h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Lisa,

I never heard about a "Kunstmarkt" in Göttingen, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

There is an earth wall that encloses the old town, you can walk right around it, it was my favorite walk when I lived there. In the northern part of the city, where most of the professors live, there is a nice park called "Schillerwiesen". You can lie in the grass or play ball games there in the summer. Or you can walk through the large woods which adjoin to the park.

Places to go:
The first thing to mention is the "Tangente", because it is an institution. They always play the same music, and there are always the same people hanging around (actually they don't seem to get older, so either they are zombies or they are different people just looking all the same). It is the favorite place to go for students of humanities who have difficulties with the other sex. Oh well, I am mean. It is not so bad at all. Only that I got fits of depression every time I went there. You can buy a cheap students ticket which is valid for half a year and gives you free entry.
Perhaps it is better to go to the "Outpost" if you want to dance.
I always hung around in the "Apex" which is a galery and a pub. They also do concerts (quite small ones because they only got a very small room for events), lectures and readings. In the eight years I regularly went there the famous cheese-baguettes became smaller and smaller and the wine became worse and worse, while the prices for both became higher and higer - well, such is life.
In the summertime you can sit outside in the Irish Pub which has a nice little garden, or at the KAZ which places ale-benches on the "Wochenmarkt" (market place) - everybody goes there on warm evenings, you will always meet somebody you know.
Or you sit in some of the cafés at the Weender Straße, which is the main pedestrian area and very picturesque.

One of the most famous inhabitants of Göttingen was Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Germanys greatest aphorist, who lived in Göttingen from 1770 til 1791.

A famous institution was the "Hainbund", a bunch of mediocre romanticists who introduced the habit of burning books to Germany (well, I don't know if they were really the first who did it, but they did it anyway, and they burned the works of authors I like, e.g. Wieland, so I am quite angry about them).

The first lectures were held 1734 in a kind of stable or storehouse, the first official university building was the "Reitstall" ("riding stable")which was demolished in the 1960s to make room for a quite useless shopping center, which is really a shame.

I think that about one half of the buildings in Göttingen have something to do with the university - there are institutes all over the town. The other half of the buildings are dwellings for students, professors and other employees of the university. It is said that about 30 % of the inhabitants are students, and I think that more than 50 % are in one or the other way related to the university.

There are three theatres in Göttingen: the "Deutsches Theater" (German Theatre), the "Junges Theater" (Young Theatre) and the "ThOP" (Theater im OP = Theatre in the Operating Room). The Deutsches Theater is the main theatre of the town, the Junges Theater is quite experimental, but the one I like most is the ThOP. It is a students' theatre and the name relates to the place it is situated. The faculty for german philology is in the former buildings of the university hospital. So the theatre is really in an old operating room, which was used for lectures in medicine. On the stage, which is surrounded by sloping rows of seats, they used to perform operations and the students could watch them. I don't know if the patients were still alive (it wouldn't have been quite hygienic). It is like an antique amphi-theatre. The quality of the plays varies from director to director, but mostly they are quite good.

Göttingen is situated in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), right in the middle of Germany, near to the "Documenta"-town Kassel. The next airports are in Hannover or in Frankfurt/Main - each in a distance of ca 150 kilometres.

So far for today.

Greetings

Morgana

link: www.goettingen.de

Thankyou VERY much That's a great help!!

Sorry it's taken me so long to notice this! *doh*


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