We left Leipzig this morning after returning some electrical adapters and buying new ones. It was interesting but do-able. I explained that we needed square plugs because someplace I was told that other countries had square outlets. We are trusting the salesman who said that even though square plugs don’t go into round holes, round plugs go into both square and round sockets. Thing is we won’t know until we leave Germany. So this is part of the adventure. (note: so far,in Poland, he is right)
Then we walked to the train station early, and unthinkably the German fast rail train was 35 minutes late. Right, a German train late. Well it finally arrived and we traveled to Dresden where we caught a local train, just in time (with no minutes to spare). We had no idea when we were supposed to get off this train and the train was very crowded, which makes handling luggage fun, and no announcements in English and the announcements that were made you couldn’t hear anyway. Somehow we found the Bautzen stop, hauled all of our stuff over cobblestone sidewalks, (really great for your luggage wheels) and made it to the pension. We are not sure our luggage will survive the entire trip. We are slowly turning our purple duffle silver (duct tape color, George in Amsterdam gave us some, we used it up and have been unable to find more)
On our way to our hotel or pension, we heard all kinds of singing and yelling and music. We had no idea what it was. We came across a man dressed in a rabbit suit. We asked if he spoke English, he did, and told us he was getting married soon and this was his last free days. So he was having his bachelor party. His friends has previously passed us pulling a boom box and tons of beer. Needless to say, a good time was being had by all.
The pension is lovely. We have 2 rooms and a Jacuzzi type tub in the bathroom. We are on the third floor, remembering that third floor is three floors above the main floor, which is the 0 floor. Our room overlooks the River Spree and the Peace Bridge.
When we first arrived we had lots of trouble getting on the internet and NO ONE speaks English. Well, we wanted to see what it is like to be in a small German town and we are finding out. Finally got the internet to work. No, we have no idea why it works now but didn’t before.
We had dinner at the restaurant at the pension and went to bed. Interesting thing about dinner, they served you a very hot stone and you put your meat on it and cooked it with the sauces they provided. Interesting, tasty but not wonderful.
On Sunday we decided we would take it easy, as my sister suggested. We are not as young as we think we are. The more we travel, the more we are discovering that we need to rest. We went down to breakfast, included, and we were pleasantly surprised. It was wonderful. Beautifully served, with lots to choose from. Even had yogurt that really is yogurt.
Duane slept most of the day and I worked on this blog and some bookkeeping that needed doing. (OK, so you noticed that I worked on this blog on June 24th and it is posting in July. Internet connection that can post pictures are rare) For dinner we just walked around and found a restaurant that looked nice and had outdoor seating. We sat looking out at ruins of a monks’ church (sorry we just went to dinner, so no pictures) from an outside seating and had the most wonderful meal. Of course we had beer with it. Everywhere we eat, beer is the cheapest drink to have and we are in Germany, so we have 2 different beers each lunch and dinner. We never drink beer at home. We don’t really taste much difference in the beers, mostly pilsners (whatever that is) except for the dark beers. Anyway, the meal was wonderful. When we were served our beer and waited for our meal, they brought bread and a spread. The spread was the “yogurt” we had with our cereal. I guess it is a bread spread. Part of the adventure.
The second day, after breakfast we followed the walking tour in an English tour book the owner lent us. We found out all the tours were only in German. We are in love with this town. I don’t know how many posts this will end up, because we took hundreds of photos.
Bautzen is known as the city of towers. It turns out there are lots of towns with walls. The history of Europe tells about there being separate medieval princedoms and each had to protect itself from the others. These walls and towers and battlements have been rebuilt over and over again as one princedom or country overtook the area. This town has the best preserved and the most beautiful walls and towers we have seen so far.
One of the towers has been turned into a hostel. 
Even the alley ways are beautiful
We bought dinner at a shopping center and ate it in our room. We were exhausted and took a Jacuzzi.
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