SATURDAY, May 9, 2015
I packed up (the suitcase is getting tighter now), left my Leipzig digs and went to the station early because the locomotive engineers strike might cause problems. I went to the Reisezentrum and waited a long long time for my number to come up on the screen (it's like the DMV there, you get a number ticket). Some fusty old codger and his wife were taking up a lot of time at one of the three open counters. He was pissed and insistent about something. Finally the lady he was arguing with left her counter and went to some smarter employee's counter, and they all stood there and conferred with lots of screen-staring and keyboard clicking.
So essentially there was only one other counter open and the number on my waiting ticket was slow to come up. When it finally did, the lady told me that my train was cancelled and so were all the trains to Berlin except one at 5:00pm -- OOPS, no, that one just got cancelled too. But I can use my ticket to ride the Deutsche Bahn's "Ersatzbus" -- buses German Rail is using to try to get their riders where they're going. The Berlin Ersatzbus is to leave at 12:10 from platform 5 at the Ost-Halle Bussteig. So I went out to check it out, and two uniformed DE employees out there looked at my ticket and said no, there is no such bus that that other lady told you. Then they conferred and looked at their "handys" (cell phones) and said well if there is one, it doesn't leave from here. You see that line of CityTour Hop-On-Hop-Off buses way over across the platz, and the big street and all the streetcar tracks? Well that's where it will leave from.
So I shepped my stuff way across the platz, and alongside all the big tourist buses and long distance buses there were crowds of random people trying to sort thing out because of the train strike. I got ahold of an intelligent looking bus driver, and he said no, definitely NO DB ersatz buses leave from there. They leave from back over there, he said, pointing to the Ost Halle Bussteig that I just shlepped my stuff from.
So I shlepped it all back there to platform 5 and the two DB ladies were still there. I started to tell them what the bus driver had said but they interrupted and said not over there, it's around the end ot the station back there, we just found out on our handies.
(Incidentally, speaking of shlepping, do you know what the German word is for the train of a wedding dress? "die Schleppe." Ha ha!)
So I went around to there, where there wer mostly big tourist buses from Italy and Hungary, and there was the ersatzbus with a sign on it that said Berlin. The driver said to come back at 12pm.
So I went back into the station and got out the Mobal phone and called Marc, my Berlin Airbnb guy, and then I explored the station, walking on a platform way out till I was outside the humungous glass roof and among the many tracks and overhanging wires, and took some pictures of decaying DDR buildings, and then back in the station I found a little display of old historic trains and looked at them, and then I bought a tomato/cheese sandwich and a coke for the trip, and paid one euro to pee in the deluxe WC center (you CANNOT pee for free anywhere in the station). I was afraid the bus would be super crowded so I went to it early and so did some other people, but there are only about 20 people, and lots of empty seats. It arrived at the Berlin Hbf in 2 1/2 hours.
I bought a 7-day local transportation pass and took the S-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, and after a short shlepp to Rathausstrasse, there was Marc waiting for me. He showed my up to the apartment, and OMG, it's pretty deluxe, and right across the street from the Fernsehturm. I can hear the non-stop activity out in busy Alexanderplatz all night in my bed, and I like it. That's the stalk of the Fernsehturm you see out the window.
FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015
Because of the confusing public transportation net of numbered S-Bahn lines, streetcars, and buses, plus the ongoing strike that interrupts routes unexpectedly, it took me two hours to get down to the Völkerschlachtdenkmal and Panometer south of town, but it was worth it.
The Völkerschlachtdenkmal, or Monument to the Battle of Nations was built in 1913 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the battle at Leipzig where Napoleon got his ass kicked. The huge, stark, gothic depictions of Teutonic heroism are scary. According to the Wiki article, the Germans have been of several minds about the monument as time has passed.
The nearby Panometer is an enormous cyclorama installed inside a big old gasometer -- a cylindrical brick building -- by artist and architect Yadegar Asisi. There are very good introductory displays explaining the circumstances of the event, and in the center of the cyclorama there is a tall multi-level platform from which you can enjoy the great sound and lighting effects on a huge and detailed view of the city during the 1813 battle.
