I have been to various places in Germany and I even lived there for two years in the 1980s down in the Black Forest. I had not really been to the old East Germany apart from briefly going to the other side of the Berlin wall in 1989. Next year our daughter will be working at the university in the Magdeburg that lies south west of Berlin. We flew into the capital and took the train via Potsdam. The journey was easy and it is a novelty to sit upstairs on a train. The landscape is pretty flat with lots of farmland and small towns.
When you arrive in Magdeburg you cannot miss the towers of the Dom (cathedral). That contains the tomb of the first Holy Roman Emperor Otto I who has a gold statue in the market place. We did go in the Dom. Unlike Catholic churches it has very little colour, but it does have some great carvings and is very imposing in scale. I did not get any photos inside.
In the square outside there was a great display of light sculptures. Central to this was one paying tribute to the other famous local Otto, the scientist Otto von Guericke who famously proved the power of the vacuum with a split ball that could not be pulled apart by horses once the air was pumped out. We saw a few monuments to this around town.
We achieved our goal of sorting our somewhere for our daughter to live and had a quick look around the university area that is not too far from the centre. We made a lot of use of the trams as our AirBnB apartment was further out. That was a nice place to stay as it was very well fitted out.
A big attraction at this time of year are the German Christmas markets and Magdeburg has a pretty good one. There have been versions in the UK, but they tend to lack the authenticity. We sampled various local delicacies and drank some Glühwein. It was raining a bit, but we had fun anyway.
To warm up out of the rain we visited the Gruson-Gewächshäuser, which is a botanical gardens in a series of glasshouses. They have a range of environments and some wildlife including bird, fish and reptiles. Some of those are free-roaming. It was mostly destroyed in the war, but has been rebuilt.
Something we noticed all over the area was lots of mistletoe in the trees. We get it around here, but not in such quantity.
Another indoor attraction was the art gallery in the old monastry that had a lot of modern works. I liked some by Nevin Aladağ who incorporates sound. Everything in this room could be played and next door there was a film showing with various instruments creating sound in different environments such as drums hit by waves or a flute on the roof of a moving car.
I liked this chap on the door whose hat is the handle.
We enjoyed our few days in Magdeburg and there seems to be a lot going on there with music and other festivals.
On the way home we spent a few hours in Berlin checking out another Christmas market and some other sights. We had been before, so had seen most already. There were a lot of police around the Brandenburg Gate for some reason.
We flew on Easyjet that is fairly cheap and we minimised our luggage to avoid extra charges. We saw a few people kick up a fuss when they got to the gate and were told that they needed to pay for their bigger bags. The charges are made very clear when you book, but some will think they can get away with it. When going through security at Berlin airport the guy on the scanner was being very picky about my pockets being empty and even made me take out my hanky. I've never had that before, but I think they get bored.
We may well be back in Magdeburg some time.
