Travelog for: Bubo

My first trip in Leipzig is to go to the main station because Katrin needs tickets for her weekend trip.


While Katrin is waiting at the counter, I explored the station on my own. You enter the station trough this huge hall but then I had to decide: Climbing the stairs or follow the people on the right?


I decided to follow the people and look where I am! It looks more like a shopping mall than a station. There are all kind of different shops over two floors.


After some window shopping I looked up and saw the blue and yellow signs of the tracks.


Now I am at the main station floor. The main station in Leipzig is one of Europes biggest "Kopfbahnhof" ("head station"). That means that the trains have to leave the station on the same track on which they entered it.

A bag full of books? These books aren't any schoolbooks, there are German and Englisch novels and thrillers and.... Hey, why do you close the zipper?!


Here is the solution: Katrin is at a Bookcrossing meet-up! I think you have already heard about www.bookcrossing.com, it's like Toy Voyagers, just with books.
This is me with all the books which are supposed to be swaped. (Great idea to put them on a black couch, right?)


Back home after two hours of nice chatting and making new friends. The result: instead of having less books at home, Katrin brought new books home with her. I won't be bored here, there are always enough books for reading.

The sun is shining and it was warm outside, a good reason to go for a walk. When I had a bath in the fallen leaves, Katrin picked me up to go to the city center.


It is not easy to take good pictures of the buildings, because everything is really close. The city center is built in a ring and people say that you can go from one end of the city center to the other end within ten minutes.
This building which looks a bit like a castle is the new town hall.


The street leeds us from the town hall to one of the famous churches on the city center: St. Thomas. It is home of the famous "Thomanerchor" (St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig). It sings here every Friday and Saturday.


In front of the church I met the founder of the choir: the composer Johann Sebastian Bach.


Near the church are a lot of cafés and restaurants, the are is called "Drallewatsch". In it's center is the "Barfußgässchen", you can the small alley on this picture. When you come here in the evening, every table is taken.


At the other end of the "Barfußgässchen" is the market place with the old town hall. In its covered footpath you find small souvenir shops, in the building itself is the museum about the history of Leipzig.


I don't have to tell you what this date means, right? For those who don't know, you find a lot of information here


This board is at the foot of the column you can see here. It is called column of peace and is a reminder of the Peaceful Revolution of 1989, which led to the German Reunion in 1990.


When I turn around, I stand in front of the place, where the revolution began: the church St. Nicolai.

I travelled north this weekend! Here are some impressions from Schwerin, the capital of the "Bundesland" (federal state) Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The townhall:


The cathedral (the building in the front is a café)


This house has been a fisherman's house about 30 years ago. You can still see the fish at the wall.


A house, rooted like a tree.


Views over the lake "Pfaffenteich". On the first picture you can see the socalled "Arsenal" in the background, on the second the city center with the cathedral.



And the highlight of the city: the castle!


In the castle garden I found an old sundial.


Right in front of the castle I met the "Petermännchen", the good ghost of the castle. Today it is a mascot of Schwerin.

A knock at the window, who could that be? It is Wieka, one of Katrin's TVs, who returned home from his trip to Spain.


I brought him into the kitchen where Katrin was just cooking a broccoli soup. It was real good to get him warm again!

The sun was shining today and Katrin decided to take me and Muumipeikko outside. (The sun was nice and warm, but it made it difficult to take clear photos).

After a little walk we came to this place which is called "Marienquelle" (Mary's spring). The legend says that the Holy Mary brought leper here to drink from the water and they were cured. Today there is just this door left.


Katrin told us another secret of this place: somewhere here is a hidden geocache. She gave us a hint: it is between two metal plates.

Muumipeikko found the first one, it was easy to find, because it gives the information about the spring.


The second one was a bit more difficult to find. When I flew around, I discovered this plate on the top of the spring.


But where was the middle between the two plates? We guessed that it must be these stones. And since you go geocaching yourself, you know the meaning of the two stones between the stones, right?


Yes, behind the little stones was the little film container with the log book.

20°C outside, the weather is too nice to spend the whole Sunday inside. So Katrin and I took the bike to explore more historical places of Leipzig.

This time we go back to the French invasion and the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. What I am talking about? We went to see the Monument to the Battle of the Nations!
Here are some impressions from the monument, the arcangel Michael und the huge knights. You can find more information about the monument here.






Our next stop is this area which is called "Alte Messe". Leipzig has always been a fair city and these buildings are the old fair buildings.


Katrin had a special surprise for me. She brought her GPS tracker and now we will the fair ground via a geocache. When I found the final, I have fulfilled one of my life missions!


