June 23 2012

Today was really fun. It was nice being able to do whatever we wanted at the pace we wanted without having to be somewhere because it is on a schedule. We woke up at a reasonable hour, checked out of our hostel and went to explore Leipzig, by way of finding breakfast. We went back to the city center and found a mall which had a food court like thing in the basement level. There was a giant fountain and a ton of escalators. We got some coffee and pastries at the bakery and then split up for a half hour to explore. Jennifer and I rode the escalators up to the top of the building and then went down each one and walked around the level.

Checking prices o things was really interesting, for instance, there was a stuffed Deer in the toy section that was 69 euro. I don’t know why, maybe it was a special deer, or a special brand, but whatever it is, it must be special to cost 69 euro.

After we met up again David and I got some Eis because it is good, especially before lunch. We then walked around the shopping area a little more.

 We ended up in a square were there was a bookstore so we went int here for about a half hour and I got some books. The Nibelungsage, The Taming of the Shrew, and Oedipus Rex. All In German, but at least with the two plays I found I could read a lot of it since for plays the sentence structure tends to be simpler. 

We then decided to go see something Jennifer said she had been to when she was here for highschool: a panoramic museum. So we walked about 2 miles… maybe longer, it seemed like forever. But we got to see parts of Leipzig I’m sure many tourists don’t get to see.

The Panorama museum’s theme right now is the Amazon, it was really interesting. What was nice was a lot of it was in German and English so I was able to read more of the German since I could use the English as a guide when I didn’t know a word.

After that we took a Strassebahn back to the Hauptbahnhof and returned to Wittenberg.  This trip to Leipzig is probably my favorite part of this experience… no, but definitely one of my favorite parts. Being able to really walk around and go where we wanted and not feel any pressure was nice.

Words:

Gegen = contrary,  opposite

Meinung (f) (-en) = Opinion

Spinne (f) = Spider

Zeigen = to show, indicate

Auffalen = conspicuous, surprising, something you weren’t expect (this apparently is a hard word to translate, there isn’t a good direct translation)