We took the train from Berlin Zoologischer Garten to Leipzig. The journey was tedious, nothing really too eventful. I wish I had gotten a coffee before I boarded, because we did not have as much time on our transfer as I would’ve liked. Samer plays table tennis with a German guy who recommended we buy the Deutschland-Ticket. For €58, you can ride all public transit without paying extra. This is an outstanding deal, as we used it for every subway, bus, and train we rode. What we did not realize was that it did not apply to high-speed intercity trains. One of those trains was much more convenient for the Berlin-to-Leipzig route, but using the pass we stitched together 2 regional trains to make it work.
We decided to make our second day trip to Leipzig to see where Bach composed, so St. Thomas Church is one of Samer’s pilgrimage sites. He loves Bach, and so he really wanted to visit it. We both thought there would be more music when we were there, but there’s none in the church. However, I later learned you could use the Bach museum app at the church, and I suspect there’s music you can listen to while you’re checking out the church. It’s a beautiful church, but you go there to see Bach’s tomb.
The Bach Museum in Leipzig is great. The audio guide is excellent, and you really do learn a lot about his family and what was going on in Leipzig at the time. And just all of the different instruments that existed then—many of them don’t exist now. There’s a significant part where you can sit down and listen to these audio narratives about what it was like. There’s a funny one where you listen to somebody perform as Bach’s first trumpeter, and then he dies at the end of it, which is both surprising and kind of funny. It’s really a great museum.
We stopped for coffee at Café Bigoti and got our coffees to go. However, Samer also got a piece of cake, which they were shocked he wanted to go because he was eating it out of a napkin outside. It was a chocolate-layer cookie thing—regular café but more modern than its neighboring café, Café Kandler.
We had lunch at Spizz – Der Leipziger Café. I had Kartoffelsuppe with a Hefeweizen. Lunch was good. You get to sit out on the square and people-watch. After lunch, we walked to St. Nicholas Church (Nikolaikirche), Mädler-Passage, and Old St. Peter’s Church (Alte Peterskirche), and then sat down at Café Kandler for the Bach-Torte. While we were in Old St. Peter’s Church, there was a woman practicing the piano, and the church itself is pretty rough to look at, so it was an incredible juxtaposition of beautiful music and aging construction—a polar opposite experience to our time at St. Thomas Church earlier in the day.
There’s nothing wrong with the cake. It had some chocolate, some nuts, some cream, and I believe there was a coffee flavoring as well. It was good, though I often prefer my tortes to have a bit of a fruit layer, which this didn’t have.
The return trip really was bad. Our Deutschland ticket had us pinned to the regional rail service, which had us stuck on this route because we didn’t want to buy an intercity ticket. We weren’t even stuck in Leipzig, which is a great, beautiful, well-accommodated station that would’ve kept us entertained. We just stood on a platform in some suburb waiting for an hour and a half. We all got stuffed into a train where there weren’t enough seats, and then we took that all the way to the suburbs of Berlin, where we had to switch to another train. It was tiring. We left Leipzig around 4:00, and we didn’t get to our hotel until 8:15.
Our walk from the station to the hotel had us stopping for a kebab at Zaddy’s. It was good. I think Mustafa’s is better on a technical level, but this really did hit the spot, and I really liked it. The thing I’ve learned, though, is always to have them back off the white sauce. It gets a little mayo-y and ask them to lean on the spicy sauce.
Lab.oratory was after the kebab. I’m going to keep most of the evening private, but Lab is a very famous gay club. It was really lovely to go out, hang out, and have drinks at a famous Berlin nightclub. We both had a lot of fun, and we didn’t stay out too late.
When I ordered a vodka soda, the bartender looked at me and said, “So you just want a skinny bitch?” which made me laugh out loud, that’s what that drink is called. Because deep down, that is why I drink it—it’s refreshing and low on calories.
When we were done, we boarded the train home, where I got a snack—börek from the station—and we split a beer on our way back to our hotel.
Next: Germany – Day 7