Hannover Day 1 - Part 2

And then we went on a bicycle ride though a forest and around a lake. Neither the forest nor the lake were small. I was so excited to be bicycling through such a beautiful forest I neglected to take a single photo of the forest, the lake, or us bicycling. I'm sorry, I failed at the photography part of this adventure, but I really was just so overjoyed and stunned it didn't even occur to me to take out my phone. 

First of all, I was riding an eBike for the first time. Wow, this might be life-changing. I've just read that Minnesota just passed a transit bill that will give a rebate on eBikes next year, I'll have to research when I get home, I want one! Here, the infrastructure for bicycles is everywhere! It seems to have precedence over every other form of transit. They have their own ribbon of a lane anywhere else anyone is moving. They have their own traffic lights. They have their own high-speed lanes for fast-moving bicycles. Everyone of every possible age, carrying any amount of day-to-day things is on them. I'm in love with all of the bicycling. I feel so boastful about how many bike lanes we have in Minnesota, but compared to here, we are like a dirt road to a highway.

Second of all, the forest (Stadtwald Eilenriede) is the biggest so-called "City Forest" in Europe, twice the size of New York's Central Park at 1600 acres with 50 miles of walking and 24 miles of bicycling paths. And truly a forest, with tall tall old trees, dense brush, so so green. Every once in a while a little surprise field or picnic area or bridge or stream or soccer field or biergarten or zoo, and then more forest. Hartmut kept up a fast pace and it was a joy to fly along, enjoying the cool breeze, birdsong, and sights along the way.

Thirdly, the lake. Also in the city, not far from the forest, the Maschsee is an artificial lake, about 200 acres in size, with every kind of water craft you might imagine except no motors, and lots and lots of people walking and jogging and biking around. Several lovely pavilions. lots of places to eat. Building it was an employment program of the Nazis. It's still a nice lake. 

We enjoyed some kind of flatbread thing that looked a bit like a pizza but was nothing like a pizza. In Robert's effort to indicate to the chef that I needed something lactose free but his own preference was "normal" somehow they started talking about being normal vs. being a foreigner, the chef being from Persia he said, and the next thing you know, they were hugging enormously. I'm still not sure how that happened, but it was just one of those traveler kind of moments of great friendly joy when two outsiders see the outsider in each other. By this time, I'd learned my first (and as Hartmut said, most important) German word, lecker, which means delicious, and which I proclaimed again and again as I ate my flatbread and slurped a delicious German beer.

I finally remembered to take a photo. This was before the flatbread arrived.
The fries come with ketchup and mayonnaise. Also delicious.

Along the way to the lake, we stopped at Aegidienkirche,
a church destroyed in the war - no roof, only walls - a monument.
This is a peace bell donated by Hannover's sister city,
Hiroshima, to remember the victims of war.