Leipzig, Halle, Dresden

Just north of Kulmbach you leave Bavaria and enter the area that was once East Germany. It's not noticeable at first but you catch on that the small towns aren't quite as picturesque and the bigger towns are still downright ugly. This came to a head in Possnek which has as much rubble as Bratislava and the buildings standing look, well, beat up. Not a place you'd want to live.

For a week we stayed in Halle, east of Leipzig, which the Lonely Planet guide describes as "the centre of the GDR chemical industry - with all that implies." Actually we stayed just north at a Treffe hotel which is part of the Ramada chain. It was the biggest room with the best air conditioning, biggest bathroom, and the biggest hotel we've been in yet. Actually much like a convention hotel in the States except no internet at all and 13€ each for breakfast (we went out of course). Ignoring breakfast, it was also about the cheapest at 52€ per night. Also the emptiest - couldn't have been a dozen rooms used out of about 300. It's not expo season.

Halle, as expected, didn't have much to offer. It did have salt-works in 806 but today all that is under the city proper having been worked out in the 1600s. It did have walls in the 12th century and there's still remnants. It had a small castle which was built in the late 1400s, not to defend the city but to defend the Archbishop from the "progressive citizens of Halle" - it was abandoned in 1541 when the Reformation swept through the area (see Luther, below) and destroyed in fighting in 1625. It had Bach. He was the organist at the Marienkirche from 1713 and again in 1716, before he went to Leipzig. It had Handel. He was born in Halle in 1685 but ended up living in England.

It's being rebuilt and the tram system is up to German standards. The ugly communist era buildings and "projects" style apartments take away the charm - come back in another 15 years as there is construction everywhere. It's not a bad city, just not as nice as we got used to in Bavaria. It feels safe here and the people don't have that uninterested dull-eyed look of Slovakians. Also has a nice brewpub - see below.

The construction in Leipzig is even fiercer than in Halle. Traffic around and in the city is a nightmare. Compare it to Illinois Street in Indy at its worst - every other block of the major thoroughfares has 2 or 3 lanes of the 3 or 4 blocked. This city has taken everything in stride and always has. Silver was found in the region in the 15th century and it's been a major prosperous city ever since.

The region has been Carolingian, Frankish, Hungarian, Saxon, Prussian, German, and East German. Here the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian armies opened a final can of whoopass on Napoleon in 1813 at the Battle of the Nations. Here the Peaceful Revolution started in 1989 that led to the downfall of the GDR.

It claims Goethe as well as the 2nd oldest coffee shop in Europe. Yawn. But Leipzig has a few places we absolutely needed to see.

Thomaskirche - A church downtown that was built around 1212 but is most famous because JS Bach was the Cantor here from 1723 until his death in 1750.

It also has been host to Martin Luther, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. It was used in 1806 to store ammunition by Napoleon's troops and was a hospital during the Battle of the Nations. A tower keeper lived in the tower until 1917. It was damaged by bombs on Dec 14, 1943 and the interior was rebuilt in the present style in 1961 and it was completely renovated in 1991.

Bach's organ isn't here anymore. The main organ was replaced in 1884, 1966, and 2000.

The blue piping is a water main that right now runs
for about a mile above ground through the city center.

East front. A now-unused door.

Bach's grave.
He was moved here in 1949
from another church that was
destroyed by bombing.

1908 Statue on the south side
outside the main door.

Bust in a nearby park given by Mendelssohn.

The main organ at the east end.

A new organ being built on the north
wall that will simulate Bach's organ.
That's simulate, not stimulate, you naughty boy.

We were lucky enough to be in the church while someone was practicing on the new organ. He even played (badly) Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. This thing doesn't fill the church and it has weak bass. While not experts in organs, we weren't impressed.

Directly across the street is a Bach Museum that you should visit when you're in town. It has an English-language slide show about Bach's life and a few original documents including an original of a violin trio that was penned by Anna Magdalena.

