Leipzig

Day two of our adventure took us to Leipzig. It is too much of a modern city for me with too many stores. I still enjoyed it, even if it isn't my favorite city that I have visited.
This is the Nikolai Kirche. Here is where the Monday Demonstrations started back in 1989. They were one of the important things that brought about German unity.
Leipzig is Bach's city. Behind the statue is the Thomaskirche, where he worked for so many years. This statue is absolutely gigantic. It is probably about 25ft fall, but that is just going from memory. The church had some old string instruments and a couple others that were from Bach's time, but didn't have an organ, sadly.

After dodging some rain at a Döner Grill we headed towards the Monument to the Battle of Nations. Why do these English terms never seem to sound as good as the German? In this case, the German is Völkerschlachtdenkmal. The Battle of Nations (or of Leipzig) was the first major defeat of Napoleon's army. He may have finally been beaten at Waterloo, but this defeat is the one that made Waterloo possible.
The monument is 91m tall (which is almost 300 ft.), that is nearly twice as tall as the statue of liberty. There are more than 500 steps to the top. I was expecting climbing it to be much worse than it actually was. Granted, there is an observation deck of sorts halfway up, so stopping and walking around the monument there made it easier. Right now, they are renovating it for the 100th anniversary of the monument and the 200th anniversary of the Battle, so only one staircase was open. To regulate traffic, they use stop lights to tell you when you are allowed to go or not. I suppose that also made it a lot easier. I am now going to show you a bunch of pictures of it, because it is just that impressive.

I suppose that they are standing 20 or 30 ft in front of the monument, but I am not sure.
Now I will show you some pictures from the top.


I suspect that these views would be better, had it not been 50° and raining. You have to take what you can get, I suppose.

I would be willing to bet a fairly substantial amount of money that no one would assume this to be a crematorium.

In the interest of not ending with a picture of a crematorium, here is a picture of the Goethe statue that they have near the old Rathaus. The rathaus is to the left of the picture. The old stock exchange is the building in the background.