The mountain train, part 2 of 10

Thursday:

This morning we attempt our walking tour of Loschwitz from the other end, as the Standseilbahn (funicular railway) is still in service.  This kind of Bergbahn has two cars on one track that splits in the middle so the cars can ride past each other as the descending one's inertia pulls the ascending one to the top.  It is a warm but quick ride up to the stop (middle picture), whereupon it begins to sprinkle rain.  We press on past a DDR physicist’s house to another lookout (bottom image).  Then we find the shuttered remains of Lahmann’s Sanatorium (below left), which may feature in my dissertation (it’s a little before my time period, but they published several cookbooks).  We gamely try to continue with the tour, but after taking a picture of a church that we don’t know why it’s important, we call the whole thing off and catch the streetcar to the train station, where we make reservations for the night train to Vienna.  Then it’s on to the library to work before meeting with my sponsor from the university.  His secretary forgot to send me directions, so we get lost, but all is forgiven. I unfortunately missed the first colloquium of the semester while in Vienna.

DH’s favorite part of the day is the jelly donuts we eat for afternoon snack. Most Germans know them as Berliner, but here in Saxony we call them Pfannkuchen (this is the word used in the rest of Germany for pancakes; here we call those Eierkuchen, or "egg-cakes," which the uninitiated might confuse with omelets or quiche, but the German words for those are Omlette and Quiche.  Really.).  In Austria we learn these are called Krapfen--they taste just as good, despite the unappetizing name!