Didn’t really do anything big today. Okay one thing was really big, but mostly today was a pleasant walk through the city of Leipzig, aside from the elegamce of Dresden and landmarks of Berlin, this city has a quaint old timey feel. Started with a trip to the apparently non-existant Leipzig sport museum which supposed has the running shoes of Lutz Long (Jesse Owen’s “superior aryan” competitor in the 1936 Olympic games who was from Leipzig, I coudn’t find museum or building anywhere somI headed back, though on the way I passed a huge flea market which had all kinds of stuff. Then I took a train to the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, have fun pronouncing that. It is a colossal monument dedicated to Europe’s victory over Napoleon in the early 1800s. It means literally ‘People’s Battle Memorial’ but more officially and elegantly as ‘Monument to the Battle of Nations’. It was really amazing, but the inside was more creepy and unsettling than anything. In a room known as ‘the crypt’ pairs of knights stand in a circle overlooked by large faces right behind them, all being overlooked by four larger figures on the floor above. There are many floors available almost exclusively by walking up and down extremly long narrow twisting stairs. Getting to the top is over 500 steps in these stairwells but the view from the top overlooking the city is cool. Leipzig was the location of one of Napoleon’s major defeats.
South of the monument is another neat old cemetery, though not as elegant as the one is Dresden save for the large ornate chapel in the middle. It started raining heavily and it threw off my schedule, a while later it stopped and I ended having a nice stroll trough town past shops and going into one of the former main offices of the Stasi, (east German secret police, almost but not quite as bad as the SS). There was another community event type thing going on in the main town square, spent some time there then went along walking down the main city center, a large multi-block shopping area which vehicle traffic is very limited.

Bonus video going down one of the stairwells, climbing up 85% of the monument was like this : https://youtu.be/ryKYLYp8XJw