Hotel Kloster Nimbschen Grimma

... tonight in the outskirts of Leipzig. we have found that Starbucks do free 1 hour internet, so that has been our net places. After a relax and recouperation we head off to the Reichstag, time is going by and we really should be on the road but the Reichstag is meant to be good. So we get there and queue up..the wait is 45mins and it's around 7pm by the time we get the audio tour and walk up the Dome and work our way back down. It very interesting and there is an ...

... were pretty and the rope climbing frame near the monkeys was a hit too.

Unfortunately, there was a long drive ahead, as we had planned to get to the Netherlands, so we had to cut the visit a little short. In the end we set off around 1.15pm and drove solidly for about seven hours, plus an hour's break. Once again the Michelin guide had underestimated the journey. It had suggested a five hour trip (yeah, right! Me and my helicopter!)

... park and cemetary complex next to the memorial.

We bought some hot dogs from a street stall to augment lunch, trying to warm up a little! Fortunately the sun came out for a few minutes while we had our picnic.

After lunch, we drove back into town, parking at the underground carpark below the Hauptbahnhof - it is a 5 euro maximum charge, so cheaper than 3 of us on the tram. We walked through the old town (Mitte) to the Gewandhaus hall ...

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 ...

... autobahn and stopped at a conventional roadside bay, choosing the table most sheltered from the cold wind and finishing off our leftover wiener schnitzel with salad.

We arrived at Leipzig at a reasonable hour and fund the road our apartment was on (Torgarstrasse) with no problems. However, with 400m to go, we were met with our now familiar problem - the road ahead was blocked by roadworks. We followed the GPS advice to find an alternate route, but of course ...

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...

Das die Anreise anstrengend wird, habe ich ja geahnt ... aber so? Aber fangen wir vorne an. Sonntag 11:16 deutscher Ortszeit - der Zug verlaesst planmaessig den Leipziger Hauptbahnhof (nichts aussergewoehnliches wuerde jetzt mancher sagen - aber in Zeiten von ausserordentlichen ICE-T-Wartungen schon ;)) Dann wundert es natuerlich erst recht, dass der statt ICE eingesetzte IC gerade mal 5 Minuten Verspaetung hatte. Das war es dann aber auch schon mit der Puenktlichkeit ...

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!

... a huge tour group which took over the narrow corridors so I often had to squeeze through and practice my 'entschuldigung's (excuse me) in the best German I could muster. Its so easy to forget just how invasive and omnipresent a government can make itself, and it terryfies me that this all happened so recently. And that to some extent my own government probably does some of these things too, especially with the whole war on terror. We could view the mail opening ...

... When he last left you Rob had just returned from a wonderful trip up to Norway and Sweden and school was about to begin… [raise curtain-- a younger more handsome Rob is cooking breakfast and looking for his black dress socks]

Rob: Where did the summer go!!! Well it seems I was just doing this, and the seven weeks of summer have passed so fast. The walk back to work brings the flood of memories, teachers that have left, new faces to ...