We are OK, just busy

 

Just to let you know we are OK and spending a lot of time on trains and in rooms, without either the ability or the time to update this blog.  Hopefully we will be able to update soon.  We have been to Bautzen, Germany and Klodkzo, Poland since the last blog.

Right now we are packed up and waiting for a taxi to take us to the train to start our 9 hour travels to Krakow, Poland.  We will spend one night there, see some sights the next day, then travel to Wielczka, Poland where the salt mine with sculptures is for 4 nights.  From there we will take one day trip back to Krakow and one day trip to Auschwitz. 

A little bit more that we learned about Germany.  I know I thought of Germany as the bad guys in the war.  What I’m finding out is that the Germans thought of the Nationalist party as the bad buys who took over their country.  Then the Russians took over their country.  I guess I mentioned it before, but it is still a surprise.  In Bautzen we saw pictures of what the city looked like in 1945.  Both the Germans and the Russians bombed the town.  The town was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The people suffered terribly, just like people on all sides of the war.  WAR IS AWFUL.

In Bautzen there is a church that has both Catholic and Protestant services in it.  It is the only church of its kind in Europe, who knows maybe the world.  This has been going on for centuries.  This town has and had no animosity toward any religion.  They even have a whole section of the church dedicated to the 75 Jewish people who lived in the town, who they were and where they ended up.

Got to go, the taxi is here.

Leipzig part 2

 

Then today we went back to old town to take some pictures and buy some electrical adapters. We could use more. Interesting enterprise. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to return them. Very complicated since some countries have square holes and some have round and never the two shall fit.

Some pictures of the older buildings or the ones we found interesting.  Notice how many people are running around Leipzig.

  

                                                       

Other interesting sights.

   This is the mailman delivering with his bike with built-in carriage for the mail.

     

   Family outing, mom, dad and the 3 kids.

                                                                                                    

Unlike when I went to East Berlin in 1968, the stores are now just like ours, stocked full with no long lines waiting to get bread.

Then to more music. We went to Thomas Church for a recital, ok not a recital but a service, but the service was in German but the music was in every language. The main huge organ played, the boy’s choir full of angels sang and then the regular organ played. I guess the German spoken was sermonizing, but who cared.

            

Before we left Leipzig we passed a fenced off area. While excavating for a new building new the old town, which is now full of high priced and high end stores, the found a maybe 1000 year old cistern with its pipes and walls and arches. Now they are fighting over saving it or building over it. A nice man translated the sign for us. People are really nice.

This next picture needs a bunch of explanation.  This is a statue outside a store on a crowded pedestrian mall.  At first it is very upsetting.  There is a plaque on the front, but that didn’t help much, but it did seem to confirm what I think this art piece displays.  Notice the figure’s head just poking out from between his shoulders.

                                                                     

                                          The Nazis then the Soviets beat us down, but we are making our way back.

On to Leipzig, Germany June 20 part 1

 

We trained it to Leipzig and hauled our luggage to our apartment.  We booked a 2 room apartment with kitchenette in a hostel/hotel/apartment called the Sleepy Lion.  We only booked an apartment because that was all that was left for our 3 night stay and the price seemed right.  Very large rooms, especially for just the 2 of us. We had beds for 4 and floor for 8.   Great.

View from our window on the 4th floor (lift available and used).

If you follow thhe street to the end, that is where the train station is.  It would not have been a bad walk if the sidewalks weren’t made of cobblestones.  The bicycle path was smoother, but we would certainly get run over.

After checking in, we walked around the old town, which is a 15 minute walk away and went to a grocery and bought some wursts, you know German hot dogs, and sauerkraut  and cooked them in our room.  Oh yeah, we also bought local German beer in the grocery for about 60 cents a bottle, large bottle.  Wonderful dinner.   We bought cereal for breakfast along with yogurt.  Well we thought we bought yogurt.  I think we had cereal and sour cream, garlic and chives for breakfast.  Live and learn.  (since I wrote this we ate at a very nice restaurant that served bread and this same spread for our bread….)