In the evening I went to the league match between RB Leipzig and SV Sanhausen at the Red Bull Arena over by the river Elster. There is a posting about that on the main blog page.
THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2015
I spent most of the day at Leipzig's Zeitgeschichtliches Forum (museum of contemporary history) and I only left because of fatigue. It is an enormous collection of artifacts, film clips, documents, and images, outlining the history of the region and the whole country from 1945 to the present. It is the best German museum for modern times that I have seen so far. It's stunning. STASI police vans and file cabinets full of personal files, actual personal letters from people in Red Army occupied Berlin ("Please, please come home, Hans -- the Russian soldiers keep raping me!! Please!), and a detailed treatment of the political in-fighting and violence in the evolution of the East German government in Saxony. Views inside typical DDR apartments, DDR entertainment and propaganda, the deterioration of the DDR government and the fall of the Wall. And the admission is free!
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015
Today was my day to leave Munich for Leipzig.
There is a nationwide train engineers strike and many trains are cancelled. It's in all the papers here. Felix, my struggling university student Munich Airbnb host, tried to check on line on my puter to see if my train was going, but nothing showed. I packed, said goodbye to Felix (the dear boy had cooked himself a delicious-looking student breakfast of sweet pfannkuchen with banana slices on it -- no ramen noodles for THESE scholars - but then again, he will have ZERO student loans at the end), carried my heavy crap down 3 flights of wooden circular stairs, and then dragged it through the rain to the train station. It wasn't far, and there were places to cut underground through the "Passagen" but it was raining significantly. Luckily the super-small-folding brolly I brought from Looz hasn't busted yet although it threatens constantly.
I checked what platform my train was supposed to leave from and there was no train there and no text posted, so I went to the Reisezentrum and asked. The guy said yep, nope, that train ain't goin'. So he figured a roundabout way to get me to Leipzig on local trains, arriving a couple hours after I would have got there anyway, and right at the time that my airbnb would be available anyway. Plus, I got 5 euros back! Plus, I LIKE to ride local trains! I'm retired! I had to change trains in Podunk (aka Hof), and then again in Oompahville (aka Gera), and I got into Leipzig at 5:30.
It was a long, pretty ride, 5 hours, through country and woods and farms, and little valleys with ponds alongside -- some geese or swans, I couldn't tell which. It was overcast, but then it got clearer and the sun came out. There were very few critters -- a couple of black-headed sheep and a very few cows and horses including one very fuzzy li'l pony. There were lots and LOTS of fields covered with a bright, bright yellow crop. I looked it up and found out it's rapeseed. As we got out of Bavaria and into Saxony (i.e., the old DDR), the train stations in the small towns were REALLY clapped-out looking. And then, when I was walking from the Leipzig train station to Saqr's Airbnb place THERE WAS THE DEAR CUTE LITTLE COMMUNISTIC GREEN AMPELMANN PEDESTRIAN "WALK" SIGNAL we had got to know and love in Berlin. HURRAY FOR COMMUNISM!
Saqr, my Airbnb host, is a medical student at Leipzig University. I don't know anything about him, but I communicated a lot with him in emails and phone calls, and all he wrote and spoke is regular unaccented German so he must be a German although there are souvenirs of Djibouti decorating the apartment. I suspect he moves out of his digs and stays with friends when he gets a taker from Airbnb. His custom is to leave the door key in a locker in the train station, and then he sends you the locker number and combination by email. I only have email when I can get wifi (which everybody here calls WLAN - "VEE-lan"). He said there is wifi in the Starbucks at the train station, so I went there and got a cappuccino and logged into their wifi, but it's public with no password and, whaddaya know? Yahoo mail won't let you do that. They think they're protecting me, but I don't need their stinkin' protection because I have a CHROMEBOOK! (Thanks, Mr. Gwinn!)
So I called Saqr on my europhone (a Mobal-brand pay-as-you-go phone with a UK phone number that I bought a few years ago and that has saved us in many situations) and he told me the key was in locker 2222 in the Ost-Halle of the train station near the Burger King. I found that bank of lockers and punched the number he gave me into the console, and POP! locker 2222 popped open and there was the key in it. Gotta love the 21st century.
