All the Baths in the World (by bike)
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Diary: Leipzig, Germany

June 1999
Leipzig is great. Goethe called it Little Paris, but he was wrong: the locals are friendly here. Thanks to the efforts of the local press officer we got into Traviata free at the Opera House. The costumes were a bit old-fashioned and drab, which surprised me, but then, what the audience chooses to wear is their business I suppose.

We stayed a couple of days in a Finnish hut at the local campsite. There were quite a few Brits staying there long-term, workers from the local building site. It was quite nostalgic to see all those traditional British activities being engaged in - getting drunk on strong lager, shouting at kids, having fights, and singing football chants at 2am in which the 'never' before 'walk along' is a tone and a half flat. How proud we were of our culture.

We also chatted to a shepherd, partied at local festivals, and met a hugely entertaining six foot six cyclist called Matthaus who once cycled 300km in a day for a bet, eating 30 bananas in the process. Scale down those figures by ten and you get an idea of our rate of progress...