was in leipzig for wave gothic treffen music festival.

-stern hotel on outside of town was very nice and very cheap. very friendly manager who speaks good english. not really hostel per se, since includes shower in room. only two twins available so the wife and i had to scunch together in one. only disadvantages are no 24hr desk and requires s-bahn to get downtown. fortunatly the door was left open for the festival and the s-bahn was close by (once we found it).

-first night of leipzig festival really depressed me. i realized that all these black clad people looked like a bunch of idiots out in the open, and i was probably one of them. that combined with a few very unfriendly encounters during the trip really depressed me. for instance trying to get to pogo during DAF concert (good, sounds like german nitzer ebb) and one dude would not let me by. other shit with unfriendly telephone operators and stuff. also depressed because i thought i had made several bad trip decisions.

-seriously investigated possibility of going home week before end of trip. would have cost $200 per ticket plus $100 each to get to london. all other last minute possibilities seemed way to expensive ($1000 each) so abandoned the idea.

-second day and spent time in park watching spooky people drift by. made mistake of missing rythmic noise bands for experimental folk. i had previously thought in gowan ring was decent, but apparently not. on stage this guy looks is a fruitbat. "did you ever write poems on the back of leaves for people to find?" jesus fucking christ on a stick... luckily fire and ice was excellent with very well done acoustic instruments, strong vocals and good sound setup.

-my spirits picked up a bit when we found milwaukee djs/couple ky and joolz at the festival. spent time chatting with them about shit but ky is very perky and got me smiling again.

-originally had intended to record concerts on my archos mp3 recorder but i could not find my microphones in time. was going to ask ky if i could use her's but, realized that background noise in concerts was to loud. freakin germans never stop talking during band play. always this backround buzz you can hear. grrrr....

-finally (for this post) most germans do NOT speak english which is big change from amsterdam. we where only able to communicate with a select few people. the rest had to get by with the garbled german we absorbed from the translation book, which is still rining in my head (what the hell is "shuz"?)

hmmm what to say about berlin. only there for two days. let's see...
-it was too fucking hot. first week of june and temp in 80s (bog knows what celcius).

-the hostel (the generator) is a frat boys dream. "factory chic" interior, but when you look beyond the exterior, you find the following:
--unhelpful staff. yes i know that this is germany but that is no excuse for lack of knowledge of the area and bad english in a hotel where half the people are english speakers.
--exhorbitant and frustrating long distance phones which are hard to use with regular phone cards.
--bathrooms in typical college dorm condition, with water all over the floor, toilets all clogged up and sinks with facets that are too short to wash your entire hand in.

-s-bahn : ah the s-bahn, my favorite semi-free form of public transport. above ground and covered by our railpass.
--stations are a little sleazy, especially in east berlin, but gets you to most of where you want to go and there are fruit stands in the stations (mmmm... fruit) and easy transfer to deutsch bahn.
--you must press the open door button to get out, which we were confused about at first, because there are a couple buttons around the door.
--finally, my favorite aspect of the s-bahn was the s-bahn stasi. at first we wondered why people bought tickets for s-bahn, because we never saw any conductors checking tickets. well on our final day we found out. after everybody boards the train, two undercover "controllers" reveal themselves and check everybody on the train. some malcontents are dragged off the train to pay their fines. ah yes... fear will keep them in line.

-permagon history museum was very interesting. basically, they try to duplicate indoors ancient temples and buildings from artifacts and reconstructions. greek temple, babylonean city gates, roman temple/gateway, arab city walls. nice.

-riechstag dome was ok. thought it was part of the functional building, but really it is seperate area for tourists to walk to the top on spiral glass staircase. there is 10 story rotation shade inside the glass dome to prevent the sun from blinding/cooking the poor tourists. did i mention it was hot?

-spent final day wandering around. tried to get into jewish cemetary but was closed for sabbath. nice christian cemetary on the west side tho. famous people who i could not recognize buried there.

-natural history museum: good bones, well presented exhibits with lots of stuffed animals. most explanations in german unfortunately.

-finally, took the ICE to both to berlin and later to leipzig. long, sleek fast and comfy in first class. up to 170kpm top speed. if you sit in front you can actually look through drivers window. nice control room setup. looks like space ship. had confusing experience when german girls took our seats because they had reservations. i did not notice the reservation LEDs above the seats on the wall. spent rest of the day sitting behind someone who had apparently vomited on the window. window was cleaned up but still pool on the floor to look at. luckily it did not smell and i spent time sleeping.

Amsterdam
-yes everybody does speak english
-power plugs are indented so cannot recharge electronics (i have the proper adapters but assume flat surface)
-tourist trap : pot houses and prostitutes for 1.5 miles from central station (haarlem not that much better)
-biking good way to get around but expensive to rent
-better to get tram ride tickets from the vvv outside centraal station
-missed dikes and dams cause 2.5 hrs away
-did catch haarlem and rotterdam tho, but rotterdam is kinda slummy in parts
-nice bridge engineering in rotterdam, right next to my fav ecoterrorists greenpeace attack boat
-saw westbork concentration camp, with exhibit and remains of camp including barbed wire, guard tower and train depot. right next to sweet radiotelescope grid.
-first g in a word is pronounced as an h, and all js are pronounced as a y
-good train system, especially liked traintaxis, which are right next to station with relativly low fares
-hard to find things to do at night, but good resteraunts from guidebooks
-food is good, but service is SLOW damn slow. spent 20 min waiting for waitress to bring water in cafe with seven tables.
-excellent exhibit by war photographers. suffering throughout the world: africa, palistine, afghanistan, etc.