Halle

Way back on Thursday, June 24th, I arrived in Halle after a busy day at work followed by a 5 hour train ride. It was really late so Kevin met me at the station and we basically just went back to his flat and fell asleep.  After only seeing Halle in the dark and not hearing much about it from Kevin, I was a bit skeptical of the town I had just arrived in.

The next day, Kevin still had to work, so I woke up and took the train into the Marktplatz to begin my Halle adventure. The Marktplatz is a busy place. All the street trams converge there and in the mornings the entire place is full of food vendors. When I arrived, there was some sort of children's event going on and there was an ambulance and fire truck on display. The fire dept also did a demonstration on how to use the "jaws of life" to cut apart a car (and make it a convertible!). I immediately walked up to the ambulance because I was really curious to see the interior design since European ambulances are so much more compact than our Fordham ones. The EMT was so nice to me and thought it was so cool that I was an EMT in New York. He invited me inside and showed me all the compartments and equipment they carry and wanted to talk to me about what the United States was like.  He was really hard to understand because he only spoke very broken English, but he was super nice! I also told him that I drive an ambulance at home and then he wanted to show me the dashboard and the lights/siren control, then took a picture of me in the driver's seat! The coolest part for me was that the ambulances in Germany are all Mercedes-Benz! Even the trash trucks are Mercedes-Benz. To me, those are classy utility vehicles.

Marktkirche

Marktplatz

Statue of Handel (in the Marktplatz)

Pretty view of the scene and Marktplatz

Jaws of Life

German Fire Truck :)

Mercedes Benz Ambulance!

After my tour of the ambulance, I wanted to get lost in the town (it didn't really work cause I always kinda knew where I was and found my way back to the same places, but I tried!). Within a few minutes of wandering away from the Marktplatz, I stumbled upon the Handel Haus, so I went into the deceivingly large building and walked around the 3-story museum. It explained all about Handel's life and had a million instruments inside. They were all very nice, but I don't know much about music so I was a little overwhelmed that he had so many pianos.. After that, I walked down past many nice restaurants, a long street with lots of euro stores, past the post office, the city hall, found my around the Halle-Wittenburg campus, and then towards the Hauptbahnhof where I met Kevin so we could work together to get him a discount rail card. It was an interesting process because the lady didn't speak a lick of English and Kevin looked at me to understand her because of my language course, but in the end, we were successful and when we left the station, Kevin was the owner of a Bahn50 card.  Anyways, on our walk back we stopped at a nice Italian restaurant and had dinner together. Then, we went to the Hallsches Brauhaus to get some fresh beer brewed right in Halle. I wasn't much of a fan, but then again, I'm very picky about beers. All in all, it was a great place that was full of local business men hanging out and Kevin enjoyed both mine and his beer. So it was a good night.  Early the next morning, we set off to Berlin to meet a bunch of friends and spend the weekend there. Below are some more pictures (which hopefully make more sense now).

Handel Haus

Halle Post Office

University Building

Shakespeare is well loved on this campus

Halle Rathaus (City Hall)

Since Kevin didn't share the photo tour of Halle, I hope you enjoyed mine! Sorry it was limited, I was only there for 1 day!