Bielefeld

Bielefeld is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with around 300,000 citizens.

Old City Hall (Altes Rathaus)

According to a German internet meme (which originated as tongue in cheek take on various conspiracy theories), this city does not exist. Incidentally this is the one thing almost all Germans know about the town.

Understand

While the bizarre conspiracy theory of it not existing is the first thing most Germans will tell you about the city, it actually has a rather long history, dating back to a first mention in the 9th century and it was first called a city in a 1214 document, the 800-year anniversary of which was celebrated - naturally - under the headline "Das gibt's doch gar nicht" which can mean "That's unbelievable" or more literally "That doesn't exist". While a lot of the old town was destroyed in World War II, there are still some nice buildings left.

Get in

City Theatre at Niederwall (1904)

Central station (Hauptbahnhof)

By train

🌍 Bielefeld Hauptbahnhof. sees regular Deutsche Bahn service. There's even the occasional ICE

By bus

See also: Intercity buses in Germany

By plane

The nearest major airport is in Hanover (HAJ^IATA); other than that the greater Ruhr area, as well as Cologne which are served by various airports are easily reachable by train.

Get around

The Bielefeld Stadtbahn

Bielefeld is served by a Stadtbahn which can be classified as a mixture of light rail, tram and metro. (see the network plan on the right). Where the Stadtbahn doesn't go, there is an extensive bus network. With headways as low as ten minutes. As is usual in Germany, tickets for bus and Stadtbahn are integrated with each other and operate on the proof of payment system.

See

🌍 Sparrenberg Castle. restored fortress
🌍 Altes Rathaus (Old City Hall). built in 1904
🌍 Stadttheater (City Theatre). it has a notable Jugendstil façade.

Do

🌍 Kletterpark Bielefeld, Am Johannisberg 3. (updated Jul 2018)

Buy

🌍 LOOM Bielefeld, Bahnhofstraße 28. Shopping mall (updated Jul 2018)

Eat

🌍 Alt Bielefeld, Obernstr. 12, ☎ +49 521 66940. Daily 11:00-23:00. (updated Mar 2017)
🌍 Klötzer's Restaurant, Niedernstraße 41, ☎ +49 521 9677520. (updated Jul 2018)

Drink

Sleep

🌍 Hotel Büscher, Carl-Severing-Straße 136, ☎ +49 521 94614, e-mail: hotel-buescher@t-online.de.
🌍 Mercure Hotel Bielefeld Johannisberg, Am Johannisberg 5, ☎ +49 521 92380. (updated Jul 2018)

Go next

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gollark: OCaml suffers from the same sort of ecosystem problem.

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gollark: I'm actually investigating F# as a non-bad language, and while it is in fact an excellent language according to the osmarks.tk™ arbitrary language ratings™, the tooling is æææææÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆæææææÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆææÆÆÆÆæææææÆÆÆÆÆæææ (very heavyweight and annoying) and much of the ecosystem is too "enterprisey".

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