This isn't a proper blog entry, although I know one is due soon. But I've been busy on Google Maps this afternoon, and have created a map showing all the places I've visited so far. I will update it as I travel to different places on my year abroad...so keep checking back onto it!
Here's the link!
Enjoy!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Chapter 28 - Back to school
Saturday 10th - Sunday 18th April
This title is not named after the retailing season, although it will surely be appearing in shops soon! Instead, it is an unsarcastic, unironic statement about my first week back in Saarbruecken.
As at Christmas, I made the decision to travel on the Saturday before work started again on Monday. Two main reasons for this: SNCF, and sleep! SNCF because it's a Sunday, and their service is sometimes a little sketchy on Sunday, even if they had to decided not to partake in a mouvement social (a strike to you and I), and despite the fact that the majority of my journey is spent on my laurels reading a book, listening to my MP3 player, or simply admiring the view (albeit at 270 km/h), travelling halfway across Europe (well, through France anyway) can take it out of you - so I travel on Saturday so that I can catch up on a little bit of train-lag before going back to work, where it's expected that I'm not still rubbing sleepy dust out of my eyes!
So, the journey started about 7.55 at Chippenham railway station, where it was a very nice day, and I had far too many layers on (simply to save me having to put them in the already bulging suitcase!). Now being a seasoned traveller I'd half expected the train to be late into Chippenham, but it had managed not to be. So, we left on time, and powered our way towards the only London station named after a bear who likes marmalade sandwiches. All was going tickety-boo (well clickety-clack, but you get the idea) until just outside Reading, where we seemed to stop for a while in the middle of nowhere. The Train Manager told us that there was an issue on the line in the Slough area, which was why were being held up before Reading. We eventually crawled into Reading, where the Train Manager was able to find out that the delay had been caused by someone jumping in front of a train in the Slough area, and the line was duly closed to allow a clear-up operation to begin, and then the lines were only gradually re-opened, which meant that the signalmen (and I daresay women) had to sort out the backlog. This they managed, and then we continued on our way to London, arriving a mere 45 minutes late. I would like to take this opportunity to do something which I don't do very often, and that's to have a bit of a rant!
My chosen topic this time is "People who jump in front of trains". Now, before I start I should say that I accept that suicide is not an easy decision to take, and the people who choose to end it all, are desperate and at their wits' end, and this rant is not about suicide itself, simply about the choice of someone to jump in front of a train. For this reason, I would ask people not to jump down my throat for what's about to come!
Jumping in front of a train is one of the most selfish ways of committing suicide that I can think of. On the very basic level, you will cause delays to the rail network, but let's face it the Train Companies can do that on their own without the help of someone standing in front of a train. So, all in all, the delays it causes are not my primary issue, merely an annoyance. That said, I seem to take delays better than others; one day when I was commuting to Bath, the trains had been cancelled, or severely delayed because of someone jumping in front of a train, and a lady comes down the stairs onto the paltform, and says "I hope he's dead!". I don't get that annoyed by it, instead I find an alternative way to uni. But, as I said that's not my main problem with it, my biggest issue is the effect it has on people who are innocent, and who have to deal directly with the person's suicide - people like the Train Driver, who may never be able to sleep at night again, the Police Officers of the British Transport Police who have to attend what they call 'one unders', along with the Network Rail employees who have to clear-up the line so that the trains can run again. All of these people have to deal with sights that are simply awful, and could cause untold psychological trauma. Or, in the case of Stanley Martin, the ultimate price, because someone decided to kill themselves by parking their car on the line and waiting for a train to crash into them.
Now as I said, this rant was about the effect that 'jumpers' have on others who were otherwise going about their normal daily business, and have had to deal with such horrors.
Now I've got that off my chest, I shall continue with the story! I got to St. Pancras, where I had arrived about 3 hours before my train was due to leave, so I went to a cafe and read my book with a mug of coffee in the sunshine whilst waiting for check-in to open. The Eurostar left, pucntually, and had an uninterupted journey to Paris, except for the planned stop in Lille. We arrived in Paris about half five, and as I walked to Paris Est I found somewhere to eat some tea, before meeting Esther at the station. We travelled back on the ICE together, where we also arrived on time, which is a rarity amongst the trains to/from Paris! After a short bus journey home, I was in bed by 11 o'clock!
