Weihnachtsmärkte and Bach

Yes, more Christmas markets!

After our brief stop in Prague, we continued into Germany. Our destination was Leipzig youth hostel, but we broke the journey at Meissen for lunch. Wandering around the town we found a delightful square containing a small Christmas market.

The youth hostel in Leipzig provided us with truly accessible accommodation, but I will write about that later as it deserves a blog of its own.

We were to stay for five nights giving us four full days in the area. 10 minutes walk from the youth hostel was a convenient tram stop giving us easy access to the centre. The first two days we spent exploring the city, staying into the evening so that we could enjoy the Christmas lights. Leipzig has one of the largest and oldest Christmas markets, so there was plenty to see here.

Our final day in Leipzig was a Sunday. As in most of Europe, the shops were closed on Sundays and we had got to saturation point with Christmas markets, so we headed to the Bach Museum next to St Thomas’ church. Bach lived and worked in St Thomas’ church choir school, part of which is now the museum. It was fully accessible and interactive with lots of music to listen to through headphones, organ pipes which made sounds when touched, and a composing studio where you could try out different combinations of sounds and musical notes. Almost everything had braille labels, and there were raised floor plans too. The museum provides touch tours for those with visual impairments. We could have stayed much longer, but lunch beckoned. (Racheal’s mealtimes have some flexibility, but only within a certain range due to the need for medication too.)

After lunch we visited Bach’s old haunt, St Thomas Church with his statue outside and stained glass window in his honour. The organ has been replaced since Bach’s day, but there were some interesting ‘rules’ recorded from that era. Next we walked to the larger St Stephen’s Church where we found a queue of people waiting to enter. We ascertained that there was to be a carol service and decided it would be a lovely way to end our pre-Christmas Europe adventure. We were treated to awe inspiring organ music, a brass band, and beautiful singing from a ladies’ and a children’s choir. The congregational carols we sang in English rather than the printed words in German. Either no one noticed or they didn’t mind! Once again, Racheal thoroughly enjoyed the music and joined in with the carols in her own way. When we left the church it was dark and we made our way back to the youth hostel to pack for the long journey home.