Leipzig & Weihnachten

Hallo zusammen! I've been busy having adventures, but now I'm going to take the time to get you all up to date on my oh-so-glamorous European existence.

 On December 20th, I went to Leipzig to see their Weihnachtsmarkt and the Nikolaikirche. The signs telling you not to throw stuff out of the window had fallen down on the train...

open for everyone

 I was really excited to visit the Nikolaikirche because it was really important in the peaceful protest movement in East German in the 1980s. Most churches in Germany have mostly older people visiting, but this church had a lot of younger visitors.

The interior of the church.

A cool mural near the train station.

Kitty's train was delayed, so I ended up wandering around the train station for a bit before going to meet her. The train station was huge! It had an entire mall underneath. There was a KFC, a Starbucks, a Subway, a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, and McDonald's. It was like visiting America...in a train station. When we were waiting on our trains home, Kitty and I ate in the KFC, starting an international KFC tasting experience.

I found yet another Ferris wheel!

The state motto of Oklahoma! On a building in Germany!

 

The Christmas market had this thing called a Maerchenwald - a storybook forest - where they had creepy dolls recreating German fairy tales. It was pretty creepy and the Germans seemed annoyed that some 20-somethings were going through it. Then we went to the main part of the market and heard some people singing songs with little kids.

 The bathroom in the train station had weird toilets that you had to step on a pedal to flush.

Then on December 21st, I headed down to Holzkirchen for Christmas! It was a good experience. I made my host family fried chicken one night - I don't know if they like it that much, and I got to see the Munich Christkindlmarkt because in Bavaria, the Christ child comes to bring presents and decorate the tree instead of Santa.

I also got mistaken for a 14 year old twice while in Bavaria, which was funny. I also got to visit the Egyptian Museum in Munich as well as Tollwood.

Tollwood is at the same place as Oktoberfest, but it's more like a hippie festival than anything else. I really liked it.

On Christmas Eve, we went to the Krippenspiel at the local church - it was very interesting. They had adults act out the Nativity story in the town square because the church is too small to hold everyone at once.

After that we went back home and ate dinner, then we went into the living room where the Christmas tree was! They used real candles on their tree, which horrified me a bit because I grew up on The Babbs Switch Story, which is about a tree with candles that burns down a school and kills a lot of people. It was okay, though. I even got a few presents, and I gave my host family peanut butter balls as their gift.

An Abundance of Katherines, anyone?

 On Christmas Day I went back to Erfurt to get ready for my trip east. The Munich train station was beautiful and not all that busy - I had expected it to be much crazier!

I saw this while waiting on my tram home at the Erfurt train station.

Christmas not at home was odd, but I got to skype my family for a bit, which made it all okay! And I realized that the song Out Tonight from Rent described me and my travels "we won't be back before it's Christmas Day" (the other version works too because I got back from eastern Europe on New Year's Day!)