The next day we decided to go to the zoo.  Yes, the zoo.  We were told the Leipzig zoo was the best in Europe.  Then we were told it was one of the best in the world.  Well, it’s true.  It is a great zoo.  What makes a great zoo?, you ask.  One of the things that stood out was how they keep the animals.  At one point I even asked why we had gone on an African safari because their presentation of the animals was so realistic.  They had  4 or 5 different types of animals roaming around a huge area, just like on our safari.  There were zebra and giraffes and wildebeest and vultures and you get the idea.  You got excited when you spotted another animal……in a zoo.!   The pictures we took just can’t convey the experience.  Sorry.

We went on the spider monkey island.  When you cross a bridge to get to this island, a worker tells you to put your zoo map in your pocket because the monkeys like them.  I followed directions.  We were also told to stay away from the railings because the monkeys bite.  So we listened to that, too.  The monkeys are everywhere. 

   how often do you get a shot like this?

Well, one monkey jumped on my pant leg, climbed up and grabbed the map out of my pocket, and ran away.     I’m pretty sure I got his picture first, not knowing what his plant was, I turned away.

The worker had to jump over the railing, shoo the monkeys away and get the map.  Boy did I love that.

           The worker was always trying to keep the monkeys away from the visitors.  Who do you think will win this standoff?

                                                                 

Have to include some other zoo pictures, just can’t help it.

    Aren’t these lovely shiny fish.  They are piranha.  Don’t stick your finger in and pet them.

This bear has long thick hair that bounces when he runs        

      

     This not an armadillo.

The gorilla area was special, too.  You know they use tools, like us.  So to keep them thinking, there is a box with something they want in it, so they have to devise tools to get it.

                                                                                                                  

Then this one took time out to relax on his rug.  Are we sure they are not human?

                                                              

 

When I said we went to the zoo, I should have said we ended up at the zoo.  We started out for the zoo, we had a map that showed where the zoo was, but not where the entrance was.  So we headed out and visited a very lovely open space with joggers and bikers and mothers with strollers, but no zoo entrance.  We walked for about 45 minutes before we got the chance to ask, and boy were we in the wrong place.  So we got some extra exercise.  Then we walked around the zoo for about 4 hours.  We should be thin (we have not lost any weight).

We came back to our room and got  ready for a dance show at the Central Theatre.  We saw a sign at the visitor’s center we visited when we first arrived.  We didn’t know what kind of show it was going to be, but got tickets anyway.  So we rested for about an hour and off we went again, to the theatre.  Well, we loved it.  It was a dance and song show performed by an ensemble of seemingly dozens, but actually only 10 performers.  They did songs and dances from A Chorus Line, and jazz, modern, tap and other stuff along with songs.  We enjoyed it totally and found out when we got back to the hotel, and could ask the desk clerk who speaks English, what the ticket said.  We had seen a performance by the Leipzig University of Music and the Arts.  Well done.

 

Thoughts about Germany

 

Some things we have noticed all over Germany. 

There are no bags of either plastic or paper, in grocery stores

People who live in apartments often have garden plots away from where they live.  Sometimes these plots have very little sheds that they can stay in over night.  We pass lots of them near the rails we travel.  Great idea, no one has to hear the trains, but plants don’t mind.

Nice rooms don’t necessarily have wash clothes or shampoo or soap, but they use the same types of setups, they fold the covers separately on each half of the bed and punch a dent in the center of each pillow.

                                                   

Did you notice the candies on the pillows?  They are golden bears (gummy bears to you)

Beer is cheaper than water or soda at restaurants and big bottles of beer are 50 cents in the grocery store

Every city seems to have an old town with towers and walls and churches and palaces and town halls

You are more in danger of getting hit by a bike than by a car or tram.  They are all over, even when they have lanes just for them.

