Day 2 - Leipzig, Germany

Before I left Esquimalt, I'd bought a t-shirt that I plan to have a picture taken in in each city we go to.  My last trip, I had t-shirts for each country I went to.  Made them with the flag of each country on it.  Here's me outside of the Dresden train station wearing the t-shirt.

What should have been easy to do - find the platform for our train and get on it, didn't happen.  I couldn't find our train info on the departure board in the station.  Oh, oh!  Got in line at the information booth to ask about it.  The first problem is the woman with the information didn't speak English!  Who puts someone in information that only speaks German???  I  struggled to understand what i was hearing "Was she saying my train is cancelled and now I take the one that leaves in 23 minutes?".  No, couldn't be.  She wrote it out, still I couldn't grasp the news.  I said but I paid for seats so does that mean I don't have seats reserved on this train?  All spoken in German.  She finally found this old man who spoke broken English.  Sure enough, what I was understanding was absolutely true.  Thank God, I always go to the train station or airports early.  What ticked me as well is that the app, Omio, I use to book my train tickets, didn't update me to say the train has changed.  That isn't good.  As we were waiting to board the earlier train, a woman overheard me talking about the situation.  She said it's what happened to her as well.  She said "Welcome to the German train system.".  Luckily, the seats we found we got to keep for the hour and a bit train ride  We were also lucky to have a young woman help us load our luggage onto the luggage racks.

We arrived in Leipzig at the exact time we were given on the information board.  At least they still get that right.

We left the Leipzig train station and headed in the direction Google Live was showing us.  It took us straight up a street that was wall to wall Christmas market.  It was snowing so all quite magical.  Unfortunately, not so much for Cathy.  The handle on her suitcase was broken while in transit from Canada to Germany.  It was jammed and wouldn't extend.  She had to haul that suitcase using a strap.  She huffed and puffed and we stopped every couple of minutes.  When we found our hotel which was about a 20 minutes walk that turned into longer.  I think Cathy wanted to fall onto her knees and thank God.  She didn't because 1)  the ground was wet and 2) neither she nor I could have gotten her back up!  Yup, she was overheated and exhausted.

After a while, we walked around our hotel to look for a place to order something to eat.  There is nothing except for the hotel restaurant.  We ended back in town.  It really is a 20 minutes walk!  haha  We are now experienced Christmas marketers.  We looked at the prices of bratwursts at a couple of kiosks.  We know which one to go to to save 60 cents!  haha  The brat was great.  We huddled with a bunch of other people in the heated entry to Karlstadt (department store) to eat our brats. 

The next few pictures were taken last night and today.  They are of three markets we've been to.  It's always a nice surprise to round a corner and find one that looks like it's from the Medieval times.  We didn't really look at the stalls because I was hell bent on finding the main market called the Leipziger Markt.  We will go back tomorrow and look more closely at it.  This is the great thing.  If you give yourself enough days in one place, you don't have to do everything at once.

The most important part of the day for me was going to an Apotheke for some medicine for this darned cold I have.  The pharmacists at an Apotheke have more training in medicine and so can prescribe more medicines than just basic cough medicine.  The young woman I had at the pharmacy was great.  She asked my symptons and then gave me two different things to take with very specific instructions.  For being a good girl, I got a cute Christmas ornament and some chocolate.  She saw Cathy behind me so gave her an ornament too.  Maybe for putting up with my whining?  hahaha  My ornament is the little gnome and Cathy's is the little girl.

Steps on December 2 - 20,879

Steps on December 3 - 12,649  Less steps but I'm sick and only did what I had to do.  *wahhhh wahhh wahhh*