Sunday was spent unpacking, well, rather putting away the stuff I'd already unpacked (onto the floor) and I had a private lesson in the afternoon. Otherwise, it was a quiet day, involving me pretty much catching up on a weekend of stuff I'd missed on iPlayer!
The first week back at school was full of the usual post-holiday chaos! With the ash cloud posing problems all over Europe, I was impressed that none of the teachers had been silly enough to get themselves stranded in a really hot, sunny country, instead of being shut in a room with 30 excitable children! I also rose to a certain level of fame, or the negative form thereof, because it was during this week that the English Abitur (A-Level) exam took place, on the higher tier of which all of the students in Saarland would have been told what to do by yours truly. That said, I still haven't heard it, and my ask one of my teachers if I could have a copy of it, so I can enjoy my slurring of the letter 'r' in a typically Westcountry manner!
It was this weekend in which Esther and I had originally planned on going to Munich, but time constraints let us down. It was only on the train back from Paris that we were supposed to be going then, and as nothing had been booked or organised, we shelved it, perhaps for another year! Instead, I took advantage of the fantastic weather which we've been experiencing in Saarbruecken, and spent most of the weekend by the Saar in the sun! Over the weekend there were also a couple of evening get-togethers too, in which I took part.
So, what's coming up next week? Not a lot regarding school, it's been a pretty quiet week really. There is a weekend trip to Freiburg im Breisgau (on the edge of the black forest, near the Swiss & French borders) for me and Harriet to look forward to.
This title is not named after the retailing season, although it will surely be appearing in shops soon! Instead, it is an unsarcastic, unironic statement about my first week back in Saarbruecken.
As at Christmas, I made the decision to travel on the Saturday before work started again on Monday. Two main reasons for this: SNCF, and sleep! SNCF because it's a Sunday, and their service is sometimes a little sketchy on Sunday, even if they had to decided not to partake in a mouvement social (a strike to you and I), and despite the fact that the majority of my journey is spent on my laurels reading a book, listening to my MP3 player, or simply admiring the view (albeit at 270 km/h), travelling halfway across Europe (well, through France anyway) can take it out of you - so I travel on Saturday so that I can catch up on a little bit of train-lag before going back to work, where it's expected that I'm not still rubbing sleepy dust out of my eyes!
So, the journey started about 7.55 at Chippenham railway station, where it was a very nice day, and I had far too many layers on (simply to save me having to put them in the already bulging suitcase!). Now being a seasoned traveller I'd half expected the train to be late into Chippenham, but it had managed not to be. So, we left on time, and powered our way towards the only London station named after a bear who likes marmalade sandwiches. All was going tickety-boo (well clickety-clack, but you get the idea) until just outside Reading, where we seemed to stop for a while in the middle of nowhere. The Train Manager told us that there was an issue on the line in the Slough area, which was why were being held up before Reading. We eventually crawled into Reading, where the Train Manager was able to find out that the delay had been caused by someone jumping in front of a train in the Slough area, and the line was duly closed to allow a clear-up operation to begin, and then the lines were only gradually re-opened, which meant that the signalmen (and I daresay women) had to sort out the backlog. This they managed, and then we continued on our way to London, arriving a mere 45 minutes late. I would like to take this opportunity to do something which I don't do very often, and that's to have a bit of a rant!
My chosen topic this time is "People who jump in front of trains". Now, before I start I should say that I accept that suicide is not an easy decision to take, and the people who choose to end it all, are desperate and at their wits' end, and this rant is not about suicide itself, simply about the choice of someone to jump in front of a train. For this reason, I would ask people not to jump down my throat for what's about to come!
