Volume 2, Day 15
It was surprisingly chilly when I woke up in the morning. When I had gone to bed, it was a bit too warm and I had lain in bed quite some while fanning myself. Yet, by the morning, the open windows had done their trick. I spent the morning in the usual fashion, opting to make my own coffee rather than help myself to that with the breakfast spread. Shortly after ten, I decided to head out.
So, Leipzig is probably most famous for its connections to pretty much every major musician. Wagner was born there, Mendelssohn and Bach both lived there until their deaths. I even passed a building with a plaque announcing a connection to Grieg. I crossed the ring road and headed into the old town to find St. Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian is laid to rest. The church was not open, the Bach Museum and Archive across the street was. I shelled out the big bucks for a ticket and wasn’t expecting much.
The museum is housed in the former residence of a rich family of Leipzig and friend of Bach. Though not particularly large, there is a wealth of information and a back garden. Headphones with touch screen panels appear to contain the entire body of music, organized and searchable. I would have liked to spend a couple hours listening, but I was anxious to keep moving. The most notable aspect of the museum is that the sign in front, which points the way to the ticket counter, was written in German, English, and Japanese. True enough, there was a whole Japanese tour group working their way through the museum.
After leaving the museum, I was thinking of running to the Aldi and having lunch back at the hostel, but as I was meandering across the green plaza next to the church, I was quite taken in by the available foods. As if by magnetic pull, my eyes immediately spotted the gelato counter, but what I went for first was a burger stand. It was a nice bratwurst, but it made me hungrier to eat it than not. Deciding to hang out for a bit in the mini-park, I pulled out my phone to review a bit of German, but discovered that my subscription to Lingodeer Plus had expired. I was maybe five days away from completing all the currently available quizzes, but it was finally time to give the app the kiss off. I would recommend it as a free app, but it is far too undercooked to be worth paying top dollar for.
I walked around a bit at random and found another half dozen ice cream sellers. If I hadn’t packed on so much weight in Beijing, I would be going nuts on pizzas, bratwurst, pommes frites, and eis, and that’s even before one browses the aisles of an Aldi and literally wants to buy everything available. Do I have a mission to try every available flavor of Rittersport? What about other chocolate brands? Between cheap grocery stores, affordable junk food stands, and reasonable street cafes, I might not need ever step foot into a restaurant. I wonder if I am ever going to get tired of supermarket bread so I have to start spending more on bakery bread. Anyways, after looking at lots of ice cream counters, cafes, and parlors, I picked one that appeared to have the best price-quality ratio and got two scoops in a waffle cone. Ambrosia.
The sky was dark with clouds and the weather report had predicted a better than 50% chance of rain at 1 pm, so I finished my ice cream and headed to the Museum of Fine Arts. It was worth the admission ticket, though I have the weird feeling I could have just waltzed in without paying. The museum is currently hosting an exhibition on Yoko Ono, which I wasn’t particularly excited about, but she won quickly won me over. It was really cool that some of the exhibits were interactive. For example, there was a room with a boat in it. Everything is covered in graffiti. At first glance, that is how it is supposed to be. But there is a table with paint cans and brushes. Each visitor gets to add their mark and contribute to the whole. Or, take the wooden block with a bucket of nails next to it. Or, the broken pieces of pottery and a worktable with glue and tape we are invited to use to piece them back together. Though Yoko Ono’s works were all over the museum, the usually galleries were still there covering everything from medieval religious art to mid-20th century works that somehow survived the Nazis (despite being labeled “degenerate”). I think I spent close to 4 hours, and I could have spent longer if not for the fact that I was craving a pick-me-up.
I swung by the train station “Promenade” and picked up a giant cookie-thing called a “Pig’s Ear” in a bakery and headed back to the hostel to have a couple cups of free coffee. I played on the internet for two hours before getting into the kitchen early to make a second spaghetti dinner. For future reference, if I am going to buy a 500g package of spaghetti (for 40 cents), I should probably try to split it into three meals. In any case, I had no problem eating the giant plate of spaghetti and finishing the bottle of chianti and half a salad from the previous night. Though I was somewhat inclined to drink a bit more, it was quiet in the hostel, and I realized I had time to watch a movie before going to sleep.
| Bach Museum | 8 |
| Bratwurst | 2.7 |
| Eis | 2.6 |
| Museum of Fine Arts | 10 |
| Pig’s Ear | 1.8 |
| Total: | 25.1 EUR (195.8 RMB) (USD 28.50) |
Running Total: 6702.8 RMB (USD 975.66)
Daily Average: 446.85 RMB (USD 65.04)