Leipzig; Saturday, 05 April, 2014

However, around 1am I was woken by a shooting pain in the muscles at the back of my knee and no matter how I tried to lie down, sit down, stand up or walk around I couldn’t find any position that was comfortable for more than about 10 minutes. The pain eventually reached a crescendo around 3am when I suddenly realised that the large bottle of water in the mini-bar could double up as an ice pack. 40 minutes later I was actually able to lie down and eventually around 5AM I must have finally fallen into a fitful sleep.

Waking up I discovered that whilst the pain was less than during the night, the movement options were more limited, with putting on socks and stairs being the two most painful jobs of the morning.

After a very slow descent to breakfast, and a very large breakfast to make up for the lack of sleep and the pain, I hobbled out of the hotel, discovering that walking on the flat was generally OK.

So I ditched the plans to head out to, and climb up to the top of, the massive Völkerschlachtdenkmal and instead concentrated on seeing sights at ground level in the city centre.

I had quite a long, and slow, wander round the city centre, stopping off at the Nikolaikirch and the Thomaskirch to have a look around them before wandering over to the Stasi museum located in their former headquarters.

It was only as I was limping up the steps that I realised the bulk of the pain in my leg had gone, and it was now down to just stabbing pain on stairs, so by adjusting my gate to basically dragging my damaged leg up behind the good one I found I was starting to get around without too many problems.

Having visited the Stasi museum I headed over to the Hauptbahnhof to pick up the sightseeing tour bus and took in both of the routes that they did, covering much of the city. To my delight as I climbed down the stairs from the top deck of the second bus I realised that whilst it was still a bit uncomfortable, my leg was almost back to normal.

Given that my leg appeared to be working, and that I was right next to the Panorama Tower I decided that perhaps I would climb a tower, albeit 29 floors by lift and just two floors by stairs.

Descending back down to ground level I had a bit more of a wander around and very carefully chose my seat at the restaurant I had identified for dinner to try and make sure that my leg didn’t get the same treatment as the previous evening.

Another massive dinner later I wandered back through town to my hotel for a relatively early and I hoped full nights sleep.