Jumping in front of a train is one of the most selfish ways of committing suicide that I can think of. On the very basic level, you will cause delays to the rail network, but let's face it the Train Companies can do that on their own without the help of someone standing in front of a train. So, all in all, the delays it causes are not my primary issue, merely an annoyance. That said, I seem to take delays better than others; one day when I was commuting to Bath, the trains had been cancelled, or severely delayed because of someone jumping in front of a train, and a lady comes down the stairs onto the paltform, and says "I hope he's dead!". I don't get that annoyed by it, instead I find an alternative way to uni. But, as I said that's not my main problem with it, my biggest issue is the effect it has on people who are innocent, and who have to deal directly with the person's suicide - people like the Train Driver, who may never be able to sleep at night again, the Police Officers of the British Transport Police who have to attend what they call 'one unders', along with the Network Rail employees who have to clear-up the line so that the trains can run again. All of these people have to deal with sights that are simply awful, and could cause untold psychological trauma. Or, in the case of Stanley Martin, the ultimate price, because someone decided to kill themselves by parking their car on the line and waiting for a train to crash into them.
Now as I said, this rant was about the effect that 'jumpers' have on others who were otherwise going about their normal daily business, and have had to deal with such horrors.
Now I've got that off my chest, I shall continue with the story! I got to St. Pancras, where I had arrived about 3 hours before my train was due to leave, so I went to a cafe and read my book with a mug of coffee in the sunshine whilst waiting for check-in to open. The Eurostar left, pucntually, and had an uninterupted journey to Paris, except for the planned stop in Lille. We arrived in Paris about half five, and as I walked to Paris Est I found somewhere to eat some tea, before meeting Esther at the station. We travelled back on the ICE together, where we also arrived on time, which is a rarity amongst the trains to/from Paris! After a short bus journey home, I was in bed by 11 o'clock!
Sunday was spent unpacking, well, rather putting away the stuff I'd already unpacked (onto the floor) and I had a private lesson in the afternoon. Otherwise, it was a quiet day, involving me pretty much catching up on a weekend of stuff I'd missed on iPlayer!
The first week back at school was full of the usual post-holiday chaos! With the ash cloud posing problems all over Europe, I was impressed that none of the teachers had been silly enough to get themselves stranded in a really hot, sunny country, instead of being shut in a room with 30 excitable children! I also rose to a certain level of fame, or the negative form thereof, because it was during this week that the English Abitur (A-Level) exam took place, on the higher tier of which all of the students in Saarland would have been told what to do by yours truly. That said, I still haven't heard it, and my ask one of my teachers if I could have a copy of it, so I can enjoy my slurring of the letter 'r' in a typically Westcountry manner!
It was this weekend in which Esther and I had originally planned on going to Munich, but time constraints let us down. It was only on the train back from Paris that we were supposed to be going then, and as nothing had been booked or organised, we shelved it, perhaps for another year! Instead, I took advantage of the fantastic weather which we've been experiencing in Saarbruecken, and spent most of the weekend by the Saar in the sun! Over the weekend there were also a couple of evening get-togethers too, in which I took part.
So, what's coming up next week? Not a lot regarding school, it's been a pretty quiet week really. There is a weekend trip to Freiburg im Breisgau (on the edge of the black forest, near the Swiss & French borders) for me and Harriet to look forward to.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Chapter 27 - Jena
Monday 15th - Friday 26th March
Astute readers of this blog will realise that this entry is for two weeks. There are two main reasons for this; 1) Not a lot really happened in the first week (what did will be explained in this entry!), and b) I'm too lazy to write two separate blog entries in one afternoon, so thought I'd include the few things that I did in the first thing with the week in Jena! Those of you with nothing better to do than read this (Hi Dad!), will also realise that, as usual, this entry is late! I could come up with some excuse about being eaten by a hungry lion rampaging through the streets of Chippenham, and having had to wait to pass through its digestive tracts before I could get on the laptop, but you might find it lacking in plausability, so I will therefore just tell the truth, I forgot about it!
So, without any further ado, let's look at what happened in the first week of this double-barrelled entry! It is, in fact, so long ago that I'm writing this with my diary beside me to try and remind me what I did! It would appear that I taught some lessons on topics as varied as: Classroom Phrases, Weather Words, Holiday Words, Corrupt MPs and their slightly dubious expenses claims, and using question words as connectives. And I did my washing and tidied my room in preparation for my trip to Jena! Saturday was spent packing, being generally lazy, accompanied with a bit more cleaning! So, that was the first week of this double barrelled entry, this one wasn't very long, (continuing the shotgun metaphor), consider it a warning shot for what is about to come!
