Apart from Berlin and a short stop in Magdeburg whole eastern Germany was still a blank map for me and I have always been curious to learn more about our “new” provinces with their famous historic cities and beautiful nature regions. Temperatures were still hovering around the freezing point, so city it was!
I only knew Leipzig as an important historical city, being home to many famous musicians like Bach and Wagner and more recently being one of the main initiators of the massive peaceful protests in East Germany ultimately leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I was however surprised to see that since the German reunification Leipzig has fared much better than other East German cities and turned into a very modern, vibrant and livable place.
Leipzig has a nice historic city center, most of which renovated, mixed up with a few modern touches. Unusual for Germany, the city seems to have a strong preference for malls. And not only the usual anonymous modern collections of chain stores, but also several beautiful historic covered arcades, dating back to Leipzig’s history as important trading post.
The most striking example of historic-modern fusion for me was the Paulinum, an university building constructed on the spot of an old church.
Not only the outside is a fusion of church and university, also the interior manages to integrate the two different worlds
Moving on to more traditional sights, Leipzig can show off two town halls, the old one “Altes Rathaus” (cf. post title) and the, only 100years old, new one “Neues Rathaus”.
The city center has two main churches both worth a look inside, in particular the gorgeous white neoclassical interior of Nikolaikirche.
Even if you can’t be tempted by religious architecture you should drop by for their historic significance.
It is at Nikolai church where the Monday prayers started which later expanded to the famous Monday demonstrations, accumulating in 100’000s of participants and the peaceful fall of the Wall. The church hosts a small exhibition on this special part of German history.
Of very different fame is the Thomas church. Host to the Thomanerchor, a boys choir founded in 1212, it is here that J.S Bach spent the main part of his career.
At the church itself you can only witness his grave and a statue, but just opposite is the Bach museum, which gives an interesting and interactive walkthrough of his life.
One more sight I can strongly recommend is the free museum Zeitgeschichtliches Forum, which has a good exhibition on the history of East Germany during the division. During our visit they also had an excellent temporary exhibition on Germany’s history of the Gastarbeiter, guest workers from Italy, Turkey, Spain etc. who arrived in the 70’s in the 100’000s, with interesting parallels to the current refugee discussions.
Your Christ a Jew
Your car a Japanese
Your pizza Italian
Your democracy Greek
Your coffee Brazilian
Your holiday Turkish
Your numbers Arabic
Your alphabet Latin
and your neighbor only a Foreigner?
]]>Our wish list still included many places, like Cologne and Munich, but being already in the far north we decided to head to my favorite German city – Berlin.
I have been several times in Berlin over the many years and always enjoyed coming back, explore new areas and witness the dramatic changes.
We were lucky again and a friend invited us to stay with him. Just heading out of his apartment next to Karl-Marx-Allee you could immerge quickly into Berlin history. The extremely wide, 2km long avenue is lined with monumental socialist-style buildings, representing East-Berlin’s flagship project after World War II.
What was once East Berlin’s most famous shopping area consists now mostly of apartment blocks, but several of the iconic cultural buildings are still in original use (or at least kept in original design), like Cafe Moskau (biggest East Germany cafe) or Kino International (most famous cinema)
If you are early then have a stop at Cafe Sybille for a good German breakfast and a small exhibition on the street’s history.
The Karl-Marx-Allee ends in the Alexander Platz, another famous location with Berlin’s iconic TV tower, where you find yourself already in the heart of the city and from where you can explore most of the city highlights on foot.
While showing the must-sees to Yang Ke I never got bored myself as there were always new things to discover.
Like the red-colored town hall, which is not only a very pretty sight from outside but now also invites to explore its ground level with several restored halls and small exhibitions.
Same at Gendarmenmarkt, where I never realized that the cathedral (Deutscher Dom) actually hosts an interesting museum on the history of German democracy.
One of the biggest transformations in central Berlin is the replacement of the rather ugly Palace of the Republic (former East German “parliament”) with it’s predecessor, the Berlin City Palace. Driven by a huge lobby group, this project to reconstruct the palace in its former glory took off in 2013 and is now already far advanced. A nearby temporary building nicely shows all the work involved and gives a first view on the future exhibitions hosted in the palace, mostly centered around ethnological collections.
