Leipzig Book Fair, Part I: The Train Ride There

In the early hours yesterday morning I travelled to Leipzig for the book fair, and I suppose the travel part of it was rather like an ice bath because it was quite unpleasant in bits but on the whole invigorating and healthy.

At around 8:30 p.m. I'd tried to go to sleep, after eating a big dinner. By 11:15 p.m. I may have drifted off a little intermittently, but probably just lay there thinking, also about how maybe I should have eaten earlier. At 3:15 a.m.ish I woke up again and then lay awake until around 4 or 4:15 a.m.

Then I got up, got ready, had more of yesterday's dinner with a slice of whole wheat bread and orange marmalade, and walked off to the train station.

The towers of Wittenberg at 6 a.m. (March 24, 2024)

It was still dark. I didn't know when to expect dawn, but since we'd just had the Spring Equinox and I knew that the fast-breaking for Ramadan was happening after 6 a.m., knew it would come a bit later. One or two shop windows with red furnishings glowed rather luridly. Three food delivery trucks were doing their rounds, then one or two testosterone-fuelled drivers roared their vehicles down the larger streets. In the side streets, birds were trilling from lightless corners, daffodils glowed from their plantings, and the trickling of water through the street gutters was an analogue to the brooks and rivers that have been replaced by modern canalization. The apartment buildings, street signs, and trees were also dripping incessantly after the rain.

In the Leberstraße I also saw vignettes while passing by. A cook had arrived at a restaurant, her coat and purse lain aside on a diners' table; a young man with shaggy hair was sitting in a bar/pub with a hardwood door with geometric patterns in the stained glass, and inside possibly a potted palm or two; a young woman had grabbed a slice of pizza and was eating it in a bright shop that looked more like a to-go place. And in the train station itself, two bakeries were open.

I'd bought the train tickets the day before, but had also written up the information on a piece of paper so that I could save time by knowing which platform to go to, etc.

A school class was waiting for the same train, and going to continue westward almost to the French border. As a second group of parent chaperones reached the platform with their charges and passed by the group beside me, a few of the children squealed happily at the sight of each other.

I was travelling second class, and had lined up at the right letter before the train arrived so I didn't need to walk along the platform to reach past the first class. A few dark grey pigeons were fluttering in the high, iron-riveted ceiling, and a man was startled when one of them dislodged a crumpled piece of paper packaging and sent it tumbling to the rather grubby station floor.

When the train arrived, it wasn't overcrowded. That had in fact been the main attraction of travelling between five and six a.m. We set off soon, and I stood in a doorway and watched the darkness as we set out through Brandenburg. By the time we reached Wittenberg, the sky had already lightened enough that I saw the distinctive landmark towers. But we roared through.

Wittenberg(?) Train Station, c. 6 a.m.

The green of grass conquered the darkness as dawn progressed, then the beige shape of a house or farm building. A clump of deer grazed at a distance. Maybe I'd seen other deer earlier too, but when I tried to see exactly what they were, the light must have just shone off their hind legs and their backs:  they looked like graceful half-arches in the dim. And a wheeled watering frame was sketched through a field, and floods of white sheeting lay over what I assumed were asparagus beds later on. The white blossoms at the hedges did look vaguely bridal, although I've tended to be skeptical of the simile when it appears in books.

Heavy weather with thunderstorms and sleet had been forecast for Saturday, and indeed the sky was a brew once it was no longer midnight blue. Especially after we'd already (I think) crossed into Saxony-Anhalt and the terrain became hilly, vast clouds without any blue gaps stormed from horizon to horizon, grey masses dipping toward the land below. Once, a spout shape reached off the bottom of one like a finger: I wondered if it might be a tornado.

A few clouds were manmade. Industrial chimneys spewed whitish vapour into the air from twinkling masses of buildings, one or two of whom had a white cooling tower. Not Keats's 'dark satanic mills' but 'light satanic mills,' I thought.

While gazing at drearier landscapes of rain-bogged ground and leafless trees and the deceased grasses of yesteryear rising from patches of paler green, I was kind of regretting not taking a book along to entertain me. But then I realized that, due to sleep deprivation, I would not have absorbed much anyway.

By the time we reached Halle an der Saale, which I thought was already Leipzig because it had so many high-rise buildings, it was bright. The rain had been a sprinkling rather than a downpour, and it dried on the windows of the ICE train as we rushed on.

Then, rolling through the suburbs of Leipzig in a long arc, we reached Leipzig's main train station.

A building at Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, to the west. I think it predates the 1920s.
I'm a bit miffed now that I know this building was in use and looking much better 10 years ago...
[2013 photo from Wikimedia user: Link]