Sunday 15 August 2010

tagesblatt

H and I made a short trip to Leipzig and there were a few fun and out of the ordinary items on the agenda.  We attended an organ concert performed at the Nikolaikirche, played incidentally on the largest instrument in Saxony.  The ancient church itself is famous for hosting more recently popular demonstrations against the East German regime and helped spur on the reunification.  It was relaxing and meditative to listen there sitting in the pews, focused on the music but with one's back to the performer, up in the rafters.  These two singular cherubs were the only figural decoration on the ceiling, and reminded me of that pop-culture, meme of the two angels that was remixed as those two grumpy old men, Statler and Waldorf, who heckled the Muppet Show from the theater box. 
Later, we went to a restaurant hewn out of a functioning brewry hewn out of the cavernous arrivals' hall of the old Bavarian Train Station.  The kettles and plumbing were expert equipment from Bamberg brewers, and apparently one could a take a workshop to learn about beer-making and make a few liters of one's own.
While we did not try that, we did take a souvenir bottle, packaged the traditional way, similar to a Bocksbeutel for wine from Franconia that my parents gave us. 
Later in the evening, we looked at the imposing Vรถlkerschlachtdenkmal by twilight.  This monument is the tallest in Europe, out-doing Big Ben or the Eifel Tower, and is an absolutely massive remembrance of the defeat of Napoleon's armies in Leipzig, and honoring those who fought on both sides to bring a decisive, if temporary, peace to the warring nations.