subject: Places To Go In Central Germany [print this page] Start by visiting the cities and towns that ring the forested mountains of the Weserbergland and the Vogelsberg, from Celie in the north to Marburg in the south, which will put you in the historical picture.
After that, you may feel like diving inside those rings, into the pages of a storybook. Meandering upriver from Hameln (Hamelin) along the Weser will take you into Sleeping Beauty country: the dark, still quite forbidding forests in which some of the best-known German folk and fairy tales are set.
Lower Saxony's state capital is a good base from which to explore the Center proper, especially if you happen to be on the rebound from a Hanseatic city tour. Hamburg to Hannover (the German spelling) is a comfortable 90-minute Autobahn hop. A good map and some astute navigating to the freeway called the Messe Schnellweg will assure you of smooth entry into town, because city planners have pandered to the motorist with a network of urban superhighways. You may be tempted to cruise right into the heart of the city. But beware: Parking is tight.
Instead, turn right down HansBocklerAllee and leave your car in the neighborhood of the Congress Centrum, where there is far more space. Hannover's city center suffered a great deal of bomb damage during World War II. Stately buildings such as the Oper and the Leineschloss, of which enough survived to warrant restoring, are generally lone period pieces, separated by several blocks of modern facades. To conjure up.
some semblance of cohesion, the authorities had a broad red stripe, over 4 km (21/2 miles) in length, painted along the city pavement.
Its loops and squiggles lead to some three dozen interesting buildings and monuments. Consecutive numbers on the pavement should match those of a companion booklet (obtainable at the tourist offices in the Neues Rathaus or the main train station), but fail to do so in many cases. The stripe is badly faded and, here and there, completely erased.
Discovering the remains of Old Hannover under your own steam can be just as much fun.