So I went to the address and it turns out it is a very brand new clean spiffy student housing. apartment. Here's the airbnb posting. It's tiny but has everything - cable tv, great wifi, and all the German-language medical books you've ever dreamed about ("Notfall und Akutmedizin," "Medizin des alternden Menschen" - that one's my favorite so far), plus lots of notebooks of comments from his study groups.
It was late then, so I walked into town - nowhere near as charming as Munich, but then again Munich was intentionally Disneyfied after the war, and Leipzig wasn't. Plus it was in East Germany. But, we'll see tomorrow. The first adventure challenge is going to be -- HOW TO WASH YOUR CLOTHES IN A GERMAN COIN LAUNDRY! Hope y'all can sleep tonight despite the anticipation and tenter hooks. //Pitzer
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SATURDAY, May 9, 2015
I packed up (the suitcase is getting tighter now), left my Leipzig digs and went to the station early because the locomotive engineers strike might cause problems. I went to the Reisezentrum and waited a long long time for my number to come up on the screen (it's like the DMV there, you get a number ticket). Some fusty old codger and his wife were taking up a lot of time at one of the three open counters. He was pissed and insistent about something. Finally the lady he was arguing with left her counter and went to some smarter employee's counter, and they all stood there and conferred with lots of screen-staring and keyboard clicking.
So essentially there was only one other counter open and the number on my waiting ticket was slow to come up. When it finally did, the lady told me that my train was cancelled and so were all the trains to Berlin except one at 5:00pm -- OOPS, no, that one just got cancelled too. But I can use my ticket to ride the Deutsche Bahn's "Ersatzbus" -- buses German Rail is using to try to get their riders where they're going. The Berlin Ersatzbus is to leave at 12:10 from platform 5 at the Ost-Halle Bussteig. So I went out to check it out, and two uniformed DE employees out there looked at my ticket and said no, there is no such bus that that other lady told you. Then they conferred and looked at their "handys" (cell phones) and said well if there is one, it doesn't leave from here. You see that line of CityTour Hop-On-Hop-Off buses way over across the platz, and the big street and all the streetcar tracks? Well that's where it will leave from.
So I shepped my stuff way across the platz, and alongside all the big tourist buses and long distance buses there were crowds of random people trying to sort thing out because of the train strike. I got ahold of an intelligent looking bus driver, and he said no, definitely NO DB ersatz buses leave from there. They leave from back over there, he said, pointing to the Ost Halle Bussteig that I just shlepped my stuff from.
So I shlepped it all back there to platform 5 and the two DB ladies were still there. I started to tell them what the bus driver had said but they interrupted and said not over there, it's around the end ot the station back there, we just found out on our handies.
(Incidentally, speaking of shlepping, do you know what the German word is for the train of a wedding dress? "die Schleppe." Ha ha!)
So I went around to there, where there wer mostly big tourist buses from Italy and Hungary, and there was the ersatzbus with a sign on it that said Berlin. The driver said to come back at 12pm.
So I went back into the station and got out the Mobal phone and called Marc, my Berlin Airbnb guy, and then I explored the station, walking on a platform way out till I was outside the humungous glass roof and among the many tracks and overhanging wires, and took some pictures of decaying DDR buildings, and then back in the station I found a little display of old historic trains and looked at them, and then I bought a tomato/cheese sandwich and a coke for the trip, and paid one euro to pee in the deluxe WC center (you CANNOT pee for free anywhere in the station). I was afraid the bus would be super crowded so I went to it early and so did some other people, but there are only about 20 people, and lots of empty seats. It arrived at the Berlin Hbf in 2 1/2 hours.
I bought a 7-day local transportation pass and took the S-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, and after a short shlepp to Rathausstrasse, there was Marc waiting for me. He showed my up to the apartment, and OMG, it's pretty deluxe, and right across the street from the Fernsehturm. I can hear the non-stop activity out in busy Alexanderplatz all night in my bed, and I like it. That's the stalk of the Fernsehturm you see out the window.
FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015
Because of the confusing public transportation net of numbered S-Bahn lines, streetcars, and buses, plus the ongoing strike that interrupts routes unexpectedly, it took me two hours to get down to the Völkerschlachtdenkmal and Panometer south of town, but it was worth it.
The Völkerschlachtdenkmal, or Monument to the Battle of Nations was built in 1913 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the battle at Leipzig where Napoleon got his ass kicked. The huge, stark, gothic depictions of Teutonic heroism are scary. According to the Wiki article, the Germans have been of several minds about the monument as time has passed.
The nearby Panometer is an enormous cyclorama installed inside a big old gasometer -- a cylindrical brick building -- by artist and architect Yadegar Asisi. There are very good introductory displays explaining the circumstances of the event, and in the center of the cyclorama there is a tall multi-level platform from which you can enjoy the great sound and lighting effects on a huge and detailed view of the city during the 1813 battle.
In the evening I went to the league match between RB Leipzig and SV Sanhausen at the Red Bull Arena over by the river Elster. There is a posting about that on the main blog page.
THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2015
I spent most of the day at Leipzig's Zeitgeschichtliches Forum (museum of contemporary history) and I only left because of fatigue. It is an enormous collection of artifacts, film clips, documents, and images, outlining the history of the region and the whole country from 1945 to the present. It is the best German museum for modern times that I have seen so far. It's stunning. STASI police vans and file cabinets full of personal files, actual personal letters from people in Red Army occupied Berlin ("Please, please come home, Hans -- the Russian soldiers keep raping me!! Please!), and a detailed treatment of the political in-fighting and violence in the evolution of the East German government in Saxony. Views inside typical DDR apartments, DDR entertainment and propaganda, the deterioration of the DDR government and the fall of the Wall. And the admission is free!
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015
I packed up (the suitcase is getting tighter now), left my Leipzig digs and went to the station early because the locomotive engineers strike might cause problems. I went to the Reisezentrum and waited a long long time for my number to come up on the screen (it's like the DMV there, you get a number ticket). Some fusty old codger and his wife were taking up a lot of time at one of the three open counters. He was pissed and insistent about something. Finally the lady he was arguing with left her counter and went to some smarter employee's counter, and they all stood there and conferred with lots of screen-staring and keyboard clicking.
So essentially there was only one other counter open and the number on my waiting ticket was slow to come up. When it finally did, the lady told me that my train was cancelled and so were all the trains to Berlin except one at 5:00pm -- OOPS, no, that one just got cancelled too. But I can use my ticket to ride the Deutsche Bahn's "Ersatzbus" -- buses German Rail is using to try to get their riders where they're going. The Berlin Ersatzbus is to leave at 12:10 from platform 5 at the Ost-Halle Bussteig. So I went out to check it out, and two uniformed DE employees out there looked at my ticket and said no, there is no such bus that that other lady told you. Then they conferred and looked at their "handys" (cell phones) and said well if there is one, it doesn't leave from here. You see that line of CityTour Hop-On-Hop-Off buses way over across the platz, and the big street and all the streetcar tracks? Well that's where it will leave from.
So I shepped my stuff way across the platz, and alongside all the big tourist buses and long distance buses there were crowds of random people trying to sort thing out because of the train strike. I got ahold of an intelligent looking bus driver, and he said no, definitely NO DB ersatz buses leave from there. They leave from back over there, he said, pointing to the Ost Halle Bussteig that I just shlepped my stuff from.
So I shlepped it all back there to platform 5 and the two DB ladies were still there. I started to tell them what the bus driver had said but they interrupted and said not over there, it's around the end ot the station back there, we just found out on our handies.
(Incidentally, speaking of shlepping, do you know what the German word is for the train of a wedding dress? "die Schleppe." Ha ha!)
So I went around to there, where there wer mostly big tourist buses from Italy and Hungary, and there was the ersatzbus with a sign on it that said Berlin. The driver said to come back at 12pm.
