Germany

We dropped my things off at his place, took his bike to the tram station, then I biked to the station near his parent’s apartment while he took the tram. We picked up another bike and headed for the lake – an old coal mining pit from the GDR period. The weather was splendid – though this pale Canadian is always aware of the hazards of UV radiation and donned the SPF 50 sunscreen. After a few hours Sergej left to Skype with a Russian he was teaching German to and I stayed at the beach for a while longer.

Later we grabbed a donair, saw some sights in town, and stopped by a brewery.

The next days I went for a run and wandered around Leipzig. Monday Sergej was off work; we had lunch at the Universitat Leipzig cafeteria – an impressive operation that feeds hordes of students at a really low price. In the evening we had dinner on the barbeque in his parent’s garden, hung out with his neighbour, and went to a bar called “Flower Power,” meeting an Australian now living in Leipzig.

Tuesday revealed more excellent weather and a trip to a park was in order. While I bought only ice cream at the park Ithought it was pretty cool that the German ice cream truck sold… beer (and why not, if people want to abuse it, the effort to acquire it elsewhere would be an insignificant obstacle).

It was great seeing Sergej and his folks. Leipzig has some pretty reasonable prices for this, making economical tourism a possibility, and this was certainly emphasized coming from Zurich.

Next stops are Wroclaw in Poland and then Kiev in Ukraine, which will be a launching pad for Chernobyl. I’ll see Natalia in Wroclaw, a friend from last summer I met at a potluck. In Kiev I might meet up with one of my peers from law school, Megan, and her husband.