The Forum of Contemporary History - An exhibition of the GDR from WWII until reunification. Couldn't take pictures sadly.

Much like other eastern bloc states, East Germany had the Russian advisors and a 1-party political system running things. Lots of incompetence and old-boy network. The party in this case was the SED and wasn't as corrupt and ruthless as in other places but was just as inept. We learned a lot in 3 hours here.

Waschstation - We needed to wash clothes. As we've mentioned, this is tougher than it seems since coin-op laundromats are scarce. We found one in a hippie neighborhood on Leipzig's south side next to the Cafe Puschkin. Roger Baylor would appreciate this place. A artist's coffeehouse with lots of reading material and hard-working staff. Just like RichO's. Serves Ur-Krostitzer beer, an unremarkable pils and breakfast from 8am until 4pm every day (open until midnight).

Gotta love the Kunstlerfruhstuck (artist's breakfast) for 2.90€ which includes 1 croissant, butter, obst; 1 tasse kaffee; und 1 zigarette.

It's just down the block from Kurt-Eisner Strasse
in a sometimes over-decorated neighborhood.

The Deutsche Bucherei library. Millions of books and a printing museum.
We tried to see the printing museum but they wanted to impound Terry's purse.
Not acceptable.

20 miles outside of Leipzig is the "Museum in a Stasi Bunker". If you remember from above, the Stasi was the GDR's secret police. This is undoubtedly the strangest museum we've seen - including the Jolly Green Giant Museum in Minnesota; on the lowest budget since a small auto museum in a guy's garage near Rochester, NY; and the most out-of-the-way since Carlsbad Caverns. Oh, and it doesn't have a gift shop.

It's a kilometer down a walking path through a housing development built in 1935 with tiny houses on tiny plots out in the sticks. Once there, you pay 3€ to see a narrated slide show (with 4 slides) and get toured for about 45 minutes through a communications center built underground in a nuclear fallout shelter. This is cold war stuff at it's strangest. Corridors of beds, typewriters, radios, air tanks, remote weather monitoring and water purifying equipment, Russian supplies, on and on.

Of course everything was in German and we never did figure out if it was ever used - oops, make that manned, we know it wasn't used. A newspaper article in one display tells that the people in the Leipzig area didn't know about this installation - or thought it was just another military base.

The irony here is that nothing is shielded. The EMP, electromagnetic pulse, of a nuclear explosion would have probably wiped out all the primitive electronics anyway.

Typical house. Probably 200sq ft on a 50x50ft lot.
All are surrounded by hedges and those we saw are lived in and attractive.

Wow. There may be construction in Halle, Leipzig, and, indeed, all of the old East Germany but Dresden takes the cake. Just scroll down through the next three pictures. But first an explanation.

First, realize we bombed the center of the city back to the stone age just weeks before WWII ended. The Dresden "raid" and the firebombing of Tokyo were similar - they started a firestorm that acted like a huge forest fire. The heat was immense as updrafts brought in ground-level air and everything flammable just disappeared in the night. Only the stone outsides of buildings remained. More people died in each of these two bombings than at Hiroshima - and more property damage was done.

This is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in the absolute center of the city. The Russians and GDR running things after WWII saved a bunch of money by leaving the rubble just sitting there and calling it a memorial. It's just now being rebuilt.

Here's what the area looked like before WWII. A nearby kiosk has this model and is protesting many of the plans to build hotels and touristy things in the area. They want to see it returned to much like it was before.

Did we say "plans to build"? Yep. For 3 blocks in any direction it's nothing but construction equipment. Here's a view from a less perfectly selected location.

Many of the buildings in the Altstadt (old city) on the south bank of the Elbe have been rebuilt, most of them during the GDR/Soviet occupation. But most of the hulks were torn down and replaced by unsympathetic ugly square stuff. Some of the more attractive buildings reveal on second glance that the details of architecture are just painted on.