When you buy a sausage on a bun, like a hot dog, here the dog, or wurst, is 3 times the length of the bun and the bun is a hard crusted one,

You cannot get tap water at a restaurant.  It is against the law.

Everyone has tried to be helpful, even when we weren’t communicating

Everyone watches the world championships of soccer, or football.  People fly their flags like it’s a national holiday, and maybe it is.  When their team is playing, people, mostly younger, paint their faces, color their hair, wear special acrylic nails and anything else they can think of, when they go watch the games in very large groups.  (I am typing this during half time because we are hooked, too, even tho we don’t understand the narration.

Got to go, half time is over.

More Potsdam

 

Some interesting things we saw…..At bus stops they tell you what buses are going to arrive and in how much time.  We saw this throughout Germany

   wouldn’t that be great at home?

We went to the palace called San Souci, or French for “No Worries”. 

   We took a tour of the inside of this palace.  Nice but small, only 15 rooms and each of the rooms was small.  After all, this was just a place to go in the summer, you know, to get away.  Since the king could not travel much, he brought Rome back home.  He had ruins of Rome copied in his garden.

  

That is what is in the far distance of the garden view.  The white on the left is a covering because they are fixing the fake ruins

The king wanted to be buried in San Souci, but he was buried in Berlin, but after the war, since he had to be moved several times to keep from being blown up, he was reburied here.  Near his burial you can see potatoes place.  The story about this is that the German people were starving and the potato had been introduced from the Americas, but no one would eat it because it grew underground and root vegetables were for animals.  So the kind put guards around his potato fields so the common folk would think it was very important to the king, and they snuck in and stole the potatoes and the rest is German Potato Salad.  So someone leaves potatoes on his grave all the time too thank him.

We next went to the New Palace.  Seems no son wants to live in his father’s palace and has to build his own.

   This is not bad for a new palace.  There are 2 ends that look the same.  We took lots of pictures of these buildings to then find out that this is the “kitchen” and the other palace is the sleeping quarters for the help.  

This is the palace…..  It is made out of brick, but the bricks you see are not real, they are painted on to look better.

Some lovely things.

  

   A normal neighborhood

 

  

The KGB had their headquarters in Potsdam.  It is where they held Gary Powers (sp) the U2 pilot, before he was exchanged for a
Russian spy, and where most decisions were made about the control of eastern Germany.  When we were driving around, whenever we saw a white washed wall, we were in the forbidden area of the KGB

 

  Very worthwhile side trip.

To Potsdam June 19

 

We are getting smarter the more we travel.  We took a train from Berlin to Potsdam without issue.  We even took a tour, not an on/off bus, that took us around for 3 hours with a guide.  We learned that we didn’t solve everything by taking a guided tour.  We still need to ask “Where does the tour end?”  At the end of this tour, we entered the San Souci Palace and took a handset tour of the 15 room palace.  From there we had to make our own way back to the train station.  We chose to walk and had a great, if tiring time.

Potsdam is a city of gates.  Old city gates that were not used to keep the enemy out, but to keep the army in.  When you enlisted into the medieval army, you signed up for 40 years.  After a while, men wanted out, so a wall, with gates, was built.  They even said on the tour that they had experience with walls.  Boy.

Some gates:

   

 

and the Brandenburg Gate in Potsdam, older than the one in Berlin

                                                                                             

Potsdam is a modern city, like all the others, and like the others, it has a great old town.

  notice the old and new together

 

One of the places we visited was where the Potsdam Conference was held, and the Potsdam Accord was signed dividing  Germany into 4 sectors. 

   Where Truman, and Stalin and Churchill met.

  

In this palace is a kindergarten, the real use of the word…..a garden for children     where the bushes are shaped like animals.  Now you know where that word came from.

It turns out that a lot of things in Potsdam are not real.  This windmill is a reproduction.

 

 This mosque isn’t one.  It was a steam plant and is now a brewpub. 

   You may recognize the maidens on this porch from the Acropolis in Athens.  Later we will show you some fakes from Rome.