Destination Magdeburg

The central station of Magdeburg, to my understanding, Hbf is short for Hauptbahnhof, which means Central Station.

My destination was a city called Magdeburg, which was the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. In 2010 its population reached about 230k, which made the city having the largest number of inhabitants.

(source: http://www.halleforum.de/nachrichten/aktuelles/28918/Einwohner-Magdeburg-ueberholt-Halle.html)

Frontal view of the Magdeburg Hbf, it's a mall with a train station. I was standing at the plaza area.

A PhD student, Martin, came and picked me up at the station. He asked me if I wanted to take the railway, or just walk to the campus. Noticing the nice weather I decided to walk... with my 50lbs suitcase. It wasn't that bad except the road wasn't made for rollers. Fortunately my suitcase was strong enough to withstand the 30min bumpy ride.

A monument in memory of a soldier saving a girl.

During the walk, Martin showed me this monument facing a 5-story building. According to him, it was in memory of a Russian solider who used his coat to catch a little girl who fell from the 3rd floor of the building. Both were safe in the end. A marking of bravery and wisdom.

At night I was taken out back to the neighborhood of the central station (I took it as the downtown area) for dinner with Martin and his friend, Rene. The place we went was called Kucaf (http://www.kucaf-md.de/). It's a nice cozy place with very good atmosphere. Dim lighting with candles at the table, and some ambient music.

The menu, of course, was in German. Because of that Martin was ordering for me, and he ordered the big portion instead of regular. I had a turkey pasta (Pute Pasta in German)and it took me a while to finish all (I usually don't leave anything behind). Price-wise it was pretty good, costing only about 7euro, and it tasted really good.

Martin had to run for some work, while Rene took me for a walk back to the campus (where I was staying). We walked along the River Elbe and it was nice. I would say it would be a nice and romantic walk if I was walking with a girl.

But that wasn't the end of the night. I had to get some grocery or I would have nothing to eat. Fortunately there was a 24-hour grocery store within 10mins walk from my place. The counter lady said something super quick in German, and I could only work out the last word as "karte", so I assumed she was asking if I was paying with credit card. I just said "cash" and handed her a 20euro bill. Over there they kept saying "bitte schön", from Google translate it means something like "here you are". All I could say was "Danke", for now.

After that I just crashed because of the exhausting flight.