A few notes on traveling to and from Denmark:
If you’re going to Copenhagen by train, you have both German and Danish options. If you go straight north, as I did, to Aarhus, you have German trains to Flensburg and Danish after, more or less. I was told there are three trains a day, Denmark is a popular vacation area AND you must have a reserved seat on the Danish trains.
I managed to get around the reservation going up, primarily because the German trains were having mechanical problems and things were backed up horribly. But leaving…I went to the train station in Aarhus, expecting to be able to get on the direct train to Hamburg. No such luck. I was able to get a seat two hours later to Flensburg (Aarhus to Fredericia, Fredericia to Flensburg — the reverse of the trip up), with two changes of train. I should mention that I managed to have three pieces of small, but heavy, luggage.
This time the Danish train was a little late, but we still made the connection in Flensburg. In Hamburg I was able to continue on to Leipzig, and that train was on time, though it arrived at almost 8 p.m.
Because the Hotel Leipzig (formerly the Ramada) was not at the train station, I took a taxi.
An unfortunate sign was hanging in the building that housed the hotel (on the 7th and 8th floors). It’s dog food that’s supposed to be healthy for your pet:
An unfortunate sign advertising healthy dog food
The next day, armed with a small city map, I hoofed it to the train station – or almost – and found a city tour. Sixteen euros, 2 hours, and windows I couldn’t take much in the way of pictures through. It was useful for orientation, however.
Leipzig was a center of music and publishing as well as the fur trade and a giant trade fair in the good old days, a part of East Germany in the less-good old days. Wagner was born here, Bach is buried here. Among the better known musicians and writers who passed through: Mahler, Schiller, Goethe, Robert Schumann, and more recently Erich Kästner.
Deutsches Buchgewerbehaus front, just down the street from the hotel.
Deutsches Buchgewerbehaus side with an architectural add-on that I found interesting.
Deutsches Buchgewerbehaus – side door
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- What appears to be church as part of university
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- Tower of Mercure Hotel
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- Gohliser Schlösschen, with restaurant
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- One of many, many buildings on the tour that I found interesting
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- Detail of a painted building – I missed the name of the artist.
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- Gold recently renovated Russian Orthodox church, with the gold donated by the Russian government
A year or so ago, I was watching a TV series, Tierärztin Dr. Mertens, (Veterinarian Dr. Mertens), about a female vet at the Leipzig Zoo. I’m not particularly interested in zoos, but I was hooked on the series — and very upset when ARD decided it couldn’t be shown out of Germany and blocked it on my computer. At any rate, I spent almost four hours at the zoo — lost half the time because I was following signs and not the map. Because of the heat, most of the spaces were empty / occupied by hidden critters.TV
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- Zoo entrance – On the TV series, it’s not so heavily shaded…
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- Stained glass windows in the Aquarium
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- The zoo works to keep the animals from being too bored. This enclosure was shared by some monkeys and some bears.
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- The penguins were out and about
It’s a really interesting place, where many animals are separated by water and low fences from the people. I asked a zoo employee if the zoo had problems with people climbing into the enclosures. She said not so far, that Germans are careful about their children.
After that I walked back to the main train station, looked around the many stores. The train station has about three levels — one for the trains and two for shops. It looks fairly new in that it’s clean. It claims about 140 shops and eateries on two levels — including McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Dunkin Donuts.
diane's fused glass 