Best Western Premier Victor's Residenz Hotel Leipzig

... model of Auschwitz..it had the people going through to the undressing rooms to the gas chambers and the bodies going to the crematoriums..it looked like a production line and you could get a whole picture and the grand scale of mass murder conveyed from the one model. The other thing I came to realize was that Hitler started his Brainwashing young, you were funnelled into the army from the ages of 12 with Hitler run "youth clubs" and then progressed to fighting for ...

Saskia and Eartha got up early and made full use of the stuffed toys. Their particular favourites were the long green Swedish snake (from Ikea) and a large stuffed lion.

Martina had the morning off and was keen to show us around her city. Having raised four kids of her own, she was a natural at entertaining my four. We walked along the River Saale into town stopping at all the favourite places her kids liked to play. They were the ...

... to find that it is a modern building rather than the old one we had expected. We went to the Egyptian Museum, which was a very interesting but very small collection.

Our next appointment was at Thomaskirche for a Motette at which the Ottawa Bach Choir were singing. We had some time to kill, so looked through the shops to get Helen some new jeans - with eventual success - and had a coffee.

The Thomaskirche was nearly full for the ...

... with JS Bach from the time he was cantor of Leipzig.

We followed signs to Mendelssohn's house but never found it. Helen was amused by the sign for a coffee shop, which used the green man from pedestrian crossings to say "never go without a coffee" - so we went in and enjoyed coffee and cake, plus their free Internet.

We caught a tram back to the apartment and bought some supplies for dinner. Having a kitchen certainly helps to cut down on the costs!

... just took us on a loop back to the same spot. So, we guessed which road might be a way around the blockage and followed it until the GPS found us another way back past the blockage to our destination, Guesthouse Apartments Leipzig. We were concerned by the shabby appearance of the outside, and by the road being dug up to re-lay the tram lines. We parked across the street in the carpark of a hardware store and walked over to find out about checking in. We were very cold ...

The Start of our Travel was the regular Train-Journey from Zittau to Leipzig. A not very spectacular drive, which we do almost every week. We wanted to use the time to improve our spanish skills but ended up talking to some carneval-junkies, boarding the train some 15 minutes after us...

... aenderte sich die Anzeige von planmaessiger Abflugzeit 22:10 auf 23:50. O.k. der Anschlussflug war damit noch nicht gefaehrdet und die 15Euro Gutschein konnte ich auch noch verwerten. Nach zwei Bieren aus dem Burger-King (die 15 Euro mussten ja irgendwie aufgebraucht werden) aenderte sich die vorraussichtliche Abflug dann allerdings auf 0:50Uhr, was sich dann mit den Anschluss schon um 10 Minuten ueberschnitt. Laut Aussagen der Fluggesellschaft sollte dieser ...

Leipzig had one of the coolest museums we've visited so far: one dedicated to the operations of the GDR (East German) secret police, known as the Stasi. The GDR kept extremely detailed tabs on EVERYONE in their country, employing spies of all ages and collecting and filing all the information. The Stasi Museum (Museum an der Runden Ecke) was their old headquarters in Leipzig and has been kept as it was to show the oppressive nature of even the Stasi workplace. Very exciting and VERY cool!

... still a collection of individual states and many saw the victory as a boost to the argument for a single national identity. During the Great War the Kaiser used the monument as a symbol for Germany's imperial potential but the Weimar republic upheld it as a sign of what Germany was capable of as a new democratic state after the fighting ended. The Nazis saw it as a sign of German supremacy, the Communists felt it showed the beginning of a long German-Russio ...

Here we go again - new experiences! My mom and me decided to go to Ischia to relax a little from my past advantures... We had to get up so early to catch our flight well and firstly get to Leipzig from Dresden - that was a bummer but now we feel like we definetely need a vacation... Ready for yummy pizza and all kinds of good Italian pasta... keep everyone updated!!