So I went back into the station and got out the Mobal phone and called Marc, my Berlin Airbnb guy, and then I explored the station, walking on a platform way out till I was outside the humungous glass roof and among the many tracks and overhanging wires, and took some pictures of decaying DDR buildings, and then back in the station I found a little display of old historic trains and looked at them, and then I bought a tomato/cheese sandwich and a coke for the trip, and paid one euro to pee in the deluxe WC center (you CANNOT pee for free anywhere in the station). I was afraid the bus would be super crowded so I went to it early and so did some other people, but there are only about 20 people, and lots of empty seats. It arrived at the Berlin Hbf in 2 1/2 hours.
I bought a 7-day local transportation pass and took the S-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, and after a short shlepp to Rathausstrasse, there was Marc waiting for me. He showed my up to the apartment, and OMG, it's pretty deluxe, and right across the street from the Fernsehturm. I can hear the non-stop activity out in busy Alexanderplatz all night in my bed, and I like it. That's the stalk of the Fernsehturm you see out the window.FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015
Because of the confusing public transportation net of numbered S-Bahn lines, streetcars, and buses, plus the ongoing strike that interrupts routes unexpectedly, it took me two hours to get down to the Völkerschlachtdenkmal and Panometer south of town, but it was worth it.
The Völkerschlachtdenkmal, or Monument to the Battle of Nations was built in 1913 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the battle at Leipzig where Napoleon got his ass kicked. The huge, stark, gothic depictions of Teutonic heroism are scary. According to the Wiki article, the Germans have been of several minds about the monument as time has passed.
The nearby Panometer is an enormous cyclorama installed inside a big old gasometer -- a cylindrical brick building -- by artist and architect Yadegar Asisi. There are very good introductory displays explaining the circumstances of the event, and in the center of the cyclorama there is a tall multi-level platform from which you can enjoy the great sound and lighting effects on a huge and detailed view of the city during the 1813 battle.
In the evening I went to the league match between RB Leipzig and SV Sanhausen at the Red Bull Arena over by the river Elster. There is a posting about that on the main blog page.
THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2015
I spent most of the day at Leipzig's Zeitgeschichtliches Forum (museum of contemporary history) and I only left because of fatigue. It is an enormous collection of artifacts, film clips, documents, and images, outlining the history of the region and the whole country from 1945 to the present. It is the best German museum for modern times that I have seen so far. It's stunning. STASI police vans and file cabinets full of personal files, actual personal letters from people in Red Army occupied Berlin ("Please, please come home, Hans -- the Russian soldiers keep raping me!! Please!), and a detailed treatment of the political in-fighting and violence in the evolution of the East German government in Saxony. Views inside typical DDR apartments, DDR entertainment and propaganda, the deterioration of the DDR government and the fall of the Wall. And the admission is free!
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015
Today was my day to leave Munich for Leipzig.
There is a nationwide train engineers strike and many trains are cancelled. It's in all the papers here. Felix, my struggling university student Munich Airbnb host, tried to check on line on my puter to see if my train was going, but nothing showed. I packed, said goodbye to Felix (the dear boy had cooked himself a delicious-looking student breakfast of sweet pfannkuchen with banana slices on it -- no ramen noodles for THESE scholars - but then again, he will have ZERO student loans at the end), carried my heavy crap down 3 flights of wooden circular stairs, and then dragged it through the rain to the train station. It wasn't far, and there were places to cut underground through the "Passagen" but it was raining significantly. Luckily the super-small-folding brolly I brought from Looz hasn't busted yet although it threatens constantly.
I checked what platform my train was supposed to leave from and there was no train there and no text posted, so I went to the Reisezentrum and asked. The guy said yep, nope, that train ain't goin'. So he figured a roundabout way to get me to Leipzig on local trains, arriving a couple hours after I would have got there anyway, and right at the time that my airbnb would be available anyway. Plus, I got 5 euros back! Plus, I LIKE to ride local trains! I'm retired! I had to change trains in Podunk (aka Hof), and then again in Oompahville (aka Gera), and I got into Leipzig at 5:30.
