City in a Day: Celle

Our orientation booklet has a handy section on cities in the state, which we can reach by riding trains for free. One of these was Celle, which it described as a "well-preserved town...that presents a great impression of what the city used to look like in the 16th to 18th" centuries, as well as mentioning a castle. It was barely a hour away, so I hopped on the train to check it out.

The day I went I was running around and didn't have a lot of time to plot out a specific course of action. No problem, I thought. I know that it was a castle, a church, and a very nice old town, all of which should have signs pointing to them. Unfortunately, the signs were few and far between, so I just wandered aimlessly until I spotted steeples over the rooftops.

I did spot this a block away from the train station, though.

I finally found the castle--really, it's not hard to navigate around the town, I just followed the road signs for the "Altstadt" or the "Rathaus" (town hall)--and discovered that it's a more recent building than I was anticipating.

It's been converted into a museum--luckily for me, it was Friday which just happened to be their free day. Very few signs are in English, though. I could get the big picture of what purpose a room held, but smaller explanations of items and things weren't translated. All in all, I was in there for less than an hour.

They were also doing some renovations, thus the crane.

Surrounding the palace is a beautiful park, though. There's a lazy stream that runs through it with some gorgeous weeping willows on the banks, and even a playground. It's the perfect place to have a picnic.

The church looked like your average (pretty) town church from the outside, but inside it was a much more ornate style.

I also just realized I haven't shown any pictures of Germany with actual blue skies. They exist, I promise!

They had paintings of the apostles and all the prophets along the balcony, and some intricate carving heading the columns and around the arches.

Celle's Altstadt is pretty in a different way than Lueneburg. While L-town uses bricks, Celle has a lot of traditional houses in a different style.

A pretty one. Many building have painted decorations in addition.

The Altstadt is laid out mostly in a sensible grid, so it's easy to know where you are without a map. There are tons of cafes, bakeries, and shops. You can pick up a map from the Alteres Rathaus (old town hall, now tourist info),which includes a handy guide of historical places. Some (there are several museums I didn't get a chance to see, mainly because I lacked the desire to spend money) sounded good, but a lot are single places of interest, like this:

 This is the oldest house in Celle, now a clothing store. Most of the historical places in the Altstadt are like this. It's wonderful eye-candy.

Celle was fine for a day trip; I was done in about three hours, though I could've stayed longer if I visited museums or got something to eat (cultural problems: German places close EARLY, like by 6pm). It's close to Lueneburg, and so is easily done after classes. It's probably not the type of place you'd devote a whole day unless you planned out your itinerary ahead of time and knew all the things you wanted to hit.