The train from Berlin to Leipzig is six minutes late and I’m almost gleeful. There’s a crack, a hairline fracture in my view of Germany’s superior efficiency in all things and I want to share this with the young blonde man sitting next to me. Instead, I ask him if he’s a student of opera. He’d been rocking hard the entire ride to arias his black headphones couldn’t hold in. He is, as a matter of fact, studying opera. I’m quick to take this as tangible proof that Leipzig is indeed the City of Music, something I learned from the only pre-visit Google search I conducted, but it’s another thought I keep to myself.
It’s a friend and ex-Berliner who first brought Leipzig to my attention. Lars’ reason for joining the exodus of artists and young people from the German capital was art school but he joins droves of people fleeing his hometown’s creeping gentrification in search of a less expensive, perhaps even freer life than the hipster paradise called Berlin. And, like any burgeoning community of artists, they’re not that keen on too many people finding out about it. We’re all familiar with the equation: impoverished communities plus artists equals a property developer’s wet dream. As word of Leipzig’s ultra cool and relaxed environment continues to get out, the more numbered its days are.
Getting There
-
Trains between Berlin and Leipzig depart several times a day and the round trip rate is around 50-60 Euros depending on when you book your ticket. Be sure to have a piece of government issued i.d. as they often check to make sure the name on the ticket matches the person onboard. Buy tickets here.
-
Flixbus is a much more affordable option. Rates can be anywhere from 7 to 15 Euros and buses leave from 4 in the morning until 10 p.m.
Lars is removing himself from his apartment to make room for me during my sojourn because apparently, no one does hospitality like the Germans. I’ll be staying in the Neustadt neighbourhood of Leipzig. Not centrally located but the city is small, very walkable, and the trams take you wherever you fancy. One of the first things I do when I get settled is head into the Netto on Stannenbeinplatz to buy a Club Mate, a carbonated elixer I seem to see in the hands of every third Leipziger. Either my palette isn’t sophisticated enough or the whole point is to dislike the beverage. Later, I’ll abandon it in the kitchen of the coal heated apartment that is to be my home for the next few days. There’s a chance either Lars or one of the artists living in the building – many of whom have keys to each other’s apartments – will find it and take it off my hands. Just about all of the building’s inhabitants are artists, I think. And they’ve remarkably built much of their home by hand, from the pipes to the floors. With rent at a couple hundred Euros a month, I can argue they’re getting exactly what they’re paying for. The apartment I’m staying in has a toilet but no bath. Fortunately, I have no cause to fret. The upstairs neighbours will let me use their shower as often as I please. I decide that should be every other day as I’m not wholly comfortable with getting naked in a stranger’s apartment, perfectly pleasant as they may be.
Accommodations
-
I understand not everyone is fortunate enough to have a local friend leave a whole apartment to them – functioning shower or not – but I really do recommend checking out Couchsurfing. Although I’ve only ever done it once, it was one of my favourite travelling experiences to date and I befriended some pretty spectacular people.
-
The B&B Hotel Leipzig-City on 34 Nikolaistrasse has a perfect location if you want to stay central, with the many of the main sights within walking distance. Rooms are around 100 Euro a night, not exactly cheap but if you’re travelling with a friend or partner the deal sweetens nicely.
Next, I head over to Vary on Eisenbahnstrasse. Vary is a record shop, café, and art gallery where you don’t notice time running from you until the darkened sky makes his appearance. This is because the record collection is highly impressive and they regularly assemble and sell their own in-house mixes with a particular flair for choosing excellent, lesser known hip hop tracks. I spend my time going through a few albums I’ve been meaning to give a listen to, Hiatus Kaiyote’s catalogue being chief among them. The affable, beanie donning owner whose name I forget to ask for carefully, almost lovingly puts together a stack of albums he thinks might interest me. It’s as I’m bobbing my head away to some Kendrick that I realize I caught him toward the end of his shift. He’s walking out the door with a newly appeared baby in his hands and there’s a woman carrying a duffle bag beside him. As I order up another latté, the other owner, a similarly young and friendly type, tells me he isn’t sure if there’s a listening party happening at Vary that night or not but there should be something taking place if I should be so inclined. I can’t believe I’ve already reached that point in the trip where I idealize the locals as “the nicest people ever,” but I’m really tripping up over how damn nice everyone I interact with is being to me. I don’t go to the listening party or whatever it was intended to be. I’m tired. And I want to go home so I can at least lie to myself that I’m going there to spend the night writing.
