The last time we went to Germany it
rained for six straight days. Seeing as how we're only going to be
there for nine days in total this time around, we're hoping for
something a little different.
Welcome to this year's adventure, where
we are heading to Berlin and Leipzig on a quick little adventure.
We'll have no car, relying on feet and on trains, and we have one
main reason and one main reason only for going.
For these guys--
We visited both Leipzig and Berlin back in 2013 on
a bit of a whirlwind trip, and always wanted to go back. Then, after
becoming fans of a certain German fussball team, we found ourselves
with the perfect reason—to watch a match just a few days after our
30th wedding anniversary.
That's right. We got married when we
were ten.
Because of all that this will be a much
different trip than the kind you usually read about—in the spring
instead of fall, only nine days instead of 12 or 13, and with us
visiting exclusively urban areas, which means, sad to say, no cows
(however will I survive?). We'll get between cities by train
(something new) and get around in the cities by foot (something we do
all the time).
And yet we'll still have time for
football. And, of course, chocolate.
Stop one is Berlin--
Where we're finding ourselves ensconced
in the Tiergarten neighborhood for a night. The Tiergarten is a huge
city park--
That sits right near the Brandenburg
gate, the Reichstag, and the Ritter Sport store--
So the chocolate part of the trip is,
rest assured, taken care of.
We then hop on a train and find
ourselves an hour later in the fair city of Leipzig, a place where
we slept for three nights in 2013 but really didn't get a chance to
explore. A pity, too, because aside from being a really cool place
just to visit--
It has this church where, in 1989,
college students began the protests that eventually toppled the old
East German government and the Berlin wall.
There's a whole walking tour you can
take to commemorate that era, plus parks and great food and all kinds
of other things we didn't get to do or see last time we were there.
After all, the place isn't referred to by some as “Hypezig” for
no reason.
Of course, the reason for the trip will
be when we set foot inside of this holy shrine the Saturday we're
there--
This holy shrine is known as Red Bull
arena, home to the RB Leipzig Bundesliga team. We started watching
RB Leipzig a couple of years ago, when they made it up to the
Bundesliga from the German minor leagues, just to see if they had any
beauty shots of Leipzig during game coverage. After a while we
stopped looking for the beauty shots and started concentrating on the
team. With a core group of young players they finished in the top
six of the league their first two years, and are on pace to finish
third this year, so maybe it's not too surprising that it took us two
mornings of getting up at 5 am to get tickets for the match.
But I have the feeling it'll all be
worth it. Especially because they're playing SC Freiburg, a team
from what might be my favorite German city. Sad to say Freiburg's
soccer team isn't quite as good as RB Leipzig (although they did tie
Bayern Munich, the [evil] New England Patriots of the Bundesliga, a
few weeks ago), but that just means that by the end of Saturday the
40,000 of us packing Red Bull Arena should have big smiles on our
faces.
With the exception of one other day the
rest of the trip will just be exploring and seeing what we can see,
but that one day should be quite fascinating. Long-time readers of
these blogs may recall back in 2013 when we visited the town of
Weissenfels, so Loraine could present a copy of her first book to the
town's mayor (the subject of that book, Marquette's Elwood Norr, was
shot down in Weissenfels), and we found ourselves at a press
conference with him, the end result of which you could see in the
newspaper the next day
We thought it might be nice to see our
old friends again, so Loraine got in touch and said that, among other
things, she'd like to give the town a copy of her second book, which
mentions our visit the first time around. Well, we were invited
back, and soon found ourselves with an itinerary for the day (these
are very organized Germans, after all). We get to have a catch-up
lunch and a tour of an historic building, and we also get to give
someone from the city a copy of Loraine's second book complete with,
according to the itinerary, a “press availability”.
That's right. You go to this part of
Germany with Loraine, and you find yourself in the newspaper the next
day. Everyone needs a travel companion like that.
So while we won't be gone as long as
usual we will be doing a whole bunch of stuff we've never done
before. You're more than welcome to come along. Just promise you
won't bring any rain with you. We had enough of that last year.
8-)
No comments:
Post a Comment