At the Spring Festival in Hanover, around 180 carnies with the latest rides and nostalgic merry-go-rounds ensure a cheerful spring feeling; traditionally it opens at Easter.
The starting signal for the fun fair at the Schützenplatz is always given on Easter Saturday: in the following three weeks more than one million pleasure-seeking people visit the largest spring festival in Lower Saxony.
Launch in the 1950s
In 1954, at the first spring festival in Hanover, Bernie's bobsleigh run was a big hit on the Schützenplatz and a meeting place for teenagers with pomades in their hair, who had fun in leather jackets and petticoats with rock'n'roll music. Today, the "Rummel" (as these folk festivals were called at the time) is even a little faster than in the wild 50s: between large festival halls and small party tents, lottery booths and gourmet stands, roller coasters, flying carpets, rockets, a 50-metre-high Ferris wheel and many other attractions lure visitors to the fairground to take off.
The highlight on Friday
Wednesdays are traditionally family days at the spring festival: tickets for the rides are only half price, all other shops offer discounts of up to 25 percent, and there is also a flea market, Punch and Judy show and a make-up studio for children. You can go on a backstage tour of the fairground every day of the week, but the big hit of the spring festival in Hanover can only be seen on the three Friday evenings when the big fireworks spectacle in the sky above the Schützenplatz is lit from around 9.45 p.m. onwards.