Then we come to Sunday, which is the day of my departure from Saarbruecken. My train doesn't leave until 14.30, but being me I'm up ridiculously early, so spend the morning in bed, lolling around, and double checking I've got everything, and then double checking the double checking! The majority of the trip was made by ICE, which is just as well really, as Jena is almost as far away from Saarbruecken as it's possible to go in Germany! Now, for those of you who don't know ICE is the very Germanically named, Inter-City Express; they're sleak, white with a red stripe down them, pretty comfy and can reach speads of up to 300 km/h. They are the pride of Deutsche Bahn, and I'm sure the only reason they run them to Paris is to show the sill people at SNCF how silly their rectangular TGVs look! But, as Ronnie Corbett was famed for doing during his monologues, I appear to have digressed slightly! I got on the ICE in Saarbruecken to Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof. This journey took about 90 minutes - although we did experience delays of about quarter of an hour because of engineering works. I'd like Network Rail to note that the trains ran DESPITE the engineering works, and experienced only MINOR delays, no rail replacement was required, no-one really minded, after all it was a Sunday, no-one goes to a meeting, or work on Sunday in Germany! Anyway, in Frankfurt, I got on another ICE, this time to Weimar (more about this historical city later!).This trip took about 2.5 hours, and I'd be lying if I said I was pleased to get off, if only for the opportunity to stretch my legs properly! Before I go further than Weimar, I'd like to refer back to my description of the ICE, where I said it can reach speeds of 300 km/h. Neither of mine got anywhere near this speed - the second ICE never got above 160 km/h, which, as those who are good at maths will notice, is only 100 mph. Now I'm not one to complain (stop that sniggering) but the train I catch from Chippenham to Bath normally manages about 125 on the way, and they date from the 1970s. Needless to say I felt a little bit disappointed that DB hadn't built high-speed lines to where I wanted to go (how damned inconsiderate). Anyway, back to Weimar Hauptbahnhof! I got on a Regional Express, semi-fast stopping service, to Jena (only 2 stations away) and was picked up by Christin, my former German Assistant, at the train station. As it happens, that despite engineering works on most parts of my journey, I still reached my final destination on time, punctually, as is to be expected from Deutsche Bahn.
So, Monday morning comes around, not too early, thankfully, and I'm able to fully appreciate where I'm staying in Jena. When you look at the window of her flat, which is on the 7th floor, you see equally tall tower blocks of flats, all built in the same style - a project of the former GDR Government; that said, they do the job they were intended for, and unlike the Palast der Republik (now, thankfully, demolished) in Berlin, they're not riddled with asbestos or any other such toxin! After a leisurely breakfast, I left Christin to write some of her uni work and agreed to meet her on the train to Weimar around lunchtime. I spent the morning wandering around the city of Jena itself. Jena is a city, which has been built up around the university, which was in fact the main reason there's a city there at all! walking through the city it is possible to see the difference between the old town and the new town. Later in the week I did a walking tour of Jena, so I'll talk more about it then!
After a stroll around Jena, I made my way to the train station, and caught the train to Weimar, where I would meet Christin. The train was made up of three separate DMUs without corridors between them, so rather than try to guess which one she would have got on, it seemed to make mroe sense to just meet at the final station! We thought it would be nice to do a walking tour of Weimar, as this way you can be have some of the interesting buildings explained to you, as well as the history of the city itself. Weimar is an important city for people with all sorts of interests. Its most cultural claims to fame are that both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller lived in Weimar for a substantial part of their lives. For those of you who haven't heard of Goethe or Schiller - they are possibly the most famous literary masters from the whole of Germany, so, quite rightly, Weimar is proud to celebrate them! They also have a plaque for J.S. Bach who spent a short time in Weimar. Bringing it more up to date - thinking primarily about the immediate post World War One time, Weimar was chosen as the seat of the new Government. Why Weimar instead of Berlin? Bascially the people from Weimar weren't as troublesome and prone to protesting and rioting as their Berlin counterparts. The Theatre was chosen as the new Parliament building, and so began the foundations of democracy in Germany. Out of this new political world, came the Bauhaus movement, which was, in it's day, revolutionary. Bauhaus influenced not only architechture, but interior design, and furniture amongst other othings. Bauhaus was banned and the Bauhaus Insitute in Weimar was closed down upon Hitler's accession to power, as it was seen to be not German enough! Hitler was also keen on spending time in Weimar, despite its links to the detested Weimar Republic! So, after a very pleasant afternoon in Weimar, we headed back to Christin's flat in Jena!
