Leipzig

So, first off I want to rub the fact that the weather here in Germany is like an early fall day in late December in the faces of people from my hometown. As I understand it's cold and snowy there at the moment.

At the moment I am chilling in the beautiful German city of Leipzig with my current traveling companion Tim. I met Tim in Dresden and he decided to follow me to Leipzig. It was actually more of his decision I think. I asked him what a good city to bum around in for a few days before I spent Christmas with my host family in Kassel would be and he said Leipzig sounded cool. We arriv
ed yesterday and spent most of that time looking through the touristy area and finding food. It's seems like a nice enough town, not big and sophisticated like Berlin or Hamburg but not small and disturbing like most inhabited areas of Arkansas. 

Today we did a little wandering and decided to walk to the outskirts of the city to see this really tall monument to some Napoleonic battle. On the way there we walked through some really soviet looking parts of town and came across this relic:

We have no idea what it is, but it has a red star on the top and looks derelict and terrifying. Leipzig is also in the former DDR so we figure it's some sort of important socialist building. 

When we got to the monument thingy, we were shocked to find it was six euro to get inside. We made ourselves content with just climbing to the top and looking out over the city. 

Beautiful day here in Germany. I wore a sweatshirt and a scarf and it almost seemed too much. These posh Europeans were still wearing parkas because not doing so would have broken some social code that I don't follow. 

Little cloudier when I took this one a few minutes later. The rest of the day was still gorgeous. 

In other news, I'm debating turning vegetarian. Tim is devout and has shown me the light. We made this stir fry with tofu the other day and it was one of the best meals I've had while I've been in on this trip. It's not even that it's healthier or anything. Finding protein and stuff while only eating vegetables is like living life on hard mode, the only way worth living in my opinion.