Back to Harste - Göttingen in summer

I'm tempted to write that summer in Germany sucks - I've been here almost week now and the weather has been terrible, it was really hot and sunny the day that I arrived but ever since its been cloudy and raining. I'm back in Harste, just outside of Göttingen where Hauke's parents live, having convinced them to let me stay in their empty house while they are away on holiday.

Church in Lenglern

I caught the train from Liege to Frankfurt on Tuesday morning, and ended up sitting right up the front of the train where I could see through a glass panel into where the driver sits, very cool! After my second train arrived at Göttingen I had to find the right bus stop and take the bus out to Harste for the first time, which I managed ok. I got inside the house without any problems, and Karin had left heaps of instructions and emergency numbers and stuff I might need all lined up on the table, she's so cute!

View of Harste, you can see it better following the photos link below

It's a little weird to be back here. When I was here over Christmas everything was covered in snow and the house was full of people, it's strange to wake up in the morning and hear only silence! I was planning on not doing very much while I was here as I am really broke, so I've spent five days just sleeping, reading and going for runs, bike rides and walks everyday to explore the surrounding countryside. Biking around has taught me to stop moaning about how flat Europe is - while Lower Saxony might not have any mountains, it definitely isn't flat! But, I'm much more used to biking around the countryside than the crazy cities here, and I'm on a bike I feel comfortable on, so I haven't had any repeats of my biking misadventures in Mainz and Gent. Late one afternoon when the sun was almost out I walked up the hill behind Harste, something I wanted to do in winter but couldn't because of the snow. The view is pretty good, you can see Göttingen in the distance and the other villages all around.

Houses in Harste

Harste is 10km outside of Göttingen. I'm not going to guess at how many people live here, but it's tiny! It has a church, a bank, a kindergarten and school, and maybe a couple of hundred houses, and rather randomly is home to the national base for Tedox, this huge discount chain shop. There are other villages only 2-3km away in several directions that are very similar, I biked around half a dozen of them. Arne said that they are becoming more like commuters suburbs of Göttingen rather than villages though, when he was a kid there was a lot more here, like resturants, pubs and shops. I don't see how even what is here gets by, with their being a bank every couple of kilometers along in the different villages.

Cows in barn on the main road, Lenglern

The countryside here is really different to countryside in NZ, in that here almost all of the farmhouses are in the village proper, and their land is bordering the village. It's common to see tractors heading down the main road of town, and I've seen cows poking their heads out of a barn on the main road of one village too! Many of the old farmhouses have the barn attached to the house, and both are attached to the neighbours' houses and barns, all in a row. It still seems a bit odd to me, I'm used to each farm being ages away from each other!

Gladebeck, the next village along

Friday night Hauke's brother Arne came out and picked me up and I watched a movie with him and a friend, and then went for a few drinks afterwards. It was good to catch up with him, and good to have an actual conversation with someone! I do think that having all this time here on my own has done me good though, it's been a really intense seven months, or even longer if you think about everything I was doing before I left NZ, and I haven't had much space from other people for that long either. The little things like sleeping as long as I want and eating whenever I want have been good. I feel a lot more relaxed now!

More photos are here.