So, Tuesday was the trip to Leipzig. The good thing about Jena is that it was pretty central for all the places we wanted to visit (perhaps that's why we went there!). Leipzig was about an hour's drive from Jena. Now I should say I have been to Leipzig before, but only to the train station and an italian restaurant to have some dinner, so I may have missed some of it! We started off by visiting the Panometer in Leipzig. I ought to explain the concept of a Panometer - it's basically a decomissioned Gas Store which has an exhibition inside it, but more impressively a circular 30ft high photographic quality artwork of a certain theme. The one in Leipzig is of the Rainforest, and the lighting there was done to reflect different times of day and weather conditions, and there were sound effects too; it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that if you shut your eyes you really could imagine that you were in the Amazon. You may not have really understood quite what it was by my explanation, so here's the website (unfortunately the German one only as English one doesn't seem to work at the moment!) The website does have a slideshow of some pictures of the one we visited. Click Me After spending a good two hours walking round there, we headed into Leipzig and undertook another Walking Tour. The guide was very enthusiastic about Leipzig, and full of interesting pieces of information, and stories about Leipzig. Leipzig started as a crossroads of the fur trade, and grew out of the fur industry. The station in Leipzig used to be the biggest, in terms of numbers of platforms, in the whole of Germany (now, following renovation of Leipzig - losing them two platforms, Frankfurt am Main now holds this record).
Following a nice afternoon in Leipzig we headed over to Altenburg where Christin had her dance training in advance of her competition at the weekend. After that, we went on to her parents' house in Goesnitz, where we would spend the night.
On Wednesday, Christin's Dad, Dieter, took me for a walk around Goesnitz, which is a relatively small town (about the size of Corsham for those of you from my neck of the woods). It also has the longest station platform in Germany, and is a changing point for several different trains. The afternoon saw our return to Jena, where Christin had Private Tuition in the afternoon. While she did some more of her uni essay, I did the walking tour of Jena, which told me more about the history of Jena. Jena developped out of the foundation of the university, the city was quite badly destroyed by the allied bombing during World War Two. The city was generally rebuilt in the post war, GDR era including a shiny glass tower in the middle of they city built in the 1970s, which complements the less aesthetically pleasing tower blocks built on the outskirts. After the tour, I went to Christin's Private Tuition where I helped a bit. In the evening, after having something to eat, we went back to Christin's Parents' in preparation for our trip to Dresden on the following day!
So, as I said previously (one sentence previously in fact!), Wednesday saw our trip to Dresden. Christin's Dad accompanied us on this trip. We did a double decker bus trip of the city; for two main reasons, primarily because it saved us having to drive around it in a car, and it told us more about the places in Dresden than we would have been able to find out from just driving around. Following the 90 minutes we spent on the bus, we then went on a walking tour which lasted about another 90 minutes. The walking tour took us around the Zwinger, the Opera House, and the Parade of Saxon emperors. Following the guided tours, Christin's Dad and I went for a walk by the river, and looked at the Frauenkirche, which was severely bombed out by the allies in the Valentine's Day raid of 1945. It was left as rubble by the GDR as a monument to comemorate the people killed in the bombing raid. There was another reason for this; the Government didn't have enough money to replace it. Following the fall of the East German Government it was decided that it would be rebuilt. It was rebuilt using a lot of the rubble from the original cathedral. They used a complicated computer programme to work out where the blocks came from on the original Cathedral, and replaced them in their original places. You can see this in my pictures, for which I'll post the link later! After a very nice day in Dresden, we went back to Christin's Parents' and I made sure I'd packed everything I needed for the flight back to the UK on the following day.
