Leipzig
Building in Leipzig
February 15, 2005
Leipzig is a student town with a line of great minds, including Bach, Wagner, Mendelssohn,
and Goethe. One of those great minds was a modern architect who designed the Leipzig
train station, which has 25 platforms and a three-story mall making it the largest
passenger train terminal in Europe. Luckily, he didn't forget to include lockers
for our bags, which we dropped off and headed into town.
Liepzig will forever be known to me as the place I tried my first currywurst and
Krakauer Wurst. Both were good, especially the Krakauer. And the city was also nice,
a great place to live I would think. It’s a student town and lots of fun, but the
tourists’ sites are simply architecture and little else. It was easy to meander
and the history came alive in the architecture, especially the clock towers and
the Alte Börse.
Augustusplatz was the worst though - undoubtedly a communist leftover. The opera
house is so incredibly hideous, when I first saw it, I just began laughing. Who
thought building that thing was a good idea? It's like a square block and the university
building must have been designed by the same guy. Nearby is the skyscraper, which
doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the city, however I found it quite intriguing
for this reason alone.
We decided to see the Bach museum, which is in German so I understood nothing. The
instruments and sheet music looked nice. The music, however didn't get lost in translation;
there were comfortable seats where we each got our own set of headphones and listened
to our choice of his music… I guess I never realized I like Bach. We finished our
Bach tour with his church/tomb, monument of him and of course a street he had many
acquaintances on, Katharinenstraße, a street of beautiful houses.
We finished the night in Leipzig at the student club of Moritz-Bastei. The club
consists of the old barbican and prisons and is supposedly the largest student night
club in Europe. Here we met Elizabeth’s friend and classmate from Ecuador, Roberto,
who said people have literally gotten lost in the club. The stories the two shared
about their former lives as the children of diplomats were interesting so Jim and
I played audience.
Clock tower