As in every German city, right-hand traffic is the rule of the road at Göttingen and therefore also bus stops are always on the right-hand side. But there is one bus stop that is on the left hand-side: the one for city tours with a classic London bus behind the old town hall. The bus company of the city (Göttinger Verkehrsbetriebe, GöVB) has acquired an old iconic red bus built in the United Kingdom in 1960. It is named ‘Miss Marple‘ after Agatha Christie’s fictional character and it is the gem of their fleet; something they really need to care about as spare parts aren’t available anymore for this classic.
Unfortunately, the London bus doesn’t tour regularly. There are every year only a few dates on which you can book a 90 minutes city tour through Göttingen. If you see the dates advertise within the buses or online be quick and book fast. Tours start and end at the left-hand side bus stop behind the old town hall. What are the sights they show you during the tour? One thing is clear: you can’t see all major highlights of Göttingen, as some of them are in the pedestrian zone of the city center. Additionally, the old bus technology limits the places you can reach; the bus has no power steering and while it could get up to the highest hills like Nikolausberg or the Zietenterrassen, going down the breaks would overheat.
What the 90 minutes tour offers is mostly a round trip through Göttingen and all three formerly independent city quarters (Grone, Geismar and Weende). From the city center the bus passes via the Bürgerstraße to Grone. At the Gerichtslinde it turns right towards the Saline Louisenhall and passes the Groner Altdorf towards the Kaufpark shopping center. Via the Siekhöhe industrial zone it passes along the Kiessee and the Jahnstadion; it uses the Reinhäuser Landstraße to get to the old center of Geismar. From there it passes the Steinsgraben and the former villas of important scientists towards the Schillerwiese, the Stadthalle (the ‘Kachelofen‘) at the Albaniplatz and the Deutsches Theater.
Afterwards the tour passes the ancient medical buildings at the Humboldtallee, takes you along the Universitätsklinikum to the Nordcampus and up to the Faßberg. After seing the northern part of the university the tour continues through the old center of Weende and returns on the Hannoversche Landstraße back to the historic city center and passes the main campus and the Auditorium with the old botanical garden while doing so. It is a nice round trip through Göttingen and it surroundings, but it is not like the classic hop-on-hop-of tours in other cities focussed on showing you all the historic sights of a city. Even as an inhabitant of Göttingen you can have some new insights – not only because the tour guides are able to continuously talk for 90 minutes but also because you will still see streets and places you’ve never seen before.
Stadtrundfahrt im Londonbus
Göttinger Verkehrsbetriebe
Göttingen Tourismus und Marketing
Göttingen
Germany
https://www.goevb.de
https://www.goettingen-tourismus.de
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