The old city hall of Leipzig is now their history museum. It covers at least 1000+ years of history. We couldn't see any more than half of it in the 3+ hours we were there.

They really like their dragon slaughter ;(




A satanic dragon vomiting Lutherans out of his butt dragon. This was on a painting to show catholic teachings.

A map of the city. Leipzig was known for it's trade fairs because it was one of the few cities in the middle ages permitted to have multiple markets.

The old city hall chambers.

A model of the old city

The armor of a Leipzig soldier

After the botanical gardens we rode over to the Ms. Hippy shop so (e:paul) could get some more zimmerman hosen. I ended up getting one pair, but I had a minor breakdown over how many pairs we got (something like 7).

On the same street these girls had hours of non-stop 90s kareoke. Ugh.




I did calm down a little when we had the best falafel known to man next door. It was 4 euro and had fried halloumi in it. I could eat this every day. In fact we went here at least three times.

You can get it at

Olive Tree
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 40
04107 Leipzig

(e:terry) looks happy after eating a falafel



So now that we were all full we went out to rave.

Leipzig is a city that's well known for it's electronic music. We went to two raves while we were there.

The first one was in this old warehouse in Plagwitz. I can't remember or find the street it was on but it was mostly old brick warehouses. I found a name on my google history, elipmanoke, but who knows if that is right.

The rave had three different DJ's including one outside. It wasn't even too smoky. You also got free erdnuss flips. And there were plenty of people who were friendly and just hung out and talked in the outside patio.






The second rave was maybe two nights later, in an old factory. The space was called "Institure fuer Zunkunft" or the Institure for the Future. It ran from 12am to noon, and you couldn't take any pictures inside. It was super dusty but the music was good.

Here's what Leipzig's new Rathaus looks like at 6am.

We rode our bikes through some of the eastern park over to the Voelkerschlactdenkmal, or Monument to the Battle of the Nations. The monument commemorates the defeat of Napolean which happened near Leipzig and was built between 1898-1913.

It's a 300 ft concrete and granite monument, that you can climb up to the very top in. I've never seen anything more impressive, especially built before 1900. The views from the top are incredible. When I was climbing the twisted narrow staircase to the lookout platform, I was almost dizzy.

It's obviously from a terrible time of nationalism, especially leading up to WWI but you have to give the construction props.

A nearby Russian church gaudily covered in gold.

After our day out riding around Leipzig, we decided to go out. We tried some of the gay bars - once again suprisingly small and empty. One was a sports bar cafe called Cafe Apart, but the second one, Havana was a lot better. We met two guys named Marcus and Mathias (I now believe every man in Germany has one of these two names). They were two music students who lived in Leipzig, and were playing in Bachfest.

We hung out at the one bar for a while, and I really got to practice my German. It's easier when you've had a couple beers.

Later we took our bikes over to another bar called Flower Power. I don't think any bars there have a closing time, but this one was most popular from 4am-12pm. It seemed kind of like the Pink, if people at the pink were crazy enough to stay 8 hours.

When we left it was pouring outside. We said bye to our friends and tried to race an S-Bahn station. I was so tired I couldn't even figure out the right tickets to buy while the trains kept coming. At this point we were just soaked so we kept riding through the rain.

When we got back to the hotel it was something like 7am.