It’s been snowing this morning in Göttingen, just as the sun was rising above the wintry clouds on the horizon. There’s a dusting still on the roofs and the ground that’s not melting as it’s still below zero. We arrived yesterday around lunch time after a two hour train trip from Berlin. It was a scenic trip: highlights were lots of blue sky, green fields and sun filtering through deciduous trees; lowlights, the guy next to me speaking non-stop Spanish (at volume) into his phone for 40 minutes, to some poor sucker on the other end who couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Another point of interest was Wolfsburg, the artificial city created by and for VW. A factory that goes on and on and then plastic wrapped cars in enormous parking lots, very green grass and manmade canals.
Göttingen is a University city that escaped ally bombing in WWII. This means I get to see some interesting old buildings that have stood the test of time, even though they may have become a bit stooped or shabby with age. The Altstadt (old city) is surrounded by a wall that you can walk on around the city. We did walk a little on the wall after winding through some back streets admiring the stoic structures from long ago, including a delapidated mill from the 1700s.
The remains of Christmas are evident advent calendars on windows, decorations between buildings and my favourite, the Christmas tree collection points (large wire-fenced areas full of discarded conifers of various species). I feel a bit sad about their sudden redundancy, this is piqued by my longing to have a Christmas tree such as those and then also tempered by my inner Greenie thinking of the utter waste. We also came across a nativity scene that appeared to be a proud tradition of the church that it was set behind. They had gone to a lot of trouble to create the scene even before the shed/stable with the nativity. The fake sheep were looking a little worse for wear, but I did admire the simple elegance of the branch of mistletoe on a lichen-covered stone altar.
The University of Göttingen itself has some old buildings throughout the city and many modern ones too. It is one of the oldest universities in Germany and has produced and been affiliated with many Nobel laureates. I like the feel of a university city, it’s a comfort zone for me I guess being that my job is in a university. I also like that I am seeing faces from all over the world that have come to this place to learn and to share their experiences, knowledge and endeavours.
Rosie and I will be having some time together in Göttingen while Ali works. Perhaps a bike ride to the lake, lunch at a local Persian restaurant, a salt bath with possible accompanying massage, afternoon tea at the Konditorei (a sweet tooth’s delight) and some retail therapy will be in order. It certainly is a relaxing, slow kind of travel I am undertaking.
As a post script to the previous blog… the fireworks were next level… they went on for hours and the detritus littered the streets the following days. Here is little taste of what went on outside our apartment on Grunberger Straße (be afraid, be very afraid)
Presence in Place 