First familiar face:

Wow. After 8 weeks of new faces, it was nice to hang out this weekend with someone I've known for longer. Julian came to Washington to visit my family a couple times in the last few years for long enough to become friends. His family is from Stuttgart (See several previous posts), but he is studying to be a doctor up in Hannover (about 4 hours north by train). Now that his exams are over, we had the time to hang out for a whole weekend.

I caught the high speed (250 kph) train Friday afternoon, and we met up at the station and walked over to his flat [Somewhere around here]. The first two weeks of August, Hannover has a huge festival that stretches around a large man-made lake (Machsee... here) near the middle of town. We went on down there, grabbed some food, and caught up on the last couple years before heading back to get some sleep for the next day.

Machsee at dusk

Julian, ready to roll!

Saturday, I borrowed a bike from one of his flatmates and we packed some lunches and set off to see one of the largest lakes in Germany: the Steinhuder Meer. Despite a 70% chance of rain, the day began beautifully as we traced the bicycle paths out of the city and deep into the countryside. Northern Germany is much flatter than the southern part, but still beautiful in its own way. By lunchtime we had made it to the lake [here], some 40km away. It is a popular tourist spot for people around the region, and there were uncountable sailboats out on the water.




Steinhuder Meer

We circled the lake, got ice cream at one of the small tourist towns on the shore, and headed back towards Hannover as the clouds began rolling in. We managed to dodge all but one of the roving rainstorms, but there was a convenient underpass to wait it out under, so all was good. By the time we got back at 5:00, we had done close to 100 km (on mountain bikes!) and both of us were exhausted. We went back to the Machsee later that evening to watch the local swimming clubs swim the length of the lake (maybe 3km) with torches. In true German fashion, they floated their beer along with them on little rafts.

Torchlit procession in the Machsee

Sunday was a bit more laid back. We walked the old city in the morning, then got back on the bikes (ouch) after lunch and rode through the local forest to Julian's university/hospital. After more ice cream we rode around the Machsee and made it back for dinner before I caught my train back in the evening. Fortunately Julian is coming back to Stuttgart here in under a week, so I'll have more opportunities to hang out before I leave for New York in about two weeks.