So Friday arrived, and was my last day in the Federal Republic before the Easter holidays. I was to fly back from Altenburg with Ryanair. I will comment on Ryanair later, but first let me describe Altenburg airport. To put it into context, Saarbruecken has 4 gates; A-D, Altenburg has 1, not called A, or 1; instead simply called The Gate (except in German, obviously!). The taxiway to the runway seemed to be poorly laid concrete slabs, slightly uneven, and in need of a little bit more cement in places! This stems from the days when Altenburg was a Soviet Airbase, which was closed off to the population from the area. Now back to Ryanair! Now I'd heard horror stories about Ryanair, mainly from the press, and watching Rhod Gilbert too much! That said, they met all three of the compulsory conditions which I require from an airline; 1) They took off [on time], 2) the plane stayed in the air, 3) the plane landed [in the right place], and what's more my luggage arrived in Stansted at the same time as me! So, I can't really fault them.
From Stansted, I caught an Easybus, which is an orange minibus, which cost me more to pay by credit card, than for the ticket itself! The journey took me to Baker Street, from where I went to Paddington and left my luggage in the left luggage office. From there I went to the British Museum, because it was open until late, and free, and then about half seven I returned to Paddington, collected my case, got some food, and then boarded the First Great Western train to Chippenham, and by 22.00 I was back in Chippenham, and 15 minutes later I was at home!
So, as I promised, here's the link for my photos from this trip. Click me. There will be another blog entry next week about my relatively painless journey back to Saarbruecken, and my first week back at school! See you soon!
Astute readers of this blog will realise that this entry is for two weeks. There are two main reasons for this; 1) Not a lot really happened in the first week (what did will be explained in this entry!), and b) I'm too lazy to write two separate blog entries in one afternoon, so thought I'd include the few things that I did in the first thing with the week in Jena! Those of you with nothing better to do than read this (Hi Dad!), will also realise that, as usual, this entry is late! I could come up with some excuse about being eaten by a hungry lion rampaging through the streets of Chippenham, and having had to wait to pass through its digestive tracts before I could get on the laptop, but you might find it lacking in plausability, so I will therefore just tell the truth, I forgot about it!
So, without any further ado, let's look at what happened in the first week of this double-barrelled entry! It is, in fact, so long ago that I'm writing this with my diary beside me to try and remind me what I did! It would appear that I taught some lessons on topics as varied as: Classroom Phrases, Weather Words, Holiday Words, Corrupt MPs and their slightly dubious expenses claims, and using question words as connectives. And I did my washing and tidied my room in preparation for my trip to Jena! Saturday was spent packing, being generally lazy, accompanied with a bit more cleaning! So, that was the first week of this double barrelled entry, this one wasn't very long, (continuing the shotgun metaphor), consider it a warning shot for what is about to come!
Then we come to Sunday, which is the day of my departure from Saarbruecken. My train doesn't leave until 14.30, but being me I'm up ridiculously early, so spend the morning in bed, lolling around, and double checking I've got everything, and then double checking the double checking! The majority of the trip was made by ICE, which is just as well really, as Jena is almost as far away from Saarbruecken as it's possible to go in Germany! Now, for those of you who don't know ICE is the very Germanically named, Inter-City Express; they're sleak, white with a red stripe down them, pretty comfy and can reach speads of up to 300 km/h. They are the pride of Deutsche Bahn, and I'm sure the only reason they run them to Paris is to show the sill people at SNCF how silly their rectangular TGVs look! But, as Ronnie Corbett was famed for doing during his monologues, I appear to have digressed slightly! I got on the ICE in Saarbruecken to Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof. This journey took about 90 minutes - although we did experience delays of about quarter of an hour because of engineering works. I'd like Network Rail to note that the trains ran DESPITE the engineering works, and experienced only MINOR delays, no rail replacement was required, no-one really minded, after all it was a Sunday, no-one goes to a meeting, or work on Sunday in Germany! Anyway, in Frankfurt, I got on another ICE, this time to Weimar (more about this historical city later!).This trip took about 2.5 hours, and I'd be lying if I said I was pleased to get off, if only for the opportunity to stretch my legs properly! Before I go further than Weimar, I'd like to refer back to my description of the ICE, where I said it can reach speeds of 300 km/h. Neither of mine got anywhere near this speed - the second ICE never got above 160 km/h, which, as those who are good at maths will notice, is only 100 mph. Now I'm not one to complain (stop that sniggering) but the train I catch from Chippenham to Bath normally manages about 125 on the way, and they date from the 1970s. Needless to say I felt a little bit disappointed that DB hadn't built high-speed lines to where I wanted to go (how damned inconsiderate). Anyway, back to Weimar Hauptbahnhof! I got on a Regional Express, semi-fast stopping service, to Jena (only 2 stations away) and was picked up by Christin, my former German Assistant, at the train station. As it happens, that despite engineering works on most parts of my journey, I still reached my final destination on time, punctually, as is to be expected from Deutsche Bahn.
