A trip to the East - Leipzig & Berlin

Next stop on my Germany travels / Herbstferien adventures was a 5-day trip to Leipzig, staying with Kristina who was in Leeds last year for her Auslandssemester - Morten would be proud of his little 'make friends with the Erasmus students scheme' working out! After a 6+ hour train from Köln it was time to experience the East, and once again take too many photos...

East German Ampelmännchen

Leipzig

There's many many tales to be told of my time in Leipzig, but I'll try to keep this (relatively!) short and sweet!

Friday: most of the day was spent sitting on a train, but after a pizza tea with a couple of Kristina's friends, many more rocked up for a party / gathering in her flat. It was at this moment that I realised not being a smoker was automatically going to put me in the minority of people there. In fact after 2 people had left relatively early I was the only one left who didn't smoke, fantastic.

Saturday: after a lie in and late German-stylee breakfast, it was time for a grand tour of Leipzig ... Problem 1 - it was pouring down with rain. Problem 2 - the neo-nazis were protesting that day :/ talk about timing. 1500 of them had registered to hold a protest at the train station, but apparently only a couple of hundred actually turned up. To be fair all we saw of it were lots and lots of police people/vans stationed through all the city centre, and a group of anti-nazi demonstrators letting of some kind of fireworks  in a park (or some kind of thing that went *bang* - can't say firearms are my are of expertise!). Anyway, Leipzig is quite an impressive city with lots of big, old, typically German buildings, and of course the Ampelmännchen. Saturday evening was a burger pub tea, sadly another opportunity for much smoking as apparently "ein Pub ohne rauchen ist kein Pub". I miss England's smoking ban! :(

Leipzig, the next day when the sun decided to shine!

Sunday: another lie in, and long German breakfast with Kristina and a couple of her friends ... we finished at about half 2!! It was still absolutely freezing but today the sun was shining so we went up the MDR tower to their viewing platform and saw Leipzig from above with perfectly clear blue skies. Afterwards it was time for coffee with another girl who had been in Leeds last year, before a trip to the cinema to see 'Goethe'. Germany readers - definitely worth a watch, it was a really good film, and I understood it without knowing anything about him / his work!

Berlin

With Berlin being (comparatively) soo close, I could hardly not go and visit, especially as I've always wanted to go, so on Monday whilst Kristina was in uni I went off on a jolly to Germany's capital city. It sounds stupid, but it's a lot bigger than I had expected! 6 hours is definitely not enough to see the whole city, but I did manage to visit many of the tourist sights - Reichstag, Brandenburg Tor, Unter den Linden, Checkpoint Charlie, Friedrichstraße, East Side Gallery... A longer visit is definitely required at some point in life.

Berlin Wall

 Tuesday: there isn't much to report other than a snotty woman on train snapping at me auf Deutsch for saying 'Entschuldigen Sie bitte', and having not such an enjoyable journey back. However, once I was back in Köln Hbf, this was when my day was made. Feeling a touch grumpy and massively fed up of public transport (or more the people on it!), as I was walking through the station to get my next train a piece of chocolate cake was calling to me from one of the bakeries... Well I could hardly ignore it's pleas now could I? Anyway, long story short, the guy thought I had asked for 2 pieces not one (I'm not that greedy!) and said I could take the second piece for free! :)

All in a good weekend filled with many more things to go in my 'experience box' and not to mention lots of German spoken! Back in Bergisch Gladbach now, but a compulsory trip to Düsseldorf and a teacher training / bonding day in Hattingen await in just under a fortnight.

Finally, I have now been paid - woop! If only I had a working bank card to actually access it though...

(Wednesday 20th October 2010)