Adventures in Leipzig

     Alright. Everyone keeps alluding to this mysterious "we got locked in a government building" story and passing it off to the next person, so I'll guess I'll take it on, though my coherence at the time was highly questionable and therefore my telling may be slightly skewed.
     At about 17:00, we'd finished dinner as a group, and since it was simply too early to go to bed, we took to wandering the city. Having gotten approximately 20 minutes of sleep in the past 32 hours, I was an automaton. I seriously looked down at my hands at one point, bent my fingers in fascination and watched the skin slide smoothly over my frozen knuckles, and wondered to myself, "Are these MY hands?" As I faced prophetic quandaries such as this, my feet mindlessly followed the group down cobblestone streets and past stone archways. The architecture was stunning; once we passed the modern storefronts in elaborate 18th century buildings, we approached looming stone walls and stained glass windows three times as tall as me. Shrouded in mist eerily yellow from street lamps and backlit by the moon, Leipzig was awe-inspiring and--I'm not going to lie--a little spooky for the half-conscious at night. Everything started looking similarly grand and daunting in the dark so I just started assuming everything was probably a church.
     I found myself following my group into one of these "churches" which we were surprised to find open. It was pretty much deserted, though I was vaguely aware of a few Germans wearing business attire and carrying briefcases leaving the building. After being corrected and told that what we were in was a government building, everything made a little more sense; beyond the expansive halls with the crystal chandeliers were hallways lined with offices. Gaining a sudden burst of energy, I ran up flight upon flight of stairs, exploring mysterious passages and checking out views from 4th floor staircases with my friends in awe with the beauty and exhilarated by the prospects of the unknown. However, eventually we slowed down and I regressed once more to a zombie-like state as we descended the stairs. With Dr. Powell leading us, we realized the door we'd come in was locked. Okay, no reason to panic, right? This place was a castle; there were doors all over the place! We went down another flight of stairs and turned right to find another door. Locked.  Alright....We found an opening above a parking garage but weren't about to jump 15 feet down. We found a wrought iron gate in the middle of a hallway. We found all the dead ends. I was so out of it by this point that it didn't quite register until four minutes in what had actually happened. Cue the melodramatic moaning and anguished cries of the lost, frightened, and exhausted. Actually, I'm pretty sure we were all cracking up. We were in the dungeon of a German government building: can you think of a more epic place to be trapped? Hannah later discovered there was a historic torture chamber down there. Thankfully, though, we did not have to resort to using said chamber for Dr. Powell, and we located a janitor who we thanked graciously as we claimed our long-lost freedom.  Then we went back to our hostel and slept and it was glorious. The end.

P.S. The Harlem Gospel singers were frickin' incredible. I had so much fun tonight. Anyone who wants to have their heart lifted needs to see a concert hall filled with stiff old Germans transformed into singing, swaying believers. So much awesome.