The long return, Tue, 30 Jun 2020 | written by Jemma
Jemma and Simon at a City, Temple in Europe, Germany

We then drove to Bautzen. Magda recommended this town as it’s the most important cultural centre for the Sorbs. We walked into the town centre and were hoping to find a café that had WiFi, as Simon had to make a work call at 11am. But we should have known by now that this is not possible! The café we went to said they had WiFi, but of course, after we had ordered our drinks we found that the WiFi didn’t work – when has it ever worked for us!? Time was short, so Simon had to leave and walk back towards a university where he could get eduroam to make the call, and left me here in this rubbish café, with two beverages and my laptop so I can write an update for the journal. At least I can charge my computer. The town square in front of me looks really beautiful and colourful, but for some reason there’s loads of tall potted plants in the window which is obstructing the view.

When Simon got back from making his work call we started to look around Bautzen properly. We went to the cathedral of St. Petri, which is really unusual as it is not straight but curves in the middle. Annoyingly, its Wikipedia page had no explanation for why this is. It also has quite a lovely ceiling, as where the ‘ribs’ of the vaulted ceiling intercept each other they are painted in really bright colours, whereas the rest of the ceiling is left grey/white. Another church (St Michael) we saw later on had a similar ceiling.

Bautzen is really beautiful, as it’s situated on a hilltop and has stunning views particularly from the old city walls. After a walk around the old town we got returned to the van and drove off to the Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland) national park.