Our adventures in Leipzig were both enjoyable and thought provoking. On the first morning we checked out of our lodge and trekked over to our new hotel, the Penta Hotel. We had decided to spend a second night in this historical town so we could explore further. Booking for this hotel was easy, upon check in we were able to get adjoining rooms and have our bags looked after until the rooms were ready at 3pm. The establishment also was kind enough to give us a late check out the following day at 3pm.

We went to a couple of museums. The first was the Nostalgic Museum. It had a wide range of artifacts from the time that East Germany was segregated from the west and under communist rule. We found that there was an abundance of appliances, toys, games, furniture, motorbikes etc from the DDR. Despite the plethora of items, however, there was no written information about any of it.

Teresa, Michele and Scott had recently been reading a book about the Stasi, which were the secret police who reported back on literally everything within the DDR. They were keen to find the museum that documents this time in history. We were able able to hire English speaking translation devices to aid us in our tour. What we learnt was interesting and confronting. Would recommend for those who are interested in German history.

When we finished at the Stasi museum we were fairly tired from all of our walking so we headed back to our hotel with the intention of having dinner. We found the hotel staff all very friendly but unfortunately the service in the restaurant was annoyingly slow. Before dinner we purchased our train tickets for the ICE train from the Leipzig Bahnhof office where we were able to book our seats beforehand. It cost 70€ each for the trip to Frankfurt.

Because of the late check out, the next day was pretty much ours to continue exploring. We had the options of visiting another museum and the zoo. We decided to go to the zoo first. There is so much to see at this city zoo that time slipped by very quickly and we had to make haste to gather our baggage and get to the train station.

The ICE train has a catering carriage which is a great place to eat and drink with large viewing windows on both sides. The seats are comfortable and larger than an airline seat so it was the best choice to travel back to Frankfurt. Our Frankfurt accommodation for the final night was at Scott’s place and he was a great host as usual!

We have had an amazing time in Europe and are sad to leave. It is especially hard to say goodbye to Scott once more. Goodbye Germany…for now. Looking forward to seeing what Hong Kong has to offer. Gute nacht!