Leipzig!

  Today (Saturday) a group of us from school went to Leipzig.  The trip was organized by school, so we all had to meet at McDonalds in the Hauptbahnhof.  It's a huge station with multiple levels and can be really confusing.  It was a giant group of us that were going.  We had to be there by 9:30AM and a lot of people were really tired from going out last night.  I got plenty of sleep, so I was just fine!  A girl named Anja was our group leader and took our money from everyone to pay for our train tickets.  We then ventured to the platform to wait for our train.  Everyone was sort of in their own cluster.  We would speak German, but also other languages that we know.  You can hear German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and a lot of other languages when we're all together.  


  The train ride to Leipzig was a couple of hours or so.  I sat next to Olivia, another girl from our group and helped her with her homework.  She's younger and has only taken the level 210 back home. She has a harder time with German, so she would ask me questions and how to say things.  My host mom, Birgit, gave me 3 books the other day.  They're the books in the "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series.  Here, the titles are only one word!  It makes things so much easier when talking about them.  I brought the first book, Verblendung, with me on the train to read.  It's definitely not as easy as ready a children's book, but it's really good practice!  


  We had to switch trains, which wasn't too bad.  The ticket control person came through and people started to worry.  He didn't ask any of us for our ticket, only the people that were sitting near us, who weren't with our group, for theirs.  At first the people in the same train car as me started to panic, because we didn't have a ticket to show him!  One girl told him that Anja had our tickets.  He said he already had talked to her and that we were all fine. We continued the ride to Leipzig.


  We arrived a little after 1:15PM.  Anja told us we were free to roam around and only had to meet at the McDonalds there by 4:30PM.  Kelleen, Emily, Olivia, and I roamed around together.  We had no idea what there was to see.  All we knew was that Bach had been there and there was a very important church to see because of him.  We roamed around for a while and saw a couple of cool things.


  We saw a children's playground with a small tower and climbed that.  We ventured different ways for a while.  We then thought we had to be back at 3:30 instead of 4:30, so we headed back so Olivia could get some lunch.  We started walking down a pathway and found out we couldn't go any further that way.  I saw the fence was open and decided we could just go through that to go to the street instead of walking all the way around again.  As we went through, I realized something wasn't right.  The area we had just climbed into had ping pong tables outside, benches, basketball hoops, and bike racks.  We walked over to the gates to get out...they were locked.  We thought about jumping the fence.  Emily and Olivia both said they wouldn't be able to, so we walked back to the gap in the fence, climbed through again, and walked all the way around.  It was after we walked around that we realized we had just climbed into a school's outdoor area.  Well, I guess I can cross trespassing off my list of things to do! Looking at my watch I realized we didn't have much time left.  We started walking back in search of a place to eat.  We didn't find anything and ended up walking back to the train station.  We all ended up getting some food at the train station.


  After realizing we didn't need to be back until 4:30, we went searching for the important church.  Kelleen and Emily were pretty much running because we didn't have a lot of time left.  Olivia and I took our time.  We had time to find the church and head back by 4:30.   


  We found the church,but the signs were very misleading at first.  Random sidenote -Olivia and I paid the 50 cents to use the bathroom, which were really nice ones! I definitely try to wait until I get home so it's free.  St. Thomas Church is amazing.  It is the home of the St. Thomas Boys Choir and also the final resting place of Johann Sebastian Bach!  It's absolutely amazing inside.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures.  We got there during a mass I believe and begged our way inside to observe.  We got to listen and watch for 5 minutes or so before we left.  Interesting facts about St. Thomas: The St. Thomas Church dates back to the 12th Century. It was here in 1409 that the University of Leipzig was founded. From 1492 to 1496, the church had the form of a late Gothic hall church. It was also here in 1539 that Martin Luther preached the implementation of the Reformation.


We rushed back to the Bahnhof and met with the rest of our group.  Anja had us all group up to take a photo of everyone.  Afterwords, we went to the train and got on.  There was a giant "BMW Werk Leipzig" sign in the station, so I made sure that I took a picture of it for Michael.


  I got home, had some dinner that my host mom left on the table for me, and crawled in bed.  Today was such a long day, I look forward to sleeping in tomorrow.  Tomorrow night we get a girl from the French part of Switzerland to live with us.  She won't arrive until 10PM or sometime late in the evening.  At least that's what my host mom said.  We'll have to see!  


I'm off to bed!  Have a splendid rest of your afternoon or evening!  Tomorrow comes with another blog!


Tschuess!