"Goettingen - University town" a Göttingen Travel Page by Bobek

In the central market place - it is a pedestrian zone, of course - there is a fountain on which a small figure of a girl with a basket and a goose inside. This is the Gaenseliesel, Goettingens landmark. Each student finishing their PhD (no lesser degree than a doctorate!!) will have to climb up the fountain, kiss the girl and leave a bouquet of flowers up there. This has been going on since around 100 years now and it is easy to imagine that this small figure represents the most kissed girl in the world.

This custom is strongly reflected by a number of photos here. Have a look - and find out that Goettingen is a truely lovely place to live.

Where is it? As seen from satellite with an altitude of 1000 km above ground and 1260 km to the white cross (Goettingen), this is where the city can be found on every map of Germany. I chose to have this distance as it nicely displays the borders of the country as well. The heading is straight north and the viewing angle is almost 41°. Latitude and Longitude are also provided as red lines.

Of course the LandSat 7 satellite did not come that close - and the geometry of the image has been calculated by software. Lots of "artificial" calculation to exhibit this close-up view of Goettingen. This time I altered the heading to show the Harz mountains that lie about 50 km north-east of Goettingen. Unfortunately I forgot to write down the proper data of this viewing example but I hope that it may be sufficient to give approximate numbers: Altitude may be between 25 and 30 km and heading is about 50° degrees. The city itself is encircled here in this image, and the number 1 shows the Harz. Number 2 indicates the place to find one of Europe`s productive wells, the Rhume well. Find more about it in the appropriate tip section.

Even though I will try my best to provide you a good impression of the peculiarities of this city, I advise to use a supplement website to study various dynamic panoramic views all over Goettingen. Try www.goecam.de in particular, which presently features 12 select spots from where panoramas were taken. They also have quite a number of aerial views in high resolution - taken from a plane and not calculated from a distant satellite.... The only downside is, the site is in German only.

Nevertheless I would be happy if you read my descriptions first. :-)