Oh, the Neustadt (new city) north of the Elbe is now really older than the Altstadt. It wasn't hit by the bombs.

The Semperoper opera house. The Russians took great pride in it's reconstruction.

This is the back end of the old Residence.
Some of the rooms are open but it's only half rebuilt.

The oddly-named Zwinger is a palace built completely around a big square garden. It's about half rebuilt and now houses some museums. It's the tourist magnet of the city.

Terry had a day of porcelain overload. A museum in the Zwinger contains the largest collection in the world - 14,500 pieces amassed by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, in the early 1700s. Sorry, no pictures were allowed.

Then we went to Meissen. Not much of a city to write home about, so we won't. But the Meissen porcelain factory has 2 floors and a gift shop showing off it's works. Many of these are reproductions of 18th century works made by the factory in the 20th century.

Home of the Bauhaus movement of the 1920s that still is around today. We saw three restored Bauhaus buildings.

An Unemployment office built in 1929. It's a half-circle that had a fully glass ceiling to cut down on light needs The interior was strictly built for flow of people through the office. It has 5 outside entry doors so people could be admitted to specific offices pre-sorted by gender and type of job.

Inside are two semi-circles with 5 office complexes in the outside ring and administration in the middle. No lights were on when we were there and it really didn't need any.

Ironic that it was built to handle the most bureaucratic function of city government and is now used for the function now tied for that title - an auto license branch.

They tried a steel house built on steel girders with steel doors, window frames, etc. After almost rotting away, it was restored (badly) in 1993. Yep, it's tiny.

The city of Dessau built a housing estate between 1926 and 1928 consisting of some Bauhaus apartment buildings and 316 row houses of 513 sq ft each. They had "earth" toilets used to feed the big, 3600 sq ft rear garden. Central steam heating was by coal. Two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a laundry/bath room (that's bath - the toilet was outside). Efficient.

In fact, they are all still occupied and the area, while not prime property, is well respected. Most every one now has a real toilet and an addition out back that is in many cases bigger than the original house. They also have all replaced the original windows with more standard-sized units, except for one house which was restored back to the original specs.

The toilet is worthy of Habitat for Humanities. A 4ft tower behind the seat was filled with dirt and a "flush" allowed enough dirt to come down to cover the smell. The resulting compost was actually used to grow vegetables and fruit - something you wouldn't dream of doing today.

The Palace Church in Wittenberg was the site, in 1547, of one of the most important events in history. It was here Martin Luther finally got sick and tired of the Pope and thumbtacked his 95 theses on the door of the local church. This set into motion the Reformation, the 7 years war, the 30 years war, Henry the VIII's brazenness, fights between the British and Spanish Armadas, Pilgrims, Huguenots, Ireland becoming it's own country, TV evangelists, etc. etc.

Built in 1509, the church was burned down during the 7 Years War in 1760 and the original door was toast. The church was soon rebuilt and King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia gave them a new bronze door with the theses proudly displayed in Latin.

Hey why not. We went through Knippeldorf and took a bunch of pictures. Maybe that's where Terry's family is from, maybe not. We should have asked Jan earlier.

A classic windmill near Endorf from 1824 was still working in 1946
but completely abandoned by 1979.
Restoration starting in 1992 has brought it back to school-trip visit status
but it's still not turning.
As opposed to those below.

We've seen literally thousands of new windmills in Austria and Germany.
Interestingly, about 1 in 10 is not turning usually.
Either they aren't terribly reliable or they don't need that much electricity.

Halle - Zum Schad. Opened as a restaurant in 1983 with the brewery added in 1993. The house was built in 1885 as a slaughterhouse for horses and in commemoration they serve horse filet, sausage, sauerbraten and goulash. Also elk and boar. 2-liter growlers to go.

Inside there's an incredibly high crapola factor. Every inch of the walls and ceiling contain plaster handprints, old radios, trophies, old postcards, what could easily be 1000 bottle of beer, steins. There's 24 time-zone clocks in the front room. The chairs are named for famous people who sat in them. Think of it as a Shallos gone wild.