So, Monday morning comes around, not too early, thankfully, and I'm able to fully appreciate where I'm staying in Jena. When you look at the window of her flat, which is on the 7th floor, you see equally tall tower blocks of flats, all built in the same style - a project of the former GDR Government; that said, they do the job they were intended for, and unlike the Palast der Republik (now, thankfully, demolished) in Berlin, they're not riddled with asbestos or any other such toxin! After a leisurely breakfast, I left Christin to write some of her uni work and agreed to meet her on the train to Weimar around lunchtime. I spent the morning wandering around the city of Jena itself. Jena is a city, which has been built up around the university, which was in fact the main reason there's a city there at all! walking through the city it is possible to see the difference between the old town and the new town. Later in the week I did a walking tour of Jena, so I'll talk more about it then!
After a stroll around Jena, I made my way to the train station, and caught the train to Weimar, where I would meet Christin. The train was made up of three separate DMUs without corridors between them, so rather than try to guess which one she would have got on, it seemed to make mroe sense to just meet at the final station! We thought it would be nice to do a walking tour of Weimar, as this way you can be have some of the interesting buildings explained to you, as well as the history of the city itself. Weimar is an important city for people with all sorts of interests. Its most cultural claims to fame are that both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller lived in Weimar for a substantial part of their lives. For those of you who haven't heard of Goethe or Schiller - they are possibly the most famous literary masters from the whole of Germany, so, quite rightly, Weimar is proud to celebrate them! They also have a plaque for J.S. Bach who spent a short time in Weimar. Bringing it more up to date - thinking primarily about the immediate post World War One time, Weimar was chosen as the seat of the new Government. Why Weimar instead of Berlin? Bascially the people from Weimar weren't as troublesome and prone to protesting and rioting as their Berlin counterparts. The Theatre was chosen as the new Parliament building, and so began the foundations of democracy in Germany. Out of this new political world, came the Bauhaus movement, which was, in it's day, revolutionary. Bauhaus influenced not only architechture, but interior design, and furniture amongst other othings. Bauhaus was banned and the Bauhaus Insitute in Weimar was closed down upon Hitler's accession to power, as it was seen to be not German enough! Hitler was also keen on spending time in Weimar, despite its links to the detested Weimar Republic! So, after a very pleasant afternoon in Weimar, we headed back to Christin's flat in Jena!
So, Tuesday was the trip to Leipzig. The good thing about Jena is that it was pretty central for all the places we wanted to visit (perhaps that's why we went there!). Leipzig was about an hour's drive from Jena. Now I should say I have been to Leipzig before, but only to the train station and an italian restaurant to have some dinner, so I may have missed some of it! We started off by visiting the Panometer in Leipzig. I ought to explain the concept of a Panometer - it's basically a decomissioned Gas Store which has an exhibition inside it, but more impressively a circular 30ft high photographic quality artwork of a certain theme. The one in Leipzig is of the Rainforest, and the lighting there was done to reflect different times of day and weather conditions, and there were sound effects too; it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that if you shut your eyes you really could imagine that you were in the Amazon. You may not have really understood quite what it was by my explanation, so here's the website (unfortunately the German one only as English one doesn't seem to work at the moment!) The website does have a slideshow of some pictures of the one we visited. Click Me After spending a good two hours walking round there, we headed into Leipzig and undertook another Walking Tour. The guide was very enthusiastic about Leipzig, and full of interesting pieces of information, and stories about Leipzig. Leipzig started as a crossroads of the fur trade, and grew out of the fur industry. The station in Leipzig used to be the biggest, in terms of numbers of platforms, in the whole of Germany (now, following renovation of Leipzig - losing them two platforms, Frankfurt am Main now holds this record).
