Holiday Inn Leipzig-Gunthersdorf

The plan is from Berlin to Leipzig today..but, we haven't finished exploring Berlin. So, after up time around 8.30am and getting ready and having breakfast we load up the car and take it towards to city of Berlin to find a carpark close to the Deutches Historishes Museum and the Reichstag. The GPS comes through locating one just under Bebelplatz, and we park, knowing it will be 11Euro for the day..and out we get and off we go to the Deutches Museum.
The Museum is ...

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 ...

... which was part church service and part concert. The first piece was played on the large organ at the back of the church, then the choir performed a number of pieces by Byrd, Bach, Buxtehude, and Monteverdi. Some were accompanied by a small organ, other by string players. It was beautiful singing, made more so by the environment.

Leaving the church, we walked back through Mitte looking for somewhere to eat, but also enjoying the stalls and ...

We slept in until 9:30, with only a few disturbances overnight. We had been worried about noise from the trams outside the door and the railway line next door, but it wasn't bad enough to wake us. The renovation included double-glazed windows, which certainly cut out a lot of noise.
We spent the morning pottering around in the apartment, and trying to arrange for a load of washing - but the man was off having his foot treated so we couldn't (or get onto the ...

... in our jumpers, and it didn't help that there was no response to the buzzer to call the office. We tried ringing them but no answer there either. After about half an hour, Helen tried buzzing one of the other apartments and someone answered and let us in. It turned out that the owner/caretaker/whatever had damaged his foot and tings were a bit chaotic while he limped around in the four-storey building. He was very friendly though, a spoke good English.

After ...

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...

... Zwar wird uns Eintritt in eine Lounge gewaehrt - aber ich brauche wohl niemanden erzaehlen, wie belastend eine solche Warterei ist. Und noch etwas: es wurde noch ein Zwischenstop eingeplant - in Karachi (Pakistan). Montag ca. 23:00 Pakistaner Ortszeit - wir werden mit einem groesseren Mitarbeiteraufgebot durch den Flughafen von Karachi geleitet. eine knappe Stunde spaeter - unser Flieger (diesmal von Cathay Pacific) startet nun hoffendlich zum endgueltigen Ziel: Bangkok

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!

... and now it's presented as a way to see where the country has come from, in order to ponder how it will proceed into the future. I found it interesting to consider how this was the biggest war then known to Europe, yet the monument was completed on the eve of a much larger conflict to come - the 'war to end all wars'. It's easy to forget how influential and traumatic Napoleon's rise to power was - I suppose they told stories about him like we now tell stories about ...

... with something appropriately reassuring, paternal, and mostly completely fictional. We are old hands, and felt that little could faze us. And then in one day Claude discovered just how much bed bugs love her, we made some quick/ rushed decisions and find ourselves living at the dump. Any advice previously dispensed should be viewed in light of these developments. This all started as we painted ourselves into a little bit of a corner in terms of accommodation ...