I begun my day feeling better about this hostel, as the only things seriously wrong with it are that it has extremely-limited internet access (not because of the internet itself, but because of the conditions in which one must use it) and that it has no kitchen. The woman who got my stuff out of the fridge for me this morning said, in direct contrast with the coworker of hers whom I saw yesterday, that it was no problem for the hostel to store my food, and she even lent me a spoon. Since I only spent 10 Euros on food the other day, and since some of that money was for non-perishable food and food that I have already eaten, it would not even be a total disaster if - and this is unlikely to happen - the hostel personnel simply threw my food out. I am not going to be bankrupted by having to eat out for three nights in a row, though I may be dissuaded from doing so at all in Berlin, and I both have a comfortable room and am not constrained to spend much of my time in Leipzig: given that I can take day-trips to more interesting cities, I am not all that limited by staying in a bad hostel in a bad city. I thought of this, before realizing that it was a bad analogy, as ersatz camping this morning, as, like when camping, I am dealing with some degree of privation; whatever the case, I only have one more day to spend in this abominable city before I can leave it for good, rush through Berlin (as it is a big city for a 2.5-day visit; I am going to spend one day in Potsdam), and fly to Amsterdam for the final leg of my trip.
My trip to Halle returned me to medieval Europe. I was initially struck by the eery silence of the streets leading to the city center: while it was easy to find the city center, the city at first seemed dead. There were other people on the sidewalks to my right and left, but none of them were talking. No birds sang, no cars drove past; it was as quiet as in many churches. The noise and activity levels picked backed up when I got to the city's main plaza, where I found the tourist office, conveniently situated. It turns out that Halle is full of museums and historic houses - among others, it had a Beatles museum! The city first rose to prominence because of its salt stores and soon secured its place as a cultural center in Eastern Germany with its royal residence (not quite a palace - I do not know what to call it), plenitude of clergymen, and university life - it has one of the better universities in this part of the country. I enjoyed walking through it and especially liked its inordinate number of plaques marking the houses in which its leading scholars, doctors, lawyers, men of state, and other most important citizens lived. The city has a museum and a music hall devoted to so-and-so Handel (I do not, regrettably, know his first or middle names), and it has one of the nicer memorials for slain Jews that I have seen in Europe, an unostentatious arch with some inscriptions on it on a little side street. The fact that Holocaust victims are remembered in every city of cultural import in Germany impresses me; I wonder if one can find as many memorials per city for victims of atrocities as one can find here.
The only other two things worth noting about Halle are that one of its churches had a very interesting interior, with a honeycomb meeting of arches at the ceiling and filigree engravings on its walls, and that the city was full of construction. While I did not consider the construction in Dresden to signal much on its own, that two large cities out of the three that I have visited in Eastern Germany have been full of construction may indicate the East's still struggling to catch up to the West. I will reserve comment on this until I have seen Erfurt, which is one of the largest and most important cities in this area, as I do not want to jump to any hasty conclusions; suffice it to say that cities in the East have not seemed any poorer than those in the West so far.
That just about covers my comments for today. I have fallen for the restaurant that I visited yesterday despite its being a little strange, as one can eat good food cheaply there. While I had a similar dish to the one that I ate last night, as it contained salmon, which I take to be the healthiest food in the world, and spinach, which I consider the healthiest vegetable, I have decided to try something new tomorrow to get more food for my money without having to eat fast food. About Leipzig itself I have a few more things to say. The bathrooms here are 250 times more expensive than those in parts of the Czech Republic, which makes sense given people's relative wealth in the two areas, and travel by train here must be twice as expensive or so as train travel in the Czech Republic. This also makes sense, as, in East Germany, one travels to places that one would want to visit on trains on which one would like to ride, while in the Czech Republic one rides miserable trains to miserable places; sometimes, paying less is not the better option. The train station here, while it initially attracted me by dint of its size, is terrible: it is closer to being a shopping mall than a train center. One can find the ticket office if one looks hard enough, but the atmosphere of the train station, like that of Stuttgart's train station, is unpleasant. Finally, cyclists here are crazier than in any other city that I have visited, and many drivers here are crazy, too. Together, they conspire to hit as many pedestrians as they can, though I have not seen them manage to hit anyone so far. I am going, anachronistically, to write my email about Leipzig and, if I still have time, watch part of a movie in the fly-infested, super-heated lobby of this hostel. Goodbye!
Look! Another medieval city center!
My trip to Halle returned me to medieval Europe. I was initially struck by the eery silence of the streets leading to the city center: while it was easy to find the city center, the city at first seemed dead. There were other people on the sidewalks to my right and left, but none of them were talking. No birds sang, no cars drove past; it was as quiet as in many churches. The noise and activity levels picked backed up when I got to the city's main plaza, where I found the tourist office, conveniently situated. It turns out that Halle is full of museums and historic houses - among others, it had a Beatles museum! The city first rose to prominence because of its salt stores and soon secured its place as a cultural center in Eastern Germany with its royal residence (not quite a palace - I do not know what to call it), plenitude of clergymen, and university life - it has one of the better universities in this part of the country. I enjoyed walking through it and especially liked its inordinate number of plaques marking the houses in which its leading scholars, doctors, lawyers, men of state, and other most important citizens lived. The city has a museum and a music hall devoted to so-and-so Handel (I do not, regrettably, know his first or middle names), and it has one of the nicer memorials for slain Jews that I have seen in Europe, an unostentatious arch with some inscriptions on it on a little side street. The fact that Holocaust victims are remembered in every city of cultural import in Germany impresses me; I wonder if one can find as many memorials per city for victims of atrocities as one can find here.
The only other two things worth noting about Halle are that one of its churches had a very interesting interior, with a honeycomb meeting of arches at the ceiling and filigree engravings on its walls, and that the city was full of construction. While I did not consider the construction in Dresden to signal much on its own, that two large cities out of the three that I have visited in Eastern Germany have been full of construction may indicate the East's still struggling to catch up to the West. I will reserve comment on this until I have seen Erfurt, which is one of the largest and most important cities in this area, as I do not want to jump to any hasty conclusions; suffice it to say that cities in the East have not seemed any poorer than those in the West so far.
That just about covers my comments for today. I have fallen for the restaurant that I visited yesterday despite its being a little strange, as one can eat good food cheaply there. While I had a similar dish to the one that I ate last night, as it contained salmon, which I take to be the healthiest food in the world, and spinach, which I consider the healthiest vegetable, I have decided to try something new tomorrow to get more food for my money without having to eat fast food. About Leipzig itself I have a few more things to say. The bathrooms here are 250 times more expensive than those in parts of the Czech Republic, which makes sense given people's relative wealth in the two areas, and travel by train here must be twice as expensive or so as train travel in the Czech Republic. This also makes sense, as, in East Germany, one travels to places that one would want to visit on trains on which one would like to ride, while in the Czech Republic one rides miserable trains to miserable places; sometimes, paying less is not the better option. The train station here, while it initially attracted me by dint of its size, is terrible: it is closer to being a shopping mall than a train center. One can find the ticket office if one looks hard enough, but the atmosphere of the train station, like that of Stuttgart's train station, is unpleasant. Finally, cyclists here are crazier than in any other city that I have visited, and many drivers here are crazy, too. Together, they conspire to hit as many pedestrians as they can, though I have not seen them manage to hit anyone so far. I am going, anachronistically, to write my email about Leipzig and, if I still have time, watch part of a movie in the fly-infested, super-heated lobby of this hostel. Goodbye!
Look! Another medieval city center!
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