Discovering Hanover: Café Culture

The German culture embraces sweets in a way that Americans will drool over; cafes and bakeries fill the corners and hot, delicious beverages are served at all hours of the day. 

Wandering through any new city brings new discoveries, and that is exactly what happened in Hanover, Germany today as my Dutch roommate and I explored the city's winding streets by bike. One particular gem revealed itself with its tantalizing cake displays and vibrantly colored window decorations offering happy moments for all. But really, the cafe is called "Glücksmoment," which directly translates as Happy Moment.  I highly recommend you waltz in to find your own such moments with great company--that is if you can find a seat. This not so little cafe is often packed with friends, couples or even families during all opening hours, all of whom seem to be engulfing in decadent treats while smiles spread across their faces. I suppose the name is true!

Four things I love about this place:

1. The customer service is superb. They may be busy but they are the friendliest German staff I've seen in a while.

2. The cakes and drinks are original. They even offer variations with less or more of what makes our hips so luscious, or even free trade labels and creative titles for their specialties.

3. Each place setting and room decor is different and of top quality. Real plates that are hand painted, beautiful decor inspired by fairy tales and toy traditions, and excellent lighting from the large windows and meticulously placed bloom lanterns makes for a bright and imaginative Happy Moment for all.

4. They offer classes! You can sign up to learn the art of cake making and decorating for yourself. Though they probably won't reveal their best kept secrets, you can at least try your hand in the kitchen.

Click here to check their classes, hours, and location.

*this review is my personal experience and recommendation. I did not receive any free cake for these words, though I wouldn't turn it down if it came later on, because it is divine. Check out this place for yourself on your next wander through Lower Saxony...

 

Unterwegs. Journey home. July 25th, 2013

Flying back to the US; feels so surreal

As I watch the tiny icon of an airplane inch its way west across the virtual Atlantic on the screen in front of me, I can feel each inch as it tugs me farther away from the German borders to which I have become so accustomed. Each time the friendly, multilingual staff drops by my row, the words that slip off my tongue have defaulted to Germanic tendencies despite the Anglican fluency of all those around me. Preferential, you might say. Flight after flight, checkpoint by checkpoint, I cross the point of no return, or do I? My heart is unable to adjust in such tumultuous situations as it is beckoned in many tongues from many lands; how can it find method of settling if I have no solid plan, no final destination as of yet? Denver. That's where I'll start. Then what? I have two final semesters of my double bachelor's degree at the University of Northern Colorado that will be complemented by workshops, conferences, visits to my family, rebuilding my harp callouses and desperately seeking both franco and germanophones to keep the polyglot, that is multilingual, version of myself adrift.

Managing to take root on rock
(Mallorca, July, 2013)

A word of my own language struck me today as I mindlessly glanced at the episode of the Big Bang Theory playing on the airline's entertainment program: Roots. I picture a tree, a flower, a tracing of origin to that which fed and built you. Trees grow, harbor life, shelter life, give life, but they do not move except when adjusting to wind patterns and changing climate. Flowers can be moved, picked, transplanted just as a tree. Traditional doctrine teaches us that roots are the beginning, the foundation, the lifeline, the nourishment. Can we ever change our roots? Can we take them with us or will we always leave some piece of us, some straggler of a memory or life behind in the ground from whence we came? Pardon the extended metaphor, but I feel completely uprooted and am also contemplating the notion of searching for a new garden.