Following a nice afternoon in Leipzig we headed over to Altenburg where Christin had her dance training in advance of her competition at the weekend. After that, we went on to her parents' house in Goesnitz, where we would spend the night.
On Wednesday, Christin's Dad, Dieter, took me for a walk around Goesnitz, which is a relatively small town (about the size of Corsham for those of you from my neck of the woods). It also has the longest station platform in Germany, and is a changing point for several different trains. The afternoon saw our return to Jena, where Christin had Private Tuition in the afternoon. While she did some more of her uni essay, I did the walking tour of Jena, which told me more about the history of Jena. Jena developped out of the foundation of the university, the city was quite badly destroyed by the allied bombing during World War Two. The city was generally rebuilt in the post war, GDR era including a shiny glass tower in the middle of they city built in the 1970s, which complements the less aesthetically pleasing tower blocks built on the outskirts. After the tour, I went to Christin's Private Tuition where I helped a bit. In the evening, after having something to eat, we went back to Christin's Parents' in preparation for our trip to Dresden on the following day!
So, as I said previously (one sentence previously in fact!), Wednesday saw our trip to Dresden. Christin's Dad accompanied us on this trip. We did a double decker bus trip of the city; for two main reasons, primarily because it saved us having to drive around it in a car, and it told us more about the places in Dresden than we would have been able to find out from just driving around. Following the 90 minutes we spent on the bus, we then went on a walking tour which lasted about another 90 minutes. The walking tour took us around the Zwinger, the Opera House, and the Parade of Saxon emperors. Following the guided tours, Christin's Dad and I went for a walk by the river, and looked at the Frauenkirche, which was severely bombed out by the allies in the Valentine's Day raid of 1945. It was left as rubble by the GDR as a monument to comemorate the people killed in the bombing raid. There was another reason for this; the Government didn't have enough money to replace it. Following the fall of the East German Government it was decided that it would be rebuilt. It was rebuilt using a lot of the rubble from the original cathedral. They used a complicated computer programme to work out where the blocks came from on the original Cathedral, and replaced them in their original places. You can see this in my pictures, for which I'll post the link later! After a very nice day in Dresden, we went back to Christin's Parents' and I made sure I'd packed everything I needed for the flight back to the UK on the following day.
So Friday arrived, and was my last day in the Federal Republic before the Easter holidays. I was to fly back from Altenburg with Ryanair. I will comment on Ryanair later, but first let me describe Altenburg airport. To put it into context, Saarbruecken has 4 gates; A-D, Altenburg has 1, not called A, or 1; instead simply called The Gate (except in German, obviously!). The taxiway to the runway seemed to be poorly laid concrete slabs, slightly uneven, and in need of a little bit more cement in places! This stems from the days when Altenburg was a Soviet Airbase, which was closed off to the population from the area. Now back to Ryanair! Now I'd heard horror stories about Ryanair, mainly from the press, and watching Rhod Gilbert too much! That said, they met all three of the compulsory conditions which I require from an airline; 1) They took off [on time], 2) the plane stayed in the air, 3) the plane landed [in the right place], and what's more my luggage arrived in Stansted at the same time as me! So, I can't really fault them.
From Stansted, I caught an Easybus, which is an orange minibus, which cost me more to pay by credit card, than for the ticket itself! The journey took me to Baker Street, from where I went to Paddington and left my luggage in the left luggage office. From there I went to the British Museum, because it was open until late, and free, and then about half seven I returned to Paddington, collected my case, got some food, and then boarded the First Great Western train to Chippenham, and by 22.00 I was back in Chippenham, and 15 minutes later I was at home!
So, as I promised, here's the link for my photos from this trip. Click me. There will be another blog entry next week about my relatively painless journey back to Saarbruecken, and my first week back at school! See you soon!
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