office. They give you a paper, an Anmeldung, that says you do indeed live where you say you live. You will need this for everything. If you lose it, no one will believe you exist, because they don't know if you really have a home. There's no paper to prove it.

You will sign a contract at your job. You must hold on to this. Your landlord will want to see it. And to get your Anmeldung, your landlord must give you a copy of your rental agreement. So, you can't get one paper without the other paper. 

You will show most of these papers when you open a bank account – you won't remember which papers you need, so you will bring them all to the bank, just in case. 

You will need the bank account to get paid by your job and pay your landlord. You will get papers from both: payslips and invoices. You must save these papers to prove people pay you and that you pay people. You may need your bank papers for later, but you don't know for what, so you keep them just in case the need arises.

As you bank with your bank, they will print out records of your transactions and mail them to you. You should keep those papers too, because, well, you might need them when someone official asks for them.

Did you keep those pay slips I mentioned earlier? Good. You need those papers to file your income tax statement. You will need more papers for your taxes, like receipts, statements, and bills of sale. 

After you file your taxes, they will send you a statement stating what they did with your tax papers. Keep that paper too. You should also keep a paper copy of your original tax return, just in case someone official asks for it. 

All these papers go somewhere. A box or a binder or somewhere safe. Because if you move, you will need to prove it with papers at the civil office and update your Anmeldung (remember that important piece of paper?), after you get new contract papers from your landlord.

If you renew your work permit, you need to go to the Pension Office and show a bunch of your papers to get another piece of paper that proves you've been paying into the pension fund. If you're like me, and they recorded you as a woman, they will correct that error in the system and give you a piece of paper saying that a piece of paper has been sent to someone upstairs who will correct that error in the records.

If you lose your job, you will go to the job agency and register as a jobseeker. In order to do this, you will need most of your papers. Make sure you have every single one of those papers. Your EU Blue Card comes with a piece of paper too big to fit in your wallet. It stays at home safe. You might forget that piece of paper and will have to return the next day with all your papers and that little piece of paper to get registered, for which you are given another piece of paper, for your records.

And so, if I am unlucky enough to see my home burn down, I will get everyone out and then run back into the inferno to rescue my papers, because what good is a laptop, disk drive, sunglasses, or a handgun if I don't have my papers in Germany.

The Strange Places of 2017

The first week in January is a week of looking. Looking at the work inbox in amazement that so many people were sending emails over the holidays. Looking at the window at 4pm to see the sun has set long ago. Looking at the year that went by before looking at the year ahead.

Here are some (not all, that would be a long blog) highlights from the year that was 2017. 

Soaking in the Cave Bath at Miskolc-Tapolca. 

We started the New Year in Miskolc-Tapolca, where we visited the famed Cave Baths. What stuck with me on our trip was our Lillefüred visit. It was a foggy, cold day – cold enough for the lake to freeze, so we could walk out onto it. 

Again and again, when we came for family visits to Hungary, we returned to the country's beautiful east side for hikes, wine drinking, and heritaging. 

The view from Füzer Castle.

Kata's Christmas gift for me were tickets to a Düsseldorf hockey game. I'm a Canadian cliche, but I'm okay with that.

Great seats, too.

We ventured into the Netherlands twice this year, to Rotterdam and a great road trip to The Hague, Haarlem, and Kinderdijk. It might have to do with my Dutch heritage or that every bar and cafe offers cutting boards with meat, cheese, and deep-fried nibbles to snack on as you drink your beer, but I feel like I can't visit that country enough.

When the sun comes out in Rotterdam, you get out.

Our time in Canada always feels brief, so I pack the schedule with friend and family time, and the getaway so Kata can discover my homeland. This year, we made it to Ottawa, where we were easily able to combine Discover Walks with some family time with the locals.

Family time = Photo Time 

I had a month without work and a freelancer friend in Hamburg had some time on his hands. We met halfway between our cities in Bremen for a mid-week getaway. Bremen is an old Hanseatic city, with a lovely Gothic old town. But it's also a student town with a energetic artsy vibe. We discovered this because the only good bars open on a Tuesday were the student drinking holes, which we frequented.

The entrance to Art Deco Street.

The oldest guys at the student bar always take the most selfies.

Kata and I discovered the Eiffel National Park. I wanted to write a longer, stand-alone post, but I couldn't find a story, theme, or thread for 200 words. I'll get to it later, but it's a wild, big, beautiful corner of North-Rhine-Westphalia. 

Walking around old lava.

Watching a friend get married, twice, in Toronto and Paris.

Well look at that, holding up the bar well past last call again.

My parents came to visit Europe. This was a big deal, and a lot of fun.

Walking through Aachen with the Euro-Trippers.

And this happened.