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the great knomad-trek
Celle, Bergen-Belsen
Public Holiday #1. Hop on a train to Celle, then take a bus to Bergen-Belsen and spend some time there, then take the bus back to Celle, walk around Celle and take the train back to Hannover.
At least that was the plan. I woke up really early, headed out to the Hannover Hauptbahnhof (which I know like the back of my hand), and bought my ticket to Celle. It cost me DM 25 return, but I could take the fastest trains there. No not the ICE train (drool....) but the IR, which would cut my travel time to roughly half, meaning 20 minutes. 

When I got to Celle, I wandered around for a while trying to find the bus station by following the signs which led me to another platform in the train station, and then I had to go down some steps to get to the bus loop. I checked out the bus schedule, which was in German of course, and waited for my bus to come in roughly 10 minutes. Waiting, waiting, waiting...... for about half an hour and no buses came at all. Actually, no vehicles came at all, so I decided to go back to the train station to ask if buses ran on public holidays, but all the shops were closed except for one, and the lady didn't speak English at all (we tried talking earlier when I bought a postcard from her, but we both didn't understand each other so we just smiled at each other and both shrugged our shoulders). So back to Hannover I went. 

In the afternoon, Kitty and I walked to Herrenhäuser Garten (only two tram stops away from our place), and explored the park surrounding it. We thought that this would somehow lead into the Großergarten but we were wrong and walked almost all the way to the freeway. It turns out that there's a moat separating the park from the actual gardens but you could still see inside. Next we went into the Berggarten, checked out this free outdoor photo exhibit (pretty nice but a little crowded) and walked around under the trees and checked out the mausoleum where the ancestors of the British Royalty were buried, the former rulers of Hannover. We both decided to go back home and rest and plan our Hamburg trip, but really, for me, what that meant was, "I think I'll go to sleep for the rest of the day because we have to go back to work tomorrow".

Lowlights. 

- Even if I had the whole day planned (mini-highlight), I was able to accomplish absolutely nothing, and even manage to spend DM 25 and waste roughly 4 hours doing that! 

Highlight. 

- When I got back to Hannover, we got to do a little bit of touristy (and free) sightseeing at the Berggarten and Georgengarten sections of the Herrenhäuser Garten, and took a peek inside the famous Georgengarten.

Grade: F. Due to factors completely out of my hands, i.e. buses not running on public holidays, my well-thought out plan had to be totally scrapped. And, since I was so bummed out about not getting to visit Bergen-Belsen, I didn't have the energy to explore Celle, so I just went back to Hannover and walked around the Herrenhäuser Garten.