Overview of our excursions

Excursion 1 begins with a short bus trip to the Museum am Thie in Göttingen's southern suburb of Geismar. The participants will have the chance to learn about the city's local history through a guided tour of the Folkloristic Collection. The focus of the exhibition includes everyday areas, such as food production, living-conditions and handcrafts. A special highlight is the area showing textile manufacturing and spinning. This tour will be followed by a bus trip to the Department of Musicology and its Collection of Musical Instruments. It comprises more than 1,900 musical instruments from different historical eras from around the world. The participants will receive a guided tour with information about music history. The afternoon will include the opportunity to reflect on the day over coffee (at own expense).

Excursion 2 will take the participants on a short bus ride to the Saline Luisenhall in Göttingen's western suburb of Grone, where high-quality salt is extracted according to age-old traditions. Luisenhall is the last business in Europe that still uses an old boiling technique for extracting salt and thus is an important technical monument from the 19th century. In a 90-minute guided tour through the premises the group will gain insight into the production-process of the salt. This tour will be followed by another bus trip back to the city center to visit the Ethnographic Collection of the University of Göttingen. The collection displays numerous exhibits, mostly non-European. The oldest of them extend back to the 18th century and were collected from an expedition to the South Seas by Captain James Cook and two German natural science researchers. The afternoon will end with a visit in one of city's many cafés (at own expense).

Excursion 3 includes an extensive guided tour through the beautiful university city of Göttingen. Among other sights we will visit the Old Town Hall with its historical ceiling paintings from the 19th century and many streets with traditional half-timbered houses. Afterwards the participants will visit one of Göttingen's numerous cafés in the city center (at own expense).

Excursion 4 involves an excursion to a small village near Göttingen called Ebergötzen. There we will visit the Wilhelm Busch-Mill and the European Bread Museum. Wilhelm Busch was a famous German poet, illustrator and humorist especially known for his classic children's books about the mischievous boys Max and Moritz. The Bread Museum shows the history of bread culture as well as the production method from grain to finished bread. Both the mill and the museum offer multilingual guided tours.

Excursion 5 also heads outside of Göttingen. At 8 a.m. (time to be confirmed) a bus will take the participants to the nearby village of Reinhausen. At 9 a.m. we will visit the Regionales Umweltzentrum (RUZ, local environmental center). The participants will learn from a beekeeper about the hierarchy of a bee colony and its division of work, with the help of an interactive role-playing game (in English). The bee colony itself will be visited afterwards. The 4-hour-excursion (excluding travel-time) will end with a tasting of different types of honey and a snack.