Latest reviews

5 stars
Das Wahrzeichen der Stadt Hannover  de

Hier wird die lokale Politik gemacht und parallel dazu können Besucher einen Einblick in weite Teile des Rathauses bekommen. Das eindrucksvolle Gebäude steht seit 1913 am Platz und hat sich seitdem zu einem Wahrzeichen der Stadt entwickelt.


Blick vom Trammplatz auf das Neue Rathaus in Hannover (Eigenes Werk. Lizenz: CC-BY-SA.)

Wer sich vom eindrucksvollen Anblick der Fassade losreißen konnte erlebt in der Eingangshalle wohl ein noch viel Moment des Eindrucks. Fast schon majestätisch wirkt die große Treppe, die neben den Treppenhaussäulen, diesen Raum dominiert.


Eingangshalle im Neuen Rathaus in Hannover (Eigenes Werk. Lizenz: CC-BY-SA.)

Die Modelle, die die Stadt Hannover in verschiedenen Epochen zeigen, geraten da fasts schon zur Nebensache. Wer es mag kann die einzelnen Flure ablaufen. Viel zu sehen gibt es dort, von Türschildern einmal abgesehen, allerdings nicht.

Der Hauptgrund eines Besuches im Neuen Rathaus ist für viele allerdings der Turm. Mit mehr als 97 Metern Höhe überragt er die meisten Bauten der Stadt. Die Fahrt dort hinauf findet mit einem bogenförmigen Kuppelaufzug statt und ist, im Gegensatz zum sonstigen freien Zugang zum Rathaus, kostenpflichtig. Der Ausblick entschädigt aber auf jeden Fall.


Blick vom Rathausturm auf die Stadt Hannover (Eigenes Werk. Lizenz: CC-BY-SA.)

Fazit

Es ist beeindruckend wie früher repräsentative Häuser gebaut wurden. Das diese bis zum heutigen Zeitpunkt in der originären Nutzung verblieben sind ist umso erfreulicher und auf jeden Fall einen Besuch wert.


3 stars
Nice selection of churches, information outdated, horrible arrangement

It is nice to have this book as a compendium on the Madrileñan churches. The texts aren’t of especially high quality, not footnotes are used. By now (2021) many of the opening hours in the 3rd edition from 2019 are wrong, I wonder if they were updated for the new edition.

Big problem is the order of the churches by style. It is hard to find a church even if you know its name – and many of the churches have more than one name. This could be fixed with alphabetical registers of persons and buildings – both are missing. The small maps for some entries and the routes at the end of the book aren’t a replacement for a map that would list the churches together, this is missing as well.

Copy-editing wasn’t too diligent it seems. Not even formats are coherent (“18:00” and “20,30” in one line (3rd edition, p. 360)).

With three quarters of a kilogram weight it is unnecessarily heavy to carry on visiting tours, lighter paper would have been better as well as a hardback format.


5 stars
Friendly fair trade fashion shop

Staff is very friendly, prices are high.


5 stars
Great encyclopedic museum

A great encyclopedic museum with well described objects and free admission.


5 stars
Friendly and good bakery

A friendly and good bakery with Turkish staff and some Turkish products like simits.


4 stars
Great collection of pre-Columbian and Spanish American objects with a ridiculous narrative framing

The museum houses objects from pre-Columbian times that are several thousand years old as well as colonial objects and 20th-century objects of native Americans, many of them beautiful and informative.

The framing of the accompanying texts and their concept of history is outrageous though. Problems of the commons American and Spanish history since 1492 are barely expounded. 18th-century paintings showing racial typologies are displayed without comment on their racist content or their context. The later parts of the recommended tour deal with aspects of culture of the Americas like “marriage”; it is quite odd to see topics dealt with for the area of countless different cultures on two continents in thousands of years.

Fortunately most objects have labels with a title, material description, origin and inventory number, sometimes also a descriptive note.


3 stars
Mediocre sci-fi adventure with exceptional visuals

Trüberbrook is a 2019 point and click adventure game set in a fictional eponymous small town in late 1960s Germany. You play as Hans Tannhauser, an American quantum physics student with German ancestry, who has won a vacation to Trüberbrook (without entering any contest!).

During the first night in his hostel, Tannhauser’s notes on quantum physics are stolen. As he starts tracking down the thief, the evidence points to an abandoned mine, and he soon pairs up with a visiting paleoanthropologist named Gretchen Lemke who is also seeking to explore it. What is the connection between the mine and Hans’ work in quantum physics?

What stands out the most about Trüberbrook is its unique visual style. All backgrounds are based on digitized miniatures, enhanced by in-game lighting and shadow effects. The 3D character models aren’t photorealistic; they look more like clay figures, which works well enough in this setting.


Trüberbrook’s unique aesthetic is the result of the digitization of painstakingly hand-crafted miniatures (Credit: btf. Fair use.)

The gameplay is classic point-and-click adventure fare (walk around, pick up stuff, talk to other characters, combine items), with a simplified inventory system. For example, if you have a screwdriver in your inventory, and you want to unscrew a TV set, you click on the TV set, and the screwdriver becomes available as a possible interaction.

This reduces the “combine everything with everything” aspect of many adventure games, but it would have been nice to at least be able to explore your inventory (it’s only optionally displayed as an icon bar, without descriptions).

The game’s lovingly created visuals can’t help Trüberbrook to overcome mediocrity in most other areas: storytelling, character development and puzzle design. To name an example in each category:

  • Storytelling: In an early chapter, Hans must escape from a medical facility. But the game never fully resolves why he was kept there in the first place.

  • Character development: While Trüberbrook has its share of quirky characters, the game’s protagonist is almost entirely without personality, and the motivations of its villain are poorly explained.

  • Puzzle design: In one puzzle, you obtain an important item by ordering a beer at the hostel reception. But the option to order a drink only becomes available after you exhaust all other (unrelated) dialog options.

There are exceptions, of course—the game has a few truly delightful, clever and funny moments. With more time spent on everything other than its visuals, it could have been a great game. As it is, if you find the visuals and setting appealing, you may wish to pick it up on sale and keep a walkthrough handy to keep frustrations to a minimum.


5 stars
Great museum

Great place, awesome objects, well lit, well described.

The Spanish and English object descriptions on the website are often more detailed than those of the printed guidebook. So if you have internet connection and read Spanish or English they deliver profound and free information.

A few more benches inside would be nice. Unfortunately, there are no lockers for small bags. As with many museums nowadays the security check-in is annoying.


National Archaeological Museum
4 stars
Great objects, mediocre presentation

It seems everything in this museum has been recently reworked – the building, the texts, the flat screens – without saving money. And without question the museum holds a great collection of objects. Their presentation though is very insufficient in many ways, the museum labels don’t even display inventory numbers, some showcases like one with Sephardi objects don’t even have object level description labels.

The advertised app is available in Spanish, English and French. On iOS, it can only be used in landscape mode and with running screen. It doesn’t save video positions if you leave a video.

The richness of the collection is worth the visit.


5 stars
Great place for coffee and working

The cafe is a great place to have coffee of fresh pressed orange juice and work a bit in the shadow of the Alameda trees. At the street tables the wifi is quite weak. There are sockets inside and a couple of books.