Oh! I'm going too slowly, aren't I? In realtime, it's June 27th, day 13 of this trip and here I am still telling you about day three of the trip, which was day one in Hannover. I'll have to speed up if I'm ever going to catch up to the much faster Instagram posts (and I'm even behind on those)!
Well, day one of Hannover is taking three parts because we did so much that day. Hartmut, our guide, is maybe one of the most energetic people I've ever met. He's a teacher, like Robert, but also he's a musician, and an avid collector and reader of history, and before becoming a teacher, he had about a hundred different odd jobs so he just knows lots and lots of random things he likes to share. I regret not getting a photo of him just being excited about something because I think that must be his natural state all the time. Robert told me, "He's curious about everything, like you." He really likes to talk about music. The morning of this long day - or maybe it was another morning, I can't remember now - he excitedly introduced me to a Swedish band called Junip that's been around since the late 80s by playing some of their music. I talked about the density of the music but because of Hartmut's accent, I heard "dancety" but maybe that's what he meant, though I doubt it because his English is impeccable, but anyway I liked the sound of dancety and it's wonderful to listen to him talk about music. He has a digital radio show he produces now and then full of history and insight into music around various themes.
So anyway, we're still on our first full day in Hannover, and our first in Germany, after two days of travel, jetlagged, missing our main piece of luggage, flabbergasted and thrilled to find ourselves here but a bit groggy and on yet another adventure after dinner. Off to the Herrenhäuser Gärten, an immense Baroque garden and palace dating back to the 17th century. We were there mostly to appreciate this great garden designed by Sophie von der Pfalz, also known as Sophie of Hannover, also through some political turn of events the unexpected heir and now sole progenitor to the crown of England. Most of that last part doesn't make much sense to me, but anyway she designed a hell of a garden, apparently in the Dutch baroque style, influenced by her childhood in the Netherlands.
Hedges and fountains and statuary, oh my. It's just stunning. Hartmut made sure to take us to a statue of her where he explained she died in her garden, stumbling in a rainstorm late at night. We were there at night ourselves, a little later than expected, so moving quickly, because dinner conversation made us lose track of time - a pattern that repeated throughout our entire visit - anyway, we were there to enjoy that once in a while they turn on all sorts of lights throughout the garden, behind statues, in fountains, in various colors, bringing the already beautiful garden to a state of enchantment.
In the U.S., despite how much space we have, we don't have many spaces where we devote vast swaths of land to public art and thoughtfully designed places of contemplation and rest. We have our national and state forests of course. And we have monuments and memorials and government buildings and public art. We even have botanical gardens. But the sheer spaciousness of these carefully designed and forever maintained spaces of cultivated gardens, statues, and public spaces, celebrating ideas and beauty and history are so different from what I'm used to. Maybe it's unique to places that had royalty, but anyway, it makes my eyes wide and my breath deep and my sense of wonder expanded to stand there imagining hundreds of years of other humans calmly, joyfully wondering and smiling as they walk arm in arm, gaze at a statue, peeking around a hedge, listen to birds high in the trees, smell a rose, and cool off alongside a fountain. I love our American places of rest and contemplation too, but the walkways are just so much wider here, it's really luxurious. (Just a moment to say the Europeans didn't invent enormous luxurious gardens, the Chinese and the Egyptians did it too. I'm just saying we don't have them in the U.S. and now that they exist in public spaces available to more than royalty, well, they're nice.)
So anyway, we skipped along to Baroque music piped in through speakers I couldn't see, gasping again and again at every turn of a hedge to reveal a beautifully lit statue or secret sitting place. Photos below with captions to explain. Before we left the house, Hartmut enlisted my help toting along little bottles of sparkling wine in my purse, and the peak of the evening was when we arrived at the largest fountain of all, he fished out cups from his pockets, and we all slurped wine in the dark and marveled at 72 meters of water shot into the sky, lit from below. What a treat, I wonder if Sophie could possibly have imagined how many people would enjoy her work so long after she left. Thanks Sophie! Thanks dear Hartmut and Martina for sharing!
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Fountains!
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| and more fountains! |
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An outdoor performance stage, the wings made by statuary and topiary. It seats 500.
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