Berlin is The place to be in Germany for artists which you can witness at every corner with uncountable funky cafes and shops.
You will also come across lots of unusual places, conserved for cultural use or other purposes:
If you are in the Prenzlauer Berg district have a look at the Kulturbrauerei, a former brewery turned into cultural center. We spent nearly a whole afternoon in a small museum on the daily life in former East Germany.
To visit the most famous icon of former German separation, head to the East Side Gallery, where a 1.3km part of the wall has been conserved and painted by many many artists. Unfortunately many paintings are suffering from graffiti and corrosion and the remaining in good conditions are currently “protected” by metal grids.
If you have a bit more time, make a one-day trip to nearby Potsdam. Former residency of the German (Prussian) kings it boosts several huge castles of incredible wealth, the most famous being Castle Sanssouci (“without sorrow”). We had a tour through another castle, which “only” served as residency for guests, but nevertheless had amazing rooms, one more crazy than the other. Just a shame that our last king Wilhelm II was allowed to take a train with 40 wagons full of treasures with him to his exile in the Netherlands after loosing World War I.
My favorite was the Grotto Hall, a room completely covered by marble and all kind of precious stones.
A completely different sight is the Dutch quarter, a small district completely built in typical Dutch red brick stones.
We arrived in my hometown Trier mid December, well in advance, giving us enough time to get into the Christmas spirit
The weather was still pleasantly warm and we had long walks, explored the christmas market (with its numerous food options) and experimented with christmas cookies.
Having my 5y old nephew and 3y old niece around made gift exchange so much more exciting – and a nice excuse for the older kids to “help” with all the Lego constructions 
For New Year celebrations we gathered with a few good old friends (and their five children) in a small city in the Ruhr Area (“Ruhrgebiet”).
This massive historic coal mining area was once an important pillar of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” after World War 2 and the population in the area exploded to 5 million, blurring all city lines and creating one big connected urban area.
Staying in Herne and going to a zoo in Gelsenkirchen while planning dinner in Bochum sounded like a crazy lot of travelling but turned out to be just a change of neighborhood.
German coal ultimately lost its competitiveness in the 60’s, but the government decided to subsidize coal mining and allow a gradual phase out of the industry. The second last German coal mine had just been closed a month ago and the last one is scheduled for 2018.
Even though this was a quite expensive endeavor it avoided mass unemployment and ghost towns in the whole area and seemed to have worked out pretty well.
We visited one of the older mines, now Unesco world heritage and large museum plus culture site, and had a great guided tour through the refurbished coal extraction facilities.
We continued north to visit my brother with his family in Hamburg. Within the short train ride the temperature dropped remarkably from +10 to -5 and weather remained very chilly for the next days combined with typical coastal winds.
We limited our city explorations therefore to short trips and spent more time with my nephew and niece.
Hamburg is a wealthy trading town which despite being the second largest city of Germany never feels crowded and has a relaxed pace.
A lot of its history relates to trading and it’s big port, still second biggest in Europe. Many sightseeing highlights are therefore related to the water, from a boat tour of the harbor over Fischbrötchen (fish sandwich) at Hamburg’s fish market to a visit of the Speicherstadt (revibed historic warehouse district) and adjacent modern Hafencity with the infamous new philharmonic hall, Hamburg’s new 800million Euro city symbol.
The warehouse district continues to be used with traditional lift mechanisms:
The area is filled with many other new wannabe attractions of which only the Miniaturland stands out. The model railways has become the biggest in the world (as well as tripadvisor’s number 1) and impresses with incredible level of details. They had a small exhibition on the history of Germany, which alone kept us two busy for an hour!
If you are at the harbor anyway also have a look at the old Elbe tunnel! Built in 1911 it is accessed by four big lifts. It’s purpose has been taken over by bridges and a new, more convenient tunnel, however it continues to be used by pedestrian, cyclists and even cars. You need to be a good driver though as the single lane road is so narrow it only leaves a few centimeters of space for modern sized cars.
