Leipzig

As I'm sure you're aware, I'm living in Leipzig. Located in the state of Sachsen (Saxony), it's pretty close to Dresden and Chemnitz, near the German border with Poland and the Czech Republic. Deep in the former communist East Germany, it's still a fair way behind catching up with the West, as is the vast majority of the East of the country.

That said, whilst Leipzig isn't internationally-renowned for its beauty, the city centre itself is pretty nice, with a fair few huge, old buildings. Outside the centre is a different story, it would seem that a good proportion of the buildings are derelict and covered in graffiti. 

Anyhow, particularly nice buildings are the old town hall, the new town hall and the newly-built Paulinum, shown below in that order. 

The Paulinum was a church until 1968, when it was demolished by the communist government, and has only just finished being rebuilt. It's now used as another of the university buildings.

Leipzig has loads of options for eating out. One of my favourites is Schnitzel Culture which, predictably, is a schnitzel restaurant. What I like about it is that they have an absolutely massive menu with loads of choices of sides and toppings, as well as a choice of meat for the schnitzel itself; you can choose from pork, turkey and veal, as well as cauliflower, tofu, aubergine, celery, cheese, and oyster. I'm not really sure how anything other than meat would work, but it must do! Anyway, my favourite schnitzel is the "Strammer Max", which I usually have with pork, and comes with chunky chips, salad, boiled ham and two fried eggs. It's good!

Besides that, there are a lot of Asian restaurants in Leipzig. There's the Vietnamese restaurant, Soup & Nem, which is cheap and you get huge portions. Somewhere I'm looking forward to going back to is Sushi & Nem, where there's an all-you-can-eat offer (anyone remember my blog post about 食べ放題?) for €10 every weekday afternoon from 2 until 4:30. Needless to say, when I went with Ash and Natasha, we got stuck in.

There's another Japanese restaurant I like, called Umai, which specialises in Ramen and Onigiri. This is a bit more expensive, but when I'm really hungry and in a particularly nostalgic mood about Japan, it's a good place to go.

There are a lot of curry places too, but I'm yet to go to one. That said, over the past few days I've been really fancying a good curry, so I might go out sometime soon.

With regard to drinking, there are so many places. One place I really like is Spizz, which I only just went to for the first time last night. It's a jazz and music club, although I didn't see any jazz on when I went (which for me is a good thing). The upstairs bit is a bar and restaurant, whilst the downstairs bit is a club. Outside they have a load of tables and chairs. When it's mild, which it was last night, you can sit and watch everything happening around you. Spizz is located on the central Markt, or market place. There are loads of bars and clubs everywhere, and people milling around, so it's a nice place to sit and have a drink. There's also a HUB-style British pub, The King's Head, which is nice to pop into occasionally for a taste of home.

A little distance outside of the city centre is the Red Bull Arena, a 45,000 seater football stadium. When we first got to Leipzig, the university gave us free tickets to see an RB Leipzig match, against FC Plauen. I haven't been to a football match since I saw Spurs beat Chelsea in the League Cup final (hehehe) at Wembley over 5 years ago, so it was great to see another match. Although the football wasn't quite of the same calibre, it was definitely a lot of fun to watch. Add to that cheap lager and plenty of good sausage-based food, and you're onto a winner.

There are some good museums too. The two I have been to so far were a museum of Germany since 1945, focusing on East Germany, and the Stasi Museum. I recommend both. I especially liked the Stasi Museum, set in the old headquarters of the Leipzig Stasi. There are untouched offices and cells to look at, as well as loads of artefacts. I particularly liked all of the examples of Stasi surveillance gadgets; cameras built into suitcases etc.

There's plenty of stuff in Leipzig which I've yet to do. When my parents come to visit me in a month I'll write a post about some of the more cultured things in the city! One place I really look forward to going to is Auerbachs Keller, an old beer hall and restaurant, which Goethe used to visit often. Several scenes from Faust are set there. It looks fantastic, and I can't wait to go there! 

I hope this post was comprehensive enough...I could go on for ages talking all about Leipzig but I think the things I've written about today are my personal highlights so far. Anyway, tomorrow I shall be posting about the Erasmus grant, which will hopefully be a useful guide (sort of guide, anyway) for anyone planning on studying abroad in Europe as part of a degree.

See you tomorrow!

James