Classy Weekend in Leipzig

It seems I've got the travel bug!

On Friday Colleen and I took the ICE train to Leipzig.  You have to understand how luxurious that was for us, we usually take the regional train (because we can get cheap tickets) which is crowded, slow and stops at every station.  When we got there we took the S-Bahn (tram) to our hotel.  Another luxury for us!  For some reason, all the hostels were booked up and we couldn't find any places to couch surf, so we stayed in a hotel.  It was expensive, but nice.  We grabbed some dinner and went to see Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas Church--pictured), which was the site of the Monday Demonstrations in 1989.

Friday night we went to see die Fledermaus.  It wasn't in the opera house and the location wasn't that great, but it was still the Leipzig Opera and the performance was wonderful.  The most hilarious thing that happened to me all weekend was during intermission when I asked if they had still water (because Europeans drink mineral water which is carbonated) and the woman's response was "No, we only have normal water."

Saturday morning we went to Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church--pictured) where Bach was the choral director and where he is now buried.  Unfortunately, we were unable to go inside, but it was cool to think that he was there!  Then we headed to the Bach Museum, which was amazing.  We were able to see actual pieces of music that Bach wrote!  It was really cool and I believe that we spent a good hour or two in there.  On Saturday we also saw the Altes Rathaus (old town hall) and the Museum Runde Ecke (round corner museum, which was the original location of the Stasi--secret police--headquarters).  We ate dinner at a bar where they still accept the German Mark!  The food was delicious.

That night we went to see Carmina Burana at the opera house.  It was not nearly as beautiful as the opera house in Prague, but had great acoustics.  It was simply amazing.  For those of you who don't know, it isn't an opera that is like a play, but, rather, more like a symphony.  There was a full orchestra, a choir and then individual opera singers.  I cannot describe how wonderful it was.  Colleen and I were on the edge of our seats the whole time.  If you're not familiar with it here is a youtube clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjvqY-U9gV0), you'll probably recognize it from various movie trailers and such.

Sunday morning we visited the oldest Botanical Gardens in Germany.  There was a cactus show going on.  The gardens weren't actually that pretty, but we were only there for about 15 minutes.  Maybe had we been able to walk further back in to the gardens they would have been better.  We got the train back, unfortunately we weren't able to get seats on the first train and had to sit on the floor.  We nearly missed both our connections and had to run from train to train.  But we made it home safely.

It was such a wonderful weekend, even though the weather was horrendous--cold and raining the whole time.  I'm happy to be back in Bamberg, though.  Home sweet hom.

My next trip is to Rome on Wednesday!  We'll be there until Sunday, when we go to Bologna and get the plane back to Frankfurt.  I'll spend the night in Frankfurt and meet Mom and Lair at the airport on Monday afternoon!


In other news!  I've taken up running.  For the time being I put my iPod in and run one song, walk one song, run one song, walk one song and so on.  I did this on Thursday for 45 minutes and today for an hour, I probably could have kept going, but I have things to do today.  Hopefully soon I can up it to run two songs, walk one song and work my way up to being able to run without needing to walk in between.  Yay, exercise!