Saturday, May 15

Today has not been a most auspicious day. The weather is quite cool and rainy--Heidi said it has been reported this is the coldest May in 70 years.

Werner is leaving today to go sailing in the Azores with some friends. The weather doesn´t look any better there and I don´t envy him being on a boat when it is so chilly.

Heidi and I had thought to drive to the Baltic Sea today, but after looking at the weather on the internet we deciided tomorrow would be a much better day. The only rain in Germany today is in our area! So we decided to go into Hannover instead. We planned to go to the City Hall which is a beautiful building and also where Heidi works. On the way there a car pulled into our lane. I saw the car start to pull out and yelled (what I yelled I won´t repeat on this blog) and Heidi swerved, but he hit us on the passenger side. Not major damage (easy for me to say, it isn´t my car!), just a long dent/scrape down most of the passenger side. After the exchange of information we continued on to the city hall. This is the "new" city hall---a little over 100 years old. It is a magnificient building with a soaring central hall, statues, beautiful ironwork and marble bannisters, and elaborate frescoes. There are four displays under glass showing models of Hannover at different times. The first was from 1790. Then one in 1939 (which showed that the Jewish synagogue had already been destroyed) another after the war (surprisingly, the city hall was not destroyed--although much of the rest of the city was) and then one of present day Hannover. There are some old buildings, but in some ways Hannover is a new city having been rebuilt after the war.

Hannover doesn´t get much notice in the tourist books, but I think it is a lovely city, with a lot of parks and many statues all through the city---not just "old" statues, but many modern and comical ones. I asked if they were installed for the Expo in 2000, but Heidi said no, they had been there before. There are old buildings that are charming and beautiful, but also some very modern ones.

We walked past the "old" city hall which for some reason the exterior of looks much more modern than the "new" one. It is mainly used for weddings and is where Heidi and Werner were married. As we walked past a newly married couple was posing for photos, and there was a group of people, all holding roses, waiting for the next couple to come out. We then went to a church where I managed to drop my camera. Ancient store floors aren´t healthy for cameras. I managed one photo--although it would only show as black and white in the viiewfinder. I turned the camera off (the universal fix--turn if off and turn it back on. When I try to turn it back on I get I get a message of "lens error, restart camera". So much for the univeral fix.... Sigh..........so I am afraid my camera is toast. We stopped by a camera shop and were told that it would probably cost about 100 Euros (maybe 135-140 dollars) to repair it. I looked at another Canon camera (not the same style as the one I have) and it was 169 Euros. Heidi offered to let me use her camera while I am here )dear Lord, PLEASE let me not drop it!!!!) and I am going to see if Gina will let me do the same, putting my card in her camera. We also stopped at an electronic store and the price was 179 Euros for the same camera at the camera shop. I have emailed a repair shop in Richardson to see what they think.

We then had a very good lunch at a vegetarian restaurant where Heidi often eats. By then we decided that perhaps we shouldn´t tempt fate anymore today so we stopped by a video store and came home!

Tomorrow we are headed to the Baltic Sea.