It was a long, pretty ride, 5 hours, through country and woods and farms, and little valleys with ponds alongside -- some geese or swans, I couldn't tell which. It was overcast, but then it got clearer and the sun came out. There were very few critters -- a couple of black-headed sheep and a very few cows and horses including one very fuzzy li'l pony. There were lots and LOTS of fields covered with a bright, bright yellow crop. I looked it up and found out it's rapeseed. As we got out of Bavaria and into Saxony (i.e., the old DDR), the train stations in the small towns were REALLY clapped-out looking. And then, when I was walking from the Leipzig train station to Saqr's Airbnb place THERE WAS THE DEAR CUTE LITTLE COMMUNISTIC GREEN AMPELMANN PEDESTRIAN "WALK" SIGNAL we had got to know and love in Berlin. HURRAY FOR COMMUNISM!
Saqr, my Airbnb host, is a medical student at Leipzig University. I don't know anything about him, but I communicated a lot with him in emails and phone calls, and all he wrote and spoke is regular unaccented German so he must be a German although there are souvenirs of Djibouti decorating the apartment. I suspect he moves out of his digs and stays with friends when he gets a taker from Airbnb. His custom is to leave the door key in a locker in the train station, and then he sends you the locker number and combination by email. I only have email when I can get wifi (which everybody here calls WLAN - "VEE-lan"). He said there is wifi in the Starbucks at the train station, so I went there and got a cappuccino and logged into their wifi, but it's public with no password and, whaddaya know? Yahoo mail won't let you do that. They think they're protecting me, but I don't need their stinkin' protection because I have a CHROMEBOOK! (Thanks, Mr. Gwinn!)
So I called Saqr on my europhone (a Mobal-brand pay-as-you-go phone with a UK phone number that I bought a few years ago and that has saved us in many situations) and he told me the key was in locker 2222 in the Ost-Halle of the train station near the Burger King. I found that bank of lockers and punched the number he gave me into the console, and POP! locker 2222 popped open and there was the key in it. Gotta love the 21st century.
So I went to the address and it turns out it is a very brand new clean spiffy student housing. apartment. Here's the airbnb posting. It's tiny but has everything - cable tv, great wifi, and all the German-language medical books you've ever dreamed about ("Notfall und Akutmedizin," "Medizin des alternden Menschen" - that one's my favorite so far), plus lots of notebooks of comments from his study groups.
It was late then, so I walked into town - nowhere near as charming as Munich, but then again Munich was intentionally Disneyfied after the war, and Leipzig wasn't. Plus it was in East Germany. But, we'll see tomorrow. The first adventure challenge is going to be -- HOW TO WASH YOUR CLOTHES IN A GERMAN COIN LAUNDRY! Hope y'all can sleep tonight despite the anticipation and tenter hooks. //Pitzer
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Ticket to a Fußball Match
I looked it up. It's an interesting team. The "RB" in RB Leipzig fictitiously stands for "RasenBallsport" ("lawn ball sports"), which is ridiculous because it actually stands for Red Bull, since that is the international Austrian sports drink combine that owns it (along with teams in Austria, Brazil, and NYC). The German Football Association made them make up a new expansion for the letters RB, since commercial enterprises aren't allowed in team names. RB Leipzig is a rather new team and is widely despised in Germany because of its commercial foreign ownership and lack of local involvement and control.
So I BOUGHT A TICKET on line for 25€ and printed it out. The stadium (Red Bull Arena) is near the Elster River across town from my airbnb. The Wikipedia says protesters sometimes show up to hate the team. Maybe there will be rowdies and hooligans. One may hope.
By the way, the airbnb I rented is in university student housing. Apparently some student is exploiting his apartment privileges to make a little Geld on the side. So there is TV, free wifi, a fitness facility, and coin laundry in the building. I'll try to look young.
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The link so we can see the apartment says there are pictures but there are no pictures. Now I'm so bummed.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Slade,
ReplyDeleteYou note that the Germans have difficulty dealing with their Nazi past. It just came to my attention that Latvia, of all places, has the same problem. There's a Latvian opera, Valentina, opening in Berlin this month. The opera is performed by the Latvian National Opera and supported by the Latvian government, but according to the librettist it won't play in Peoria (Riga) because the subject includes Latvia's participation in persecution of Jews during Nazi occupation.
P.Derick