Back to Germany

In two days, I'm headed back to Germany.  Obviously, this is very exciting news, but at the moment I'm a little sad to be leaving home as well.  This time I'll be living in Hannover and working in the town of Gehrden, a suburb of Hannover.

Location of Hannover w/in Germany.  Previously, I was right outside of Nürnberg.

I didn't do much with my blog last time I was abroad, but hopefully I'll post more regularly this time.

In the meantime, I don't have many expectations, partially because I'm still not sure what exactly I'll be doing at the school where I'm an English assistant or what courses are available this semester at my university.  I still don't have housing, and since I've never been to Hannover before, I don't have a feel for the city aside from what I've read.

However, I think that I can still draw a few contrasts between Hannover and Erlangen, where I lived in 2008/09.

First of all, Hannover is considered to be the center of Hochdeutsch, or standard German.  I am looking forward to not having to decipher any dialects, like I had to do in Erlangen.  When you move into other parts of Northern Germany, however, there is another very strong dialect, Plattdeutsch, which is supposedly more similar to English.  

Hannover is much larger than Erlangen, probably more comparable to Nuremberg. But whereas Nuremberg has a beautiful medieval center, Hannover was supposedly rebuilt quickly in the modern style after WWII.  Though I'm preferential to older architecture, I'm sure that there will still be a fair share there, especially in comparison to the US.

Though Hannover is more centrally located within the country, Northern Germany has more maritime connections and I'm looking forward to more fish and experiencing more water!  Yes, my head is already swirling with travel plans and I definitely hope to visit the different harbor towns like Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck.  But obviously there are some more important things to attend to before I can really branch out, getting to know where I'm living being one of them!


Now time to get back to packing!