So I have been in Clausthal for over a month now and I am starting to settle in. I have met and made friends with lots of lovely people and I have explored a lot of the local area.
Clausthal is known (by a few people) for its millions of lakes so I thought that I should probably take a look. I had no idea where any of them where so I just started walking and eventually found a pathway that goes past a few of the lakes. Just to give you a guide of how cold it is, most of the lakes are frozen over although it has started warming up. I found signs that explained the origins of the lakes but I cant read German that well yet so I may have to go for another trip around when my German is better.
After having explored most of Clausthal, I figured that I should visit the local town of Goslar so I decided to go with Merlin (my partner on the project) and his girlfriend Steffi. Goslar is quite a vintage town with many churches and sort of Edwardian house architecture but also had many modern shops so overall was a very nice town but was still not what I expected Germany to be like. I can probably put that down to being up in the Harz mountains. One thing that I noticed was that Germany still have Woolworths which is quite strange becasue they went bankrupt in England. The journey back to Clausthal was quite interesting because Steffi drove and she was mental. I think that I can extrapolate from this experience that all Women drivers are scary!!
This week is when all the international students arrived so I had an introduction day where I was shown around Clausthal and had a very exciting library tour but at the end of the day, we had a BBQ where they sold beer and a bratwurst for 1 euro. At this, I met a huge variety of people from different countries and a lot of Chinese people (I swear they are taking over the world). As soon as it got a little to cold, me and few of the new people I met decided to go to Ano which is a local pub. Its safe to say that the next day was fun at work. Then the following day, I had a party to go to. It was Katja's (a colleague from the institute) moving in party which was a lot of fun. We had a lot of home-brewed shots and I got to see a few of my colleagues quite drunk as you can see in the picture which made the next day at work was quite interesting.
The most recent trip that I have done was visiting the beautiful city of Hannover. Me, George and Erica (the people i met from the international day) caught the train to Hannover which was quite entertaining because none of us had any idea about the train system. We ended up paying twice as much as what we had to but oh well. On the train, we got speaking to some German citizens which was difficult because we could not speak very good German and they knew no English. I took a while but we eventually understood each other. Luckily, Hannover is a tourist friendly town with a red line running through it showing all the places of interest which we stuck to religiously. Hannover was the perfect city because it had a big shopping area and some very interesting architecture but also had some very large fields and a huge lake. I have also found the most awesome form of transport.
Its called a Bierbike which is basically a bar on wheels where you can cycle around the city. I am definitely going on that when I next go to Hannover!
During our time there we also visited the Markthalle which was a massive hall filled with stalls that sold food from all over the world which was also awesome! We ended the day by the lake with music playing in the background and the entertainment of a group of drunk people getting off the bierbike and some people doing parkour which was the perfect finish to the day. Hannover was more the kind of Germany I was expecting to see but we are planning to visit several cities throughout Germany like Hamberg and Munich so this will hopefully give me a better view of Germany.
Clausthal is known (by a few people) for its millions of lakes so I thought that I should probably take a look. I had no idea where any of them where so I just started walking and eventually found a pathway that goes past a few of the lakes. Just to give you a guide of how cold it is, most of the lakes are frozen over although it has started warming up. I found signs that explained the origins of the lakes but I cant read German that well yet so I may have to go for another trip around when my German is better.
After having explored most of Clausthal, I figured that I should visit the local town of Goslar so I decided to go with Merlin (my partner on the project) and his girlfriend Steffi. Goslar is quite a vintage town with many churches and sort of Edwardian house architecture but also had many modern shops so overall was a very nice town but was still not what I expected Germany to be like. I can probably put that down to being up in the Harz mountains. One thing that I noticed was that Germany still have Woolworths which is quite strange becasue they went bankrupt in England. The journey back to Clausthal was quite interesting because Steffi drove and she was mental. I think that I can extrapolate from this experience that all Women drivers are scary!!
The most recent trip that I have done was visiting the beautiful city of Hannover. Me, George and Erica (the people i met from the international day) caught the train to Hannover which was quite entertaining because none of us had any idea about the train system. We ended up paying twice as much as what we had to but oh well. On the train, we got speaking to some German citizens which was difficult because we could not speak very good German and they knew no English. I took a while but we eventually understood each other. Luckily, Hannover is a tourist friendly town with a red line running through it showing all the places of interest which we stuck to religiously. Hannover was the perfect city because it had a big shopping area and some very interesting architecture but also had some very large fields and a huge lake. I have also found the most awesome form of transport.
Its called a Bierbike which is basically a bar on wheels where you can cycle around the city. I am definitely going on that when I next go to Hannover!
During our time there we also visited the Markthalle which was a massive hall filled with stalls that sold food from all over the world which was also awesome! We ended the day by the lake with music playing in the background and the entertainment of a group of drunk people getting off the bierbike and some people doing parkour which was the perfect finish to the day. Hannover was more the kind of Germany I was expecting to see but we are planning to visit several cities throughout Germany like Hamberg and Munich so this will hopefully give me a better view of Germany.
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