Is Nord LB, Hannover the world's strangest building?

The Norddeutsche Landesbank Headquarters in Hannover is marvellously bonkers in the same way that the Lloyds of London is. Similarly it both shrieks its difference and yet also manages to hide among its neighbours.

The outside facing the roads is fairly normal and it is only the staggered tower the juts up in the middle that suggests that it is anything unusual.

Venturing through an opening in to the centre the full magnificence of the building is thrust in to your face. There are sheets of metal and glass flowing in all directions, tubular walkways connect various parts of the building and it all sits in a shallow pool of water.

This picture is taken from the far left of the previous one and is looking back towards where that one was taken. There are shops and cafes on the right which front on to a main road. The chairs and strange pink seating belong to one of them,

Turning to the left revealed one of the other entrances to the complex building. Moving closer to the door I discovered that the tenant is the British Consulate, i.e. I am paying for some of our government officials to work in one of the world's strangest buildings. I am sure they can justify the cost of that.

Around Hannover

My first day in Hannover was spent wandering through gardens and on the second I went exploring the town.

I slight mistake, which turned out not to be that bad, meant that I was in a hotel a little out of town just beyond a major ring-road in Zone 2. That proved not to be a problem as two of the main tram lines, 4 and 5, stopped nearby and got me in to the centre in under fifteen minutes.again.

A one-day travelcard for the two zones was only 5.90 euro and that meant that I could hop on and off trams at will. I like being able to do this and it is not exactly unknown for me to take a tram one stop, get off and take the same tram back again.

I'd like to see more towns and cities adopt the London Underground approach of telling you which direction each train is travelling in, rather than assuming that you know where the destinations are.

The tram took me to Kropcke. This is a large station with platforms on several levels and stairs all over the place. There are a few escalators too but not that many and not all were working.

The station is wonderfully decorated with science fiction themes, something I'd like to see London Underground emulate.

Above ground Hannover is full of communal spaces that give you space to breathe, time to relax, a place to sit and something to look at. These four simple fountains are just one example of many and are by no means the largest of the grandest.

The streets between the spaces are (mostly) nothing special, thanks to the damage done by Allied bombing during the War, but the spaces between them make the exploration a delight.

Less delightful was the list up to the top of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall), which was new in 1913.

Some of it was my fault, I thought that the observation platform that we were heading for was somewhere else, somewhere much lower. And so I found myself unexpectedly in a lift. I like my lifts to have flat floors that are not made of glass and to head up in a straight line. This one broke all three rules and so I was a little shaken when I arrived at the top.

Luckily the views were worth it.While a lot of Hannover is bland post-war rebuild there are also scenic parks and the Old Town.

The Neues Rathaus is an interesting building in its own right, made the more so for being a working building that lets tourists trample through parts of it.

Admittedly not all of them trample in to the restricted areas like I did but the chap who showed me the correct way out was very civil and understanding.

This is the back of the building and the wide steps lead down to the lake in the park. The precarious window at the very top in the centre is where I risked all to take pictures like the one above.

The sun shades in the foreground, necessary on that day, are for the up market cafe where I had a beer and something with bread and cheese to calm my nerves. It is a lovely spot.

From there I followed the boundary of the Old Town, still marked with walls and water in some places, and then went in to the part of the Old Town that looks old.

Very little of it is old because of the bombing but Hannover has made a good job of recapturing some of the feel of the previous Old Town by rebuilding in the old style and by relocating some old buildings from elsewhere. Critics could say it is fake but I think that it works well.

The street pattern is as important to an Old Town as the buildings and here Hannover also scores well. The lanes are narrow and bend mischievously. The popularity of the area is shown by the large number of bars, cafes and posh shops in the area. I was spoilt for choice when looking for somewhere to have my next beer and eventually chose a bar with seats on the street and a convivial atmosphere

It is impossible to ignore the artist Niki de Saint Phalle in Hannover and I came across some of her work every day. There is a colourful grotto by her in the Great Garden, her works feature prominently in the Museum of Modern Art and when exploring the town I found three large athletic statues by the moat. They are so joyful it is impossible not to smile.

There is a lot of other art across the city and these metal trees in a courtyard demanded my attention. I like the art and I like the space that it is in.

