The House of Hanover and the Herrenhausen Gardens

It was tempting to call this blog "Meetings, Meetings, and More Meetings (M^4)", but I think that such a mundane title would not have been all that attractive.  Nevertheless, that is what life has been, and continues to be, here.  The week of Sept. 12 was the German Astronomical Society meeting in Bochum.  Then last week was the inaugural meeting of the Ruhr Astroparticle and Plasma Physics Centre, also in Bochum, with an opening reception at the Bochum planetarium which, by the way, looked just like the planetarium in Winnipeg and about the same vintage.  In the same week, Judith ran a special session for the graduate students (with pizza) on women in astronomy in preparation for an upcoming similar session in Berlin (but that is another story).  Now this coming week is the  Berlin meeting, "Magnetic Fields in Interstellar and Intergalactic Media".  This meeting is highly appropriate to our research so we are looking forward to being enlightened, and hopefully enlightening too.

But first things first. Today is Sunday and we set out early for Berlin.


It's amazing how casual you get about what might be worth visiting along the way.  Hanover is approximately half-way between Bochum and Berlin and seemed like a good place to stop for lunch. Pulling out our Germany guide, we read about the close connection between the House of Hanover and the British monarchy. For a time, both the UK and Saxony were ruled by the same monarch.  But to save time and for fear of screwing up some important history, here is a link instead.

Hanover held other treasures, the main one being the Herrenhausen Gardens. So this was our destination and we duly programmed Serena to take us there.  Nothing is small here.  The grounds are magnificent and reminiscent of Versailles (well aren't we well-travelled?!).   But rather than spending a lot of time on description, how about some pictures instead?









Associated with the gardens was a small museum which we also toured.  The main draw?  Unexpectedly: Leibniz.  This brilliant mathematician lived in Hanover and, in fact, consulted on the design of the gardens.  Here are some museum photos.  Watch especially for Richard next to the bust of Leibniz.







Departing from Hanover, it was back to the highway.  Note that the Anglicized version of "Braunschweig" is "Brunswick", the 'New' version being Richard's place of origin.


A long day of driving finally got us to Harnack  House of the Max-Planck Society at 4 p.m.
 Now the real work begins...