Sunrises and sunsets

At the Schneller Graben weir on the Leine River

The trees on the opposite bank are reflected in countless shades of green on the gently rippling water’s surface, lapping around a few paddlers; the increasingly warm sunlight transforms the brick house by the weir into a water castle in Tuscany, and the evening sky slowly shifts from a soft blue to a pale yellow.

River landscape — At the Schneller Graben weir

Soon, tufts of purple clouds will drift silently by. A summer symphony of colors. And everything flows.

The Evening Gala on the Leine

This tranquil spot on the grass by the Schneller Graben, perfect for the heavenly evening show, is somewhat tucked away in the Leinemasch behind the stadium. If you’re driving there for sunset, take Ferdinand-Wilhelm-Fricke-Weg past the back of the HDI Arena and the Gilde Parkbühne to the parking lot in front of the Sports Performance Center at the Lower Saxony Olympic Training Center, and from there, take your time walking toward the sun on the nearby bank of the Leine. Pedestrians and cyclists are best advised to take the bridge over the Leine on the west side of Maschsee, behind the Hannoverscher Ruder-Club von 1880 e.V., and then walk along the left bank to the prime viewing spot on the sunbathing lawn. There, everyone has a front-row seat overlooking the Leine, which appears on two “stages” over a 600-meter stretch, separated by a gentle slope at the weir. The Schnelle Graben becomes a roughly 20-meter-long orchestra pit, from which the never-ending melody of the flowing water softly drifts across.

Three meters for three million

We owe this (enchanting) relaxing music to the foresight of Hanover’s city leaders, who in 1742 commissioned the construction of the weir to divert the Leine River over the neighboring Ihme River (which joins the Leine just a few meters further west) during floods, a system that still diverts the river around Hanover today. When the facility went into operation three years later, it was the city’s most expensive structure to date, costing 51,000 talers. It wasn’t until 140 years later that the idea arose to use the three-meter drop in water level to generate electricity. With an annual output of around three million kilowatt-hours, the Schneller Graben hydroelectric power plant—which went into operation on November 3, 1921 (the imposing brick building on the left bank, which seems to transform into a Tuscan moated castle in the increasingly warm sunlight)—can supply around 1,500 households in Hannover with naturally generated electricity. You can see all of this up close on a canoe tour. Boats can be rented individually or booked as a group tour through Kanuverleih Hannover; the meeting point and launch site are on the right bank, directly below the weir.