Lower Saxony Region

Lower Saxony borders on the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The state of Bremen forms two enclaves within Lower Saxony. The state's principal cities include Hanover, Braunschweig, Osnabrück, Oldenburg, and Göttingen. The northwestern portion of Lower Saxony is a part of Frisia it is called Ostfriesland and lies on the coast of the North Sea. It includes seven islands, known as the East Frisian Islands. In the southwest of Lower Saxony is the Emsland, a sparsely populated area, once full of inaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony is absolutely flat, but there are two mountain chains in the south the Weserbergland and the Harz. The middle of the state houses the largest cities and the economic centres Hanover, Hildesheim, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter and Braunschweig.