The start is the entry of the fair ground. The double "M" mean "Mustermesse" (sample fair). It was the name of the annual fair in the 1920's. Our task for the cache is to find the number of the halls and calculate with the next station of the cache.


Our next stop is this biulding which is known as the "Pantheon".


This hall is used by a supermarket today...


... this one is an ice arena...


... this is the "Soccer World"...


and this one is empty, the windows are broken.


The tower of this building is not a church, the red star identifies it as former building from the Russians.


After some calculating we finally arrived at this place. With your practised eyes you have probably already spotted the little box


Here I am with my first geocache outside the UK which I found on my own (the one yesterday was just training).

A loud knock at the door usually means that a visiter arrived. But today there was not just one new TV in front of the door but two! Both are travelling the European TV Trail. The little tiger Dusel is back home and looking for new adventures. Pippiis still on the road and looking for a great time in Germany.


Dusel brought a postcard from his last host, Pippi some sweets. It has been a while since there was such a big group of TVs together here and we had a lot themes to talk about.

Today the first snow has fallen. Okay, it has fallen during the night, because when I left the house, the snow started to melt again.


This candle shows us, that the advent time starts on Sunday. Just four more weekends until Christmas!


Katrin decided that it is time to prepare the first Christmas presents.
Muumipeikko helped her to wrap this chocolate for her American penpal,


Pippi decorated the present for the boyfriend,


Dusel was writing a card to Mummipeikko's mum...


and I discovered a present from St Nicholas. The words say, that the present shouldn't be opened until December 6th.


We surprised Muumipeikko with a little surprise. It was his last afternoon here in Germany. Tomorrow he will travel back home to Finland. after spending a nearly a year in Germany.


He wasn't the only one who leaves Leipzig, Dusel will travel on to his next host, too.

When you see this old warehouse, can you guess where I am? The way it is built can tell you that I am in a city which has been part of the Henseatic League. Maybe the next photo makes everything clearer...


This gate identifies the city as Lübeck, it is the "Holstentor".


And what did I do here? Right, I walked around one of the most famous Christmas fairs of northern Germany

I hope you didn't worry too much about me. Life here is a bit boring because it is snowing nearly every day and Katrin spends her time with going to university, doing the household or reading.

Today she took me with her to university. On our way we had to walk through this snow slush, that was terrible! I was happy, that I can fly.


Here I am in front of the building. An since it is very cold, we hurried to get inside.


This is one of the rooms. It totally looks like a classroom in school. But I have no idea why they built columns in the middle of the room...


The students who study bookselling even have their own little bookstore. It is open every day during lunch break. Here they can practise working in a real bookstore.


I'm on the way back downstairs to the cafeteria. This is the staircase which always goes in a halfround with an elevator (or lift, Katrin always mixes up the British and the American word) in the middle.


In her afternoon break Katrin wrote a Christmas card to one of her friends. To me it looks like a cryptograph, but she told me that she wrote in Süterlin. Süterlin is the name of the German lettering which has been used in the 1930's.

Today I visited the Christmas market.


Every hut sold something different, but many of them sold food. You can buy a lot of Christmas decoration or toys or scarves or sweets.


This is a huge advent calender, it is at a wall of a building and every day they open a new door. It was even too big to be complete on the photo!


Next to the church of St. Nicolai there was this hut with a wooden pyramid on it.


Near the church of St. Thomas there is a "Märchenwald" (fairy tale forest).


I recognised these two fairy tales:
The princess and the pea


and Snow White

It's a sunny Saturday and we travelled to Halle, just about 30 minutes north of Leipzig by train. What we want to do here? Look for new bookcrossing books
This is supposed to be an open air library but there weren't any interesting books to take home. Katrin wanted to put us inside one of the boxes for taking a photo, but they were frozen and we couldn't open them!


This was a bit disappointing, but when we arrived at the city center we smiled again: there was another Christmas market


This tower is on the middle of the market place. Right in front of it is a huge tent in which they sell salmon and "Glögg" (the Scandinavian version of "Glühwein", the spiced wine)


In front of this church there was a huge snow globe in which you could climb.


I also discovered a wooden crib.

I'm going to spend Christmas with Katrin's family in the northern part of Germany. We arrived today just in time to decorate the Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas mum!
In Germany the "Weihnachtsmann" brings the presents in the evening of December 24. Pippi and I were really excited when we heard that someone was knocking a the door.
It was Santa Clause! He even had some time and read a Christmas story to us.


Here is a close up shot of the two of us.