My Life In Leipzig..

Michael Jackson tribute night!!!!!!
(above) beautiful park by my house...
(Above) - An East German attempt at a pun in English...
(Above) - My Communist lego dorms
(Above) Right by where I work
(Above) all the wires for the trams... Leipzig, like most other East German cities, runs on an above ground tram system not an underground subway system
(Above) - Lol this just made me laugh.. Stay! Go! Now!
(Above) - St. Petereskirche - a really beautiful old Gothic church in Leipzig. Tooooo bad none of these epically beautiful churches are Catholic haha.

Heyyy everyone!! I am settling in Leipzig decently well now.. Have been here almost a full two weeks. I finally have Internet in my apartment (Yeee!!), have made a few American friends, have settled into my working schedule, and have somewhat mastered the confusing Leipzig tram schedule. I say somewhat haha. I tend to space out on a very regular basis.. which was fine in Berlin because I could just focus on getting myself to the station, space out, then jump on my U-Bahn. But in Leipzig sometimes 4 or 5 different lines will run through one stop so you really have to pay attention....something I'm not so spectacular at doing haha.

Still have not found a Catholic Church in Leipzig. Apparently Saxony was the heart of the Protestant Reformation - Wittenburg, the city where Martin Luther (father of Protestantism), posted his 95 theses opposing the Catholic church, is less than an hour away from Leipzig. So I suppose it makes sense that finding a Catholic church here is kind of like hunting for a Protestant church in Poland. Or people that don't drink at Oktoberfest. It's just not gonna happen lol. I found a really pretty Russian Orthodox church on my run yesterday... absolutely goregeous. I'm contemplating crashing the next 10 am service.... Russian and Greek Orthodox are technically Catholic right? And I can pass as looking Russian... maybe if I just sit in the back and keep my mouth shut haha... I'll let you all know how that one goes. : )

What else what else.... I dunno, I'm just generally coming around to really like Leipzig. The longer I spend here, the more I find the things I originally didn't like endearing the things I did like even more awesome. I absolutely love meandering through the Innenstadt ("inner city"/old town, part of the city that's pretty, lol) after work. Leipzig has some of the best shopping I've seen in Germany. Besides that whole H & M debacle...

Yeahhhh for those of you who don't keep up regularly with local German news, there was a bit of a hostage situation at a Leipzig H & M . Compleetteeellyyy random - it really does not reflect on the city or Saxony or my general safety at all. But an armed gunman kind of came in and took a few people hostage in the changing room area for a few hours. He wasn't right in the head... and it's super rare for anyone to have a gun in Europe anyways thats not in the police force. No one ended up getting hurt - I think he just walked out of the store after a few hours and turned himself into authorities. But yeah, here's a link to the article if you want more details... The article is more dramatic than necessary in my opinion... http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2010/06/17/armed-man-in-leipzig-h-and-m/clothes-store-hostage-reveals-horror-story.html

I think American media is more dramatic than necessary in general in my opinion. The longer I am here and have some distance from it the more annoyed I become with American news. So much of it is drama and fabrication....outrageous headlines and pictures designed to grab people's attentions but stories that lack any real substance. And I'm not a literary or TV snob, trust me. I keep up with "The Hills," "The City," and UsWeekly on a regular basis even from abroad. But shit even those have pictures and quotes and try to act like they have some kind of basis in reality. So much of the time I get so frustrated with how America makes the rest of the world looks through its distorted and overly dramatic media..

I got really annoyed a month or two ago at some of the American coverage of the Polish plane crash. After it happened I picked up some Polish newspapers and a copy of the New York Times. The Polish ones were black and white in mourning of their country's loss and primarily focused on paying honor and tribute to the fallen. They honored their lives and told their stories with great dignity and pride. They were a country in a state of mourning but at the same time were looking to the future with a remarkable sense of hope and strength. The New York Times, on the other hand, gave in unnecessarily great detail the specifics of the plane crash, focused in depth on how close the date was to the Katyn massacre (another national tragedy), and emphasized repeatedly how difficult this would make Polish and Russian relations once again. Is that really necessary? Do I really need to know as a consumer exactly how the plane went down and hundreds of people died? Do you really need to make your American public even more paranoid about "dangers" in traveling abroad than they already are? It just felt so disrespectful to a country in a serious time of mourning and rebuilding and left a really bad taste in my mouth.

The more I've been in Europe the more I've realized how safe most of Europe is compared to most of America (H & M hostage situations aside). The crimes that do happen tend to make sense.. .such as robberies and whatnot. And people don't have guns here (once again, H & M hostage situations aside). If you get robbed, don't hold on to your stuff and you will probably come out of it ok. In America I feel like the media is perpetually blown up with crazy and random things happening - drivebys, national disasters, kidnappings, etc. Yet I have found Americans traveling in Europe to be wayyyyy more paranoid than Europeans traveling in America. An overly dramatic media and a hypersensitive public can only makes\ it all worse.

Anyways, I'm going to stop my whining. I don't even know how I got started on that subject haha. Too much time to read and ponder here. Actually I do have quite a bit of time to myself in Leipzig but it's been really great. I have access to all of the books in English at the Leipzig University Library so I've been being a nerd and taking full advantage. I also have been able to write a lot, particularly in the last two weeks when I have had no Internet at home.

Going to Munich again tomorrow to meet up with Uncle Ray!!!!!!!! Sooooo beyond excited!!! I will fill you in and post pictures after I get back on Monday!

Love u all!!!!

-Courtney