Sieverner See is a man-made lake with people living around it. From what I understand, originally they were never supposed to be permanent dwelling places and then, after the rules were relaxed a bit, they were supposed to stick to specific proportions. All of this seems to have gone by-the-bye now though and there are all sorts of weird and wonderful houses to be seen.

My host was a good friend that I know from my fated days working as a secondary school music teacher. Our school was originally a nice place to work; the majority of the staff were caring and hard working and the head was supportive to staff and pupils alike, but gradually things began to change and sucked into the crazy quasi-corporate machine that UK teachers have to deal with today. I left and joined a band in a typically rash manner whereas my friend decided to try her hand teaching in Germany, which she very much enjoys.

I don’t feel particularly qualified to pass any opinion on different countries having never really spent enough time in any apart from my own to really understand the difference. That said, I have spent months at a time in Germany with work and there is something I really like about it, possibly just the trees and the fact that there are a lot of open air swimming pools. Oh and the beer isn’t bad either, I’ve never had a bad night out there although drinking isn’t really my thing any more. Round Sieverner See there are a couple of empty plots and I am currently very taken with the idea of buying one and building a shed, or to be more precise, a Russian style wooden home with a massive log burning stove in it. I’m sure it’s a ridiculous notion but not entirely far fetched; if I can give up my random amazon purchase addiction for a year or two and pay off a good chunk of my mortgage maybe I could do it. How amazing it would be to have an actual bolt hole like that.

I spent a lovely couple of nights there. On the first day we had a lovely catch up and a dip in both the hot tub in the garden and the lovely lake. I was a little bit upset that my Apple Watch only said that I’d swam for 290m, there must have been some crazy invisible current or something as I was in the water for nearly 40 minutes. After that we watched a rescue demonstration with my friends daughter and then went shopping for a bratwurst just to make sure my experience was complete.

We went to the coast for breakfast the next day, to a little place on the North Sea called Wremen. It was the type of place that I would have like to go for a pole about and perhaps a beer if I wasn’t living a driving life at the moment. We parked up and I cooked us all breakfast before going for a walk down the coast, all very pleasant. The industrial scenes from Bremerhaven reminded my of my mum, she loved an industrial landscape. I will definitely need to come back and stay for longer, this is something I never seem to learn because there just seem to be too many places that I want to go to. At some point, probably when I have retired/am between jobs, I will find somewhere and really get to know it.

I left for Leipzig at around half past four, with a good cool bag full of assorted, salad thanks to my lovely host. Lower Saxony is yet another place that I felt I could stay in forever.