When I checked in to my hotel in Oldenburg, the man at reception told me he was giving me the “mini room”, sounding as though he was doing me some kind of big favor. Of course, I thought he just meant a small room, which didn’t surprise me because I Read More …
Oldenburg is known as one of Germany’s dozen-or-so bicycle-friendliest cities, which is not surprising considering its location on the North German plain between Bremen and the Netherlands’ border. The city of Oldenburg has an impressive cycling infrastructure, including an extensive network of separated cycle paths (and hardly any cycle lanes Read More …
Behind the modern façade of the Oldenburg City Museum (Stadtmuseum), three nineteenth-century villas contain art works and cultural history exhibits from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Two of these villas belonged to the wealthy art collector Theodor Francksen (1875-1914), who bequeathed the houses and his extensive art collection to Read More …
After the Grand Duke of Oldenburg was forced to abdicate in 1918, at the end of the First World War, the new government decided to use his old palace as a museum. I don’t know what the museum had to offer when it first opened in 1923 [well, I know Read More …
In the years 2015/2016 the city of Oldenburg, in the northwest corner of Germany, took in around three thousand refugees, who were fleeing particularly from the wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. “At the height of the refugee crisis,” according to a city press notice, “six communal shelters and three Read More …
The Oldenburg adult education center, the Volkshochschule (VHS), celebrated its seventieth anniversary in 2016. But that didn’t stop it from celebrating its hundredth anniversary just four years later, in 2020. The reason for this discrepancy is that the two anniversaries were counting from different founding dates. The original founding was Read More …
Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) were one of the most prominent couples in the 20th century art world. Both are best known for their highly unusual sculptures, but they also created masses of posters, paintings, installations and other artworks of all sorts. When I was in Read More …
The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg ceased to exist in 1918, at the end of the First World War, when the last reigning grand duke, Frederick Augustus II, was forced to abdicate, along with all the other dukes, grand dukes, counts, margraves, landgraves, princes and even kings who up to then Read More …
This is the main railway station in Oldenburg (Oldb) — not to be confused with Oldenburg (Holst), which is a smaller place in Holstein, on the way to Puttgarten, Rødbyhavn and Copenhagen. The reason for the “(Oldb)” in the name of this Oldenburg is that for centuries it was the Read More …