There was more to the day that did not make this cut, including a squat tower with a twist (literally) by Frank Gehry, some colourful Gothic brick buildings,  a yellow and green office block, chairs stuck on the side of a building, a church organ that looked as though it wanted to be in a Gothic film, a copy of Banksy's girl with red balloon that I also saw on a woman's t-shirt, a classic tea room (I went back), and an enticing comic shop.

Hannover made discovering most of these easy by linking the main sites with a red line painted on the pavement.

Hannover impressed me. Yes, a lot of it is ugly but that is true of many towns that suffered the twin blights of war damage and post-war functional design. But move away from the main shopping street and there are many communal spaces, fountains and other street art, and interesting buildings to discover.

The Berggarten at Herrenhausen

The Berggarten at Herrenhausen is just across the road from the Great Garden and had a completely different feel.

This used to be the kitchen garden for the royal palace and has evolved in to a more wild and natural space than its grander neighbour. The contrast is sublime.

There are many oaths in this garden too but few straight lines. The obvious route meanders up the gentle hill along the route taken by the small stream that gently flows the other way.

There are flowers along the way and these are planted in clumps to give the impression that they arrived there naturally. The colours are more subtle too with rich yellows and dull oranges standing out against the carpet of green.

There is a formal point to the garden and that is at the top of the slight hill.

Leading to it, not the route that I took, is a regiment of trees that is interrupted by a thick bed or orange and white flowers.

Beyond that is the mausoleum where George I of Great Britain and Ireland lies along with other members of his family.

The building is unassuming and there is nothing regal about it. Nor is there any sign of tribute, other than the garden in front of it, though as George I dies almost three hundred years ago I suspect that not many people remember him.

Drifting back down the hill through the trees on the opposite side to the stream brought me to the series of small greenhouses. These are hardly Kew Gardens but they still managed to convince me to take lots more photos of orchids, despite having hundreds already.

Between the narrow greenhouses and the main building is an unexpected and almost hidden courtyard garden.

Here colour and formality reigns against a backdrop of grey stone that also defines the shape of the beds.

The Berggarten does not try to compete with the Great Garden, instead it is content to do something different and it does it very well. It is a much smaller garden so does not provide much of a feast by itself, it is better thought of as the dessert that ends the meal by adding something a little different and a little special.

The Great Garden at Herrenhausen

The gardens at Herrenhausen (Heron House) in Hannover are stunning in scale and execution. I took over 200 photographs there and had a terrible job cutting them down to just 80 for my Facebook album and an even tougher job cutting that down for this blog.

Even then I've cheated a little and am doing separate blog posts for the Great Garden and the Berggarten which are separated by the main road.

The Great Garden certainly lives up to its name. It's 50 acres of formal gardens that took me most of the day to explore, and I know that I did not visit all of it.

The first view on entering the Great Garden immediately suggests something about the scale and formality of the gardens. Two long avenues of carefully managed trees lead towards a little temple in one of the corners of the garden. To the left, just beyond the line of lesser trees, is a moat that surrounds the garden.

The far end of the garden is laid out in a geometric pattern of paths defined by tall hedges that hide wild gardens. Where these paths meet there are fountains; there are two more like these two, making four altogether. The symmetry is a little confusing and I was reminded of the old Avengers episode (1966), The House that Jack Built, where every door that Emma Peel took led her back to the same place (an idea replayed in a recent Dr Who).

There are gardens within the garden and some of them are hard to find. This is one of four very different gardens clustered together. Each only has one way in and is surrounded by thick hedges so only the gentle trickling of water from the fountain gives the game away.

Emerging from the hedges of the far end of the garden reveals the Royal Castle proudly peering over the flower gardens and the large ponds.

Turning to the right shows how wide and how long the ponds are. There are more gardens beyond the far hedges, and behind us too. The line of trees on the right defines the start of the geometric hedges and their hidden mysteries.

The flower garden next to the Castle is a triumph of design and colour. The beds along the edge are all planted the same way and in the middle there are low hedges laid out in curved patterns with either orange plants, white stones or green grass between them.

In the centre of the floral garden is a large fountain which is a noisy as it is pretty. I walked all the way around it a couple of time looking through it to see the the patterns it made against the garden behind it. Impressive those this, it is not the king of the fountains here.

Venturing back in to the complex of hedges and paths at the far end of the garden took me to the main fountain. This sits in the centre of an "X" with the four fountains mentioned earlier forming the four points.