Which brings us to the inscription over the front door. "On Sept 8, 2000 Mikhail Gorbachev and Hans-Dietrich Genscher stopped off here at Zum Schad". And they have their plaster handprints to prove it. (Now we need someone to tell us who Genscher is).

The copper-clad vats are very proudly displayed in a bay window looking out to the street and the sidewalk seating.

Leipzig - Brauerei an der Thomaskirche. Located in a soulless building on a sloulless platz just 100ft from the Thomaskirche. You have to look hard to see it's a brewery or even find a name among the big awnings of the outdoor garden. The inside is modern, clean, and quiet (as everyone sat outside that day).

By the way, now that we're north of Bavaria we're starting to see true sit-at-the-bar bars again.

Leipzig - Zum Kaiser Napoleon. According to their menu, a gasthaus was here in 1624 and on October 18, 1813 Napoleon ate in the garden - which would be during the Battle of the Nations. French troops were quartered there during the battle. Today it's a pleasant, completely new brewpub with a great pork/mushroom/cheese/etc casserole.

Saw something unique in my experience - the barman poured a Hell and a Dunkel and, having too much head in one and not enough in the other, poured some foam from the Hell to the Dunkel. Would never have thought of doing that.

The Thuringerhof is fabled as one of the oldest places in Germany and one of Goethe's haunts. Certainly worth a stop. Completely new now, it's owned by Wurzburger Hofbrau. We had two very notable beers.

Julius Echter Hefeweissbier Dunkel - From a bottle. For style, very dark dull brown. Immediate apple aroma and taste. Some banana sneaks in later. Thick body.
Scharzbier - From the tap and served warmer. This had a milkshake-thick head. Absolutely amazing. Bitter hop aroma. Big huge taste of smooth sweet bittersweet chocolate, raisin, and a touch of roast. Heavy smooth body. Think of it as an Old Peculiar clone, German-style.

Dessau - Brauhaus Zum Alten Dessauer. Not very Alten (old), having opened Nov. 11, 2001. It's in a refurbished warehouse building down a dead end alley in downtown Dessau. The vats and the malt mill are all right in the restaurant - the aroma must be wonderful.

Food: Good including an excellent spaghetti sauce. The brown bread was served with a small pot of lard - not an unusual German condiment.

Frances adds "The green and red strip fruit you couldn't identify were gooseberries! They used to be common in England when I was a child but now for some reason they are hardly grown. Make lovely fruit pies with cream. Yum! Haven't eaten one for years more's the pity!"

Frances also tells us "The big pink flowers that curled over were cyclamen. They are very common as house plants for Christmas in England. There is a small wild cyclamen that grows wild in Turkey which is sold in England to put in rockeries. There is one that flowers at the end of August and one that flowers at the end of February. We have the one that flowers at the end of August. It is also pink. Oh the big ones come in white as well. No other colours that I know of. They grow from a corm. I have never been able to get the big ones to reflower, not can anyone else which is why there are such big sales at Christmas. The little ones flower on their own every year without any help!"

The Autobahn in Germany. Yep, there's no speed limit in many areas. Cities have a speed limit of 50kph (30mph) or as posted. Outside of cities, all roads are 100 (60mph) or as posted. Autobahns are 130 or as posted but the round sign with 3 narrow slashes that normally says "end speed restriction" means "end speed limit" evidently. I've taken the policy of being passed by a few cars at speed before we go faster than 130. Passed at speed is the proper term. I've been cruising at 160kph (100mph) in the middle lane and been passed by cars easily going 240.

Problem is these open stretches don't seem to last very long. At many exits (ausfahrts) the speed goes down to 100 or even 80 for about a mile. Bridges where wind could be a factor are also often slowed as well as the plentiful rest stops. Haven't seen an open stretch of more than 10 miles yet.

