Cross Country

That's the nice thing about Europe.  I drove the US equivalent of probably Denver to D.C. (in proportional width) today in what should have been 5 and-a-bit hours.

"What should have been?" you ask.  Indeed.  I got slightly side-tracked when the GPS led me here:

Which is clearly where they seriously thought about putting the A4 Autobahn......but is equally clearly where, in the end, they didn't.

A little reconnoiter, and I arrived at the Dedow residence in just over 6 hours from when I left Adenau.  For those playing the game from home, my friend Sebastian was an exchange student at Farragut back in '98 or '99 (don't remember which).  We kept in touch intermittently, most recently when our mutual friend Ryan visited him last year.  Sebastian and his lovely wife Dana live on the west side of Leipzig, and it's from their spare room that I'm now posting this.

After I arrived, they took me on a tour of the city center.  The tour proved more entertaining than expected because Leipzig is currently playing host to a large "goth" convention.  This is basically where people wear a lot of black, and/or dress as if they're in the 1800s or sometime there-about.  Sebastian made me promise to note that this is not now most Leipzigers(?) dress.  I thought it was interesting that unlike the typical North American "goth", most of these folks seemed to be having a pretty good time in-character, as opposed to walking around trying to act angry at the world.

 We walked around looking at some significant buildings.  A bar mentioned in Foust....that's still a bar today in reality, a large church where a world-renowned choir is based, and the original "Rathaus" or town hall.

We also took a trip to the roof of what is really the only really tall building in Leipzig to see the city from there, as well as think of where to go tomorrow.

Sebastian & Dana in the university square

One view from the top, including Europe's largest train terminal.

Following the tour we had dinner back at the apartment, played a round of "Dominion", which is a pretty fun card/strategy game that Sebastian plays, and traded stories in some combination of German and English.  Dana's English is about as good/bad as my German, so I was trying to say as much as I knew in German and occasionally asking Sebastian, who is pretty fluent, to translate.

More to come tomorrow I'm sure.