There are raised viewing platforms on one side of the floral garden (next to a maze) and at one end next to the Castle. From here the overall design of the floral garden is more obvious as is the detailed design of the low hedges. You may also notice one or two statues. These are grand enough but the gold ones are off to the left in another hidden garden. There is a little theatre in there too.

The last garden to make this selection is at the side of the castle. Here the planting is in long thin strips with low hedges behind. From above they look like a series of window boxes well spread out across the courtyard but sat in the tight place and looking at them from a low level the gaps between the rows disappear and all you can see are the flowers.

This is just a sampler for what the gardens has to offer. I've mentioned other things like the maze and gold statues and I could also mention the lime trees laid out in grids, the fountain with playful cherubs, the colourful grotto by the ubiquitous Niki de Saint Phalle, and more.

The only way to truly appreciate the Great Garden is to go there and spend a long time walking through it.

Tintin in America in Brussels Midi

Having arrived at Brussels Midi by Eurostar my time waiting for the train to Düsseldorf was considerably brightened by Tintin.

Obviously I read the books as a boy, even the one in French that one of my French teachers bought for me (Vol 714 pour Sydney), I loved the animated adaptation that that we used to get on TV where each book was broken down in to segments just a few minutes long, and I likes the recent film too.

A large poster inside one of the many confusing entrances explained that this film was the cause of the Tintin celebration at the station.

On a concrete pillar in one of the reception areas (a place to pause while you try and work out which way you are meant to go to find anything useful, such as a train) was a large copy of one of the pages from the black and white edition of Tintin in America.

A short panel beneath explained something about the drawing style.

Clear straight lines were used for Tintin and the train but broken wavy lines were used for the landscape and smoke to indicate movement.

As always with Herge's style, it is simple but effective.

This is the first time that I had seen his work in black and white, instead of the familiar bright flat colours, and I found that effective too. A lot of good art is done in black and white, especially horror comics, and I would like to see more of it in the mainstream.

On the wall behind the pillar with the poster was a very large copy of one of the panels. It stretched a whole story high and was as wide as it was tall.

The effect was stunning. The movement was palpable, as was the determination on Tintin's face. And all this was achieved with very few lines.

Tintin has been a popular character for over eighty years and it is excellent that he is being celebrated in such a public way.

From London to Hannover by train

A quick break in Germany meant another excuse to relax on the trains while getting there.

Hannover emerged as the preferred destination after playing around with the superb Deutsch Bahn iPad app to find an interesting place within easy reach by train. I like to arrive early evening to give me time to explore the city a little while looking for somewhere to eat, and that puts a constraint on how far I can get on the first day.

Going by train means Eurostar and that means Paris or Brussels. This time is was Brussels.

I have been there a few times now but the station still confuses the hell out of me. I emerged confidently from the Eurostar terminal heading for my favourite cafe (the one with wi-fi) only to take a wrong turn immediately and having to go back on myself.

If getting lost is a tradition then so is taking a picture of the four coloured pillars by one of the entrances.

One a previous journey, to Berlin, I had missed the connection because the Eurostar was a few minutes late so I played safe this time and allowed myself an hour. Probably wise given the getting lost situation.

The hour between trains was plenty of time to find the correct place to go and to have a leisurely coffee, though the cafe's wi-fi was not working to Twitter and FourSquare missed out.

The next change was at Düsseldorf and that meant passing through one of my favourite stations, Cologne.

I hopped off the train when it stopped there to tale a few more pictures of the stupendous roof. I had lots of pictures of this already but a few more could not hurt.

Immediately after the impressive station is the equally impressive bridge across the Rhine and I took a few more pictures of this too as we rode smoothly past.

The fashion for putting padlocks on the bridge to show your love for somebody was new when I was first there around fifteen years ago and now the bridge is smothered in them and they look like they are meant to be there.

Düsseldorf station was a huge disappointment after Cologne, but I took a picture of it anyway.

Far better was the train to Hannover that was already in the station waiting for me.

I was travelling First Class, as I usually do in Europe, because it does not cost that much more and I think that the extra space and comfort is worth it.

This was my carriage. There were only three of us in it when we set off though we did collect a few more people along the way.

There was so much space between the rows of seats that I had to stretch to reach the foot-rest.