https://videopress.com/embed/FlIJIRoo?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0
I have to take the 1 tram to get to the city centre. Most of the city’s attractions are reachable by foot from there, the most obvious being the train station itself. The Leipzig Hauptbahnof is big and busy. It’s also beautiful, fitting in nicely with the old Europe downtown architecture every tourist expects to look at when they cross the Atlantic. The only thing that almost ruins the sight of the train station is the abundance of large and bright shop signs. The station doubles as a shopping mall and it’s one I get to know intimately as my Air Max Theas are badly giving me the hurts. It’s what I deserve for having bought them the year before just to look passably cool in Berlin. I buy replacement footwear and head toward Nikolaistrasse to begin my wandering. This is quite obviously the main shopping and hotel district of the city. I’m sure there are plenty shops of a unique and intriguing variety, but I don’t stop anywhere until I’m directly in front of the Panorama Tower. Built in the late 60s, the structure is be shaped like an open book to represent something I can’t precisely remember. It offers gorgeous, almost 360° views of the city and with the entrance fee at 3 Euros, there’s nothing to complain about.
View from atop the Panorama Tower
The tower is next to the University of Leipzig, the city’s main post secondary institution but it’s Lars’ school I look for in the horizon. I’m late for an event at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB). There are weekly events open to both students and the public and that night Köken Ergun, a Turkish filmmaker, is giving a lecture on his work to discuss the perils and pleasures of documentary filmmaking. When I finally show up, I consider turning around but I’m stopped by a student having a cigarette by the front doors. She’s also late and looking for the same room. Shared shame is easier to live through and so we enter together.
If I have to choose from the short clips shown to the audience, Ergun’s best work is Binibining Promised Land, a documentary about a beauty contest for Filipina guest workers in Israel. There’s a familiar sincerity on the part of the Filipino women and families. Representation of these women is nowhere to be found in Israeli media and there’s a palpable urgency in many of them to be loved by Israeli society at large. The radar for this particular feeling is most likely my own migrant background and a similar wish I had growing up to be apart of my new country’s family. The inclusion of Israeli judges in the pageant is a fascinating, if not loving touch. If nothing else, it’s nice to see immigrant and local communities come together even if it is to celebrate the crowning of a beauty queen. These thoughts stay with me until the end of the lecture when it opens up to inquiries from the audience. As soon as question time ends, I get up to briefly speak to Ergun and sheepishly ask him for an interview when I really only want to speak to him about the schools Turkey is opening in African countries in a bid to spread its culture as far and wide as possible. He’s not in the habit of giving out interviews to random audience members and he wants to see the website of the publication I work for before he’ll agree to one. As we make our way out, he gives me a book title to check out on the subject matter, something I never do.
Eating
1. Bau Bau on 9 Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse is a vegetarian café which changes names every few years when it undergoes redesign. Like so many Germans, the café owner speaks near perfect English so the German only menu won’t be a problem. The quiche in particular is fabulous.
2. Veganz (53 Nikolaistrasse) is a popular vegan grocery store with built in cafés. Bagels and smoothies are their specialty.
No trip to Leipzig is complete without a visit to the Spinnerei. The industrial site, located in the Lindenau region of the city, is the former home of a cotton mill and it’s enormous in size. Now it’s used for artist studios, galleries, and living spaces for the resident artists of which there are at least a hundred at a time. The Spinnerei embodies Leipzig’s creative El Dorado essence like nothing else. I regret not dedicating more time to its exploration as I learn there is a restaurant, hotel, and cinema on the massive premises. One of Lars’ professors has an exhibition on but there’s so much art I look at I’m never sure if I ever find it. There is something very heavy about the Spinnerei and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s the art powerhouse of the city but, more than that, it’s an emblem of real work. It might be the lingering energy of the cotton mill workers or the German dogma of labour still in the air. Whatever it is, the melding of creativity and constant effort is important for me to experience. I need to be reminded that the only thing that will be remembered of any of us, should we be so lucky, is what we created and that is almost always exclusively culture.
Millennial Muslim 