Eastern Germany-- Leipzig and Dresden

After leaving Berlin, we stopped in Leipzig for six hours or so on our way to Dresden. In case you are not a Germany geography wizard, these cities are both in Eastern Germany.


This is the Nikolaikirche, which is a church where some of the first successful resistance to the GDR (Eastern Germany regime) began. People used to meet here for 'prayer meetings' and would actually conspire against the government.



We also visited Thomaskirche, the church where Bach worked for 27 years. He is buried underneath the church.



These blue pipes are above-ground water pipes. I'm not sure if they are unique to Eastern Germany, but we'd never seen them before.

We also went to a Stasi (East German secret police) museum in Leipzig. It was really interesting to see the technology they used to monitor mail, phones and people's homes and learn about the techniques they used in questioning suspected dissidents.

We also went to the Leipzig Zoo, which is world-known for its research in ape communication. It was the prettiest zoo I've ever seen, and the animals are actually kept in something similar to their native environment. This ape decided to pose for me!

This picture was taken without zoom-- the monkey was literally right in front of my face because the Leipzig Zoo has some free-roaming monkeys who are not afraid of humans.

Notice the big, scary lion in the background and the very short fence. Okay, I realize that there is a bit of water between us and the lion, but it seemed a little dangerous to me. I don't think you'd ever find something like this in the US!



This is the Zwinger in Dresden, which my guide book says "used to be a party place for royals." Dresden must have been pretty wealthy place back in the day-- nobody even lived here, the multiple castles are elsewhere in the city. Now the buildings house museums, a few of which we visited.

This is part of Dresden's sky-line. Walking around this city I often felt overwhelmed by the beauty-- it was literally too much to take in! My guide book says that "there are few city silhouttes more striking than Dresden's" and that in the 18th century, Dresden was known as the "Florence of the north."

We had to wait in Dresden until 10pm to catch our overnight train to Paris, so when it got dark, we went to the Botanical Gardens. They had a tropical house, and I saw a banana tree!