There were no freebies for being in First Class but I did get waiter service for my mug of coffee. I also got a mug that I would gladly have kept if I had not got plenty of mugs already, it would have meant carrying it around on holiday with me and the guard would have noticed.

I was grateful for the display telling me how fast we were going as I would never have guessed that we were travelling at speeds up to 200 km/h otherwise.

The journey was quick, easy and comfortable. And that is why I prefer to travel by train rather than fly. This way getting there is part of the holiday too.

The Life of Stuff at Theatre503 (gripping)

I got nudged in to seeing this by a Hot Tickets offer that did not work (again) but having been alerted to, and tempted by, the play I was quite content to pay full price to see it.

There was the slight problem of having to get up early the next day to go on a holiday that I had not yet packed for but these were mere details, the play came first.

The Life of Stuff is a snapshot of the fringes of the underworld in Edinburgh in the eighties. The action (and there is a lot of it) takes place over just a few hours, it could almost be in real-time, and the cast of characters include hardened criminals, would-be hardened criminals and extreme drug users.

Despite all this it is very funny. And violent too.

This is the story of one of the would-be hardened criminals trying to take the next step up the ladder by removing (i.e. killing) his main rival and taking on his chemistry student who provides the drugs that he sells.

There are two hard men on the new top man's staff, two girls in tow because of the promise of good drugs, and a couple of other people inadvertently caught up in the murder and about to pay the price for it.

Each characters has their own motive and ambitions, even if it is just to get more and better drugs, and that gives each character a separate story.

It is the mix of these character and their stories that gives the play its richness.

Good characters need good actors and The Life of Stuff had them across the board, from the genuine nasty hard man to the silly drug obsessed young woman, from the smooth talking crime lord to the hapless youth tricked in to murder.

Theatre503 is always an intimate space and this time it was more so with some seats on the far side of the stage too. This made it a narrow stage and brought us right up close to the action, more than once I had one of the cast leaning right over me.

The set was simple (pictured) and effective. During the course of the evening it effortlessly became a dance floor, a basement, a penthouse an office and a roof top. Good performances do not need props to carry them.

The various threads in the stories pull together and there is a surprise and dramatic ending. Well, to be honest, I saw the big surprise coming from a mile off but what happened after that is more surprises and the play ends on a very violent note that also has some goodness in it.

The Life of Stuff at Theatre503 is raw, vibrant, small theatre at its best. No wonder the place was packed out.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the Rose Theatre (heart-breaking)

My plan to get to the Rose Theatre more often and I was back for my third visit this year to see A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.

The other reasons for going were the reputation of the play, i.e. I had heard of it, and it featured Ralph Little, who is still Jonny Keogh from Two Pints to me. Little is the fourth Two Pints actor who I have seen on the stage, just Will Mellor to go.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is an unusual tale told unusually.

This is obvious from the very beginning when Little runs on to the stage and berates us as his misbehaving class. We are told to put our hands on our heads, which we do, as he runs through some familiar lines about us wasting our own time etc. He then pops out of the classroom saying that he'll be back in a minute but then we become the audience and we see him return home where is wife is waiting for him.

Little talks us to say that he is going to explain something and then the play within the story begins. There is a fair amount of talking directly to the audience by all the cast. In one memorable moment Little pops his head out of the kitchen door to ask his wife if she is talking to us about him.

It takes a while for us to learn that they have a daughter and a little while longer for us to see her. She is severely disabled, physically and mentally, and is in a chair.

The scene set, the play then pulls us in two directions at the same time. The core of the play is miserable but the storytelling is humorous.

Prejudice rumbles through the play like an unwelcome guest at a party. The couple are
angry at the prejudice against their daughter, the wife's promiscuous past causes much comment and derogatory comments are made about people in council estates.

There are other tensions in the play too including a possible affair, a job that is a chore rather than a career, a possible murder and a marriage that seems tired and worn out by it all.

To lighten the mood these tensions are offset by the arrival of a couple of friends who could easily be the role models for Boycie and Marlene with their working class roots and new-money snobbery. And there are the cats in the kitchen.

The set highlights the chaotic nature of the story and the mixed play/narrative format with oddly shaped doors and windows in the room and a theatre curtain hanging over it. The direction enhances this with, for example, spotlights on the main characters when they are talking directly to us.

There is an awful lot going on in this production and it is all good (or better). This is easily the best thing that I have seen at the Rose Theatre so far.