Leipzig

An old German coworker of mine took me for a tour of Leipzig on July 15th, a couple of Sundays ago. Leipzig is about a 100km from Dresden, and has a slightly larger population than Dresden. It is also where Bach, the famous composer, grew up. That day was a really beautiful day, but it was also ridiculously hot. It got up to 38C that day. Thankfully, my coworker drove there in his air-conditioned car.

On a side note, air conditioning is quite a rarity for buildings to have, at least in East Germany. No houses are equipped with it, and a lot of office buildings, like mine, don't have it as well. It sucks on the hot days, but it's usually fine.

The Leipzig Hauptbahnhof (main train station). It's the largest end station in Europe, meaning that all trains that go into this station must leave the station going backwards. I'm not exactly sure that's something to be very proud of.

One of the streets of the Leipzig old city. Notice how clean it is.

One of the churches.

Leipzig is famous for its unique shopping walkways like this one. There hallways like this where you can walk through a building to another street, where shops line these hallways.

A square getting renovated.

The old city hall.

Inside the Thomaskirche (Thomas church), where Bach played the church organ as a child. The organ in the background is a rebuilt version of the church organ. I think this church was destroyed in WWII.

Another shot inside of the Thomaskirche.

A statue of Bach infront of Thomaskirche.

The house where Bach grew up in. It is now a Bach museum.

I think this is the new city hall.

The front shot of the new city hall.

I think this is the theatre.

Or maybe this Soviet style building is the theatre.

A part of the university in Leipzig.

An old cannon in the Leipzig Forum of Contemporary History, which exhibited life in East Germany after WWII and before the reunification of Germany. It was really interesting to hear some stories from my colleague who grew up in East Germany, and lived through some of this time.

Another passageway with shops.

Inside the Nikolaikirche (Nikolai church).

A war monument built in celebration of the defeat of Napolean. It might not seem large in the photo, but it's actually pretty huge.

A couple of shots from the top of the monument.

These panoramic shots turned out awesome thanks to the software called Autostitch. It takes a really long time to get the photos stitched, but it turns out a LOT better than the piece of crap stitching software that came with my camera (I have a Canon SD600). What's really cool is that this software can stitch together a huge amount of photos into one nice panoramic. Check out the website.