A bigger problem is the speed differential. I can handle keeping out of the way of overtaking cars but it is wearing on the nerves. The trucks and busses make it a serious problem. They are limited to 80, 90, or 100kph depending on which sign they have on their back end. Going, say, 160 on 2-lane stretches you need to be ready to slow to 100 if you can't pull out and pass. If you are at speed you may also suddenly need to slow to, say, 120 or slam into someone passing a truck.

Blowing by a string of trucks going half your speed is also a bit scary. Maybe the Germans have got used to it but I haven't yet.

American music. You hear it everywhere. Even country music. In a bar where no one speaks English, the background strains of "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille" is really unexpected. But that's probably one reason why English is spoken by so many people.

We're very glad we're touring by car instead of train. Lots of tourists, especially Brits and young Americans get a Eurorail pass and wander quite cheaply but they are really limited as to where they can go.

We talked to 2 couples from Scotland at the laundromat in Munich who were spending a month on the continent. Had been to Prague and were heading for Rome on the night train. We told them about seeing the every-3-year wedding festival in Landshut. They had no chance to see something like this since it would be a full day's plan to get there and back on a train.

Plus you are limited to staying in central-city hotels. They told us about their "cheap" hotel near the train station - 120€ per night. We were staying in the suburbs for 64€ and an 8€ ticket let us both ride the S-Bahn to the city and use all the busses and trams all day.

And finally, we couldn't have clean clothes every day, 3 suitcases, a 12volt cooler, a laptop, some heavier coats, a suitcase of books and maps, and a bunch of Diet Pepsi without a decent sized station wagon.

Did I tell you about our car deal? We're leasing a Renault Menage station wagon until October 20th for $27 (US) per day. This includes $0 deductible comprehensive, collision, liability, road hazard, glass, unlimited mileage, warranty, and road service. Cheap. Stick shift (of course), air, tire monitor, keyless, 1.8 diesel 6-speed. 5th is only usable at 100kph, 6th over 120.

It's a French tax thing offered by Renault. Peugeot and Citroen have very similar deals. We picked Renault because the car itself suited our needs best.

Route following is very different in Europe than in the U.S. There are numbered roads, probably a little less prevalent than State Roads, but there are no East, West, North, South directions at all. Instead, there are road signs at almost every intersection with arrows pointing to where you will end up if you go down that road.

Small side roads usually have the name of some small town a couple of kilometers away. Major intersections have big signs with often 3 or 4 towns in each direction. The farthest and biggest comes first and the smaller closer towns are farther down the list.

Basically this means you need to have a list in your mind of some towns along your route and you have to match that list mentally and quickly with what you read as you approach the intersection. Time matters.

The complication this system causes is that often a city to the east, west, or even south will be posted as a destination on the road to the north. "No, we don't want to go to Xxxx" has to be repressed since the quickest way to Xxxx may be on the road to the north even though you would need to turn southeast in a couple miles. At least we're still talking to each other but for Terry's birthday present I didn't make her navigate the entire day.

We haven't seen any (any!) roadkill. Nothing. No squirrels, possums, armadillos, nothing. Are animals smarter over here?

Duvets. Bah. Terry loves them but I really want to sleep under a simple sheet again. Duvets are like comforters in a big pillowcase and since leaving France all the beds have had a bottom sheet and a duvet. You're either sleeping without any cover or under a warm comforter, nothing in between.

And they aren't long enough. To cover your feet, if you roll around at all at night, you need to tuck the bottom end under the mattress. This leaves the duvet coming up just past your waist. Bah.

I'd like to have the crane concession in Europe. But why are all the cranes painted yellow? Green or black would blend into the background much better and make it easier on us photographers.

Bavaria has bretzels everywhere. We call them pretzels but they call them bretzels. Haven't seen any since Bavaria though except in the Thuringer Hof which is owned by a Bavarian brewery.