Less Adventures in Leipzig

Definitely not the most exciting place in the world! I think the highlight of Christine´s time in Leipzig was laughing at me on the train: since a backpack makes turning round in a train near impossible I had to walk backwards so I couldn't see the step sneaking up on me. Cue James doing his best upside down tortoise impression on the floor, Christine peeing herself laughing and a load of confused looking Germans not knowing whether to help or giggle!

We stayed with a Nigerian guy called Godwyn, who was really welcoming. He took us out that night to meet a load of other English speakers living in the city. They gave us some ideas about what to do and then spent ten times as long slating Berlin, our next stop.Many thanks to all the facebookers who reassured us (correctly) about how ace Berlin actually is. Anyway, beer and lots of people who speak English meant that it was quite a late one so so a tough early morning next day for exploring. It most definitely won't be the last!

It took us about 3 hours to see all of Leipzig that we wanted. It was good to see the church where Bach performed a lot of his works and is now buried, I got to see a Sci-Fi exhibit in a free museum and Christine got to see a wedding where the church was still open to tourists. Win-win i suppose!


















By now we're fully immersed in German culture so we carried it on with dinner (sorry Christine, I mean tea) in an Irish pub. At least it was German beer!

Having seen all of Leipzig on the first day, the wait for the bus to Berlin was a bit painful. All we wanted to do was get to the capital and go exploring but we'd planned that we'd want the morning in Leipzig so had to wait ages for our bus. At least we made friends with a load of ducks while we waited.

Adventures in Dresden

Getting to Dresden was nice and easy, plus we had some beautiful views from the train as we passed through the countryside. I think there was quite a bit of "Aaah, we should have gone there", especially when we saw houses built high up on hillsides with what I must assume would be amazing views to wake up to.

We stayed in a town called Radebeul just outside of Dresden with a lovely host called Barbara. Her house is at the bottom of a hillside covered in vineyards. Unfortunately for us we just missed the tasting season, otherwise we might never have made it into Dresden. According to Barbara it wouldn't have mattered too much, she said we'd seen all the best bits from the tram on the way to her house.

Barbara offered us some bikes to ride into Dresden and after a few wobbles we were on our way, riding alongside the Elbe all the way to the city. Surely it would be impossible to get lost? Wrong. At least we can blame a few diversions caused by whatever the equivalent of roadworks on a cycle path is called.

We did our usual unguided tour of the city, failing abysmally to use a map properly (my fault not Christine's) but did manage to see all the major sites. We think. It's impressive to think that almost the entire city got rebuilt after the war because they did such a great job restoring all the old buildings, the Zwinger was particlularly nice - a basically a park inside a palace. We danced in there, it's become our mission to dance everywhere we go!

Dresden's definitely worth a visit but we were glad to only have one day there. Unless you go with a wallet full of cash to see the museums it's easy to run out of things to see. Getting back to the house was a bit more of an adventure though. We left it a bit late and had to ride home in the dark. Christine was a bit brighter than me and had already realised they were a bad idea on the way into the city, I only realised when we were riding in pitch black (apart from bike lights - don't panic H&S geeks) and had no idea how to get across the river. We rode, and rode, and rode, and rode and rode some more. I miss my car!

A long time coming...

It's been far too long since the last post so let's get all you non-facebookers up to speed! We spent a lot of time in Prague making the most of the cheap beer, the record worked out at about 70p a pint so we thought we had to really! We got the hang of the transport eventually but did have a few blunders right until we left the city; who'd have thought picking the right platform would be so difficult. We explored all the touristy bits of the old town but liked the little quarter's much more. If any one goes out there for a cheap weekend get yourselves across the Charles Bridge asap. Speaking of which, we had a little dance on it to a jazz band. We're trying to dance in every place we go and doing a good job so far. Saturday took us to the royal gardens and the castle (by accident) but there were far too many people to stick around for long so a quick walk up the hill and we found a BMX competition and a live rock band wearing matching Wally outfits. We spent a bit of time watching some crazy riders doing back flips and if we can get the internet to behave there's some videos to follow. Dinner was fun - Christine managed to order the stinkiest cheese known to man, it really should have had a warning sign with a picture of feet. Then we lost the internet thanks to a change of lodgings which is why I'm sitting on the train writing all this offline trying to remember the best bits to write about. Gabriela was a great host but her cats weren't so keen on sharing the apartment and one made this abundantly clear by peeing on my (James) side of the bed. It might not have been such a problem but I didn't realise until we went to bed. Cue a tight squeeze into half a bed and relief that we had 2 matresses. We had a day trip to Czesky Krumlov in Bohemia (more out of guilt that Gabriela had looked up train times for us at 11pm straight after work) but it was worth it. Beautiful town with a castle on a cliff guarded by bears. That was the way we imagined Czech Rep would look. Next day we went to Kutna Hora, anyone we've spoken to during planning knows just how long we've been waiting to go there: The town has a chapel decorated with the bones of 40,000 people, even a chandelier made of them. It's supposed to instill the idea that in death everyone is equal. And then to Germany...country number 2! But we'll let you have a rest and make a cup of tea before rambling on about Dresden. We miss you all, thanks for the likes and comments from the facebookers; it's nice to know you're thinking of us. Speak soon!

Don't worry, we're here!

It's been a bit of a mission finding our way to our first host but we've finally made it. After one night in a hostel we set off this morning to find Pavla's house and it wouldn't have been a problem if there were any signs to help people find the entrance to the train station. Who knew you could just walk in through any gap in the fence and wander across the tracks!

Anyway, we're here in our shed now for the next few days so it's time to forget about Christine's 27 tonne rucksack and go find a beer!

p.s. Pavla's cottage (not shed!) is brilliant, we're sat in her huge garden enjoying the sun. xx christine xx