Leipzig is the next Berlin. Or so everyone is saying. It really feels and looks like it, in that it has the imperial glamour of an age old city mixed with a leftover sense of DDR. Eliz and I exited the Bahnhof and literally joined a massive Fasching parade. The confetti was fun, but the costumes were so Bayrisch it was like we hadn't left. We found the Thomaskirche (where Bach worked) and the old and new city halls (these are on the scale of Hogwarts). We got to know the Altstadt pretty well and were on our way to our couchsurfing host when a nice lady interrupted our mis-guided attempt at finding directions to offer us an extended history of the city, personal anecdotes included. I was really glad Eliz has studied German for 10 years because I did not understand a single word. For an hour and a half. Cold and hunger aside, travelling with someone who is equally lost in directions generally means you meet a lot of interesting and helpful strangers!
The next day we visited the Stasi museum. Stasi is the name for the secret police in East Germany during the GDR/DDR. The museum is housed in the former building used by the Stasi in Leipzig. There are offices still intact with cool things like the steamer used to open people's mail, the cameras and eavesdropping devices that they would stick inside electrical outlets and old machines used to shred documents and meld them into cement. They talked about the recruitment process for undercover agents, and the infrastructure built to keep it all running. They founded a law school specifically to have accredited lawyers trained in manipulating the legal system. Children from young ages were identified as potential recruits or potential threats. My favorite was the exhibit on Zersetzung, which translates to decomposition. Stasi agents would actually stage seemingly inconspicuous negative events in target's lives, with the express purpose of causing psychological, and thus covert and plausibly deniable, damage. (These weren't supposed to be major things, weird phone calls or breaking into homes and rearranging furniture, but the note said that officers often got carried away with these tasks, sometimes such as smear campaigns and ruining marriages). The government was able to fund itself partly out of the profits made when searching incoming mail for conspicuous objects. They often recorded eavesdropping on cassette tapes stolen from mail sent from West Germany. There used to be a joke: An East German man writes his grandmother, "Thank you for the pistol you sent me. I buried it in the back garden". A week later he writes again, "You can send the flowers now, Grandma. The Stasi dug up the garden for me". It was so fascinating how well oiled a machine it all was. A huge and impressively undercover infrastructure. It all came down with the fall of the wall, and so we visited the Nikolaikirche too. This was where the Peaceful Revolution, that led to the fall of East Germany, all started. The church still has a the famous sign outside saying "open for all". Leipzig is also apparently somewhat known for it's coffee and cafes. There is even a coffee bean museum. But my tour guide spoke too fast so I couldn't tell you why. Better than that though, is the dessert that Leipzig is known for, the Laipziger Lerche. It's like a marzipan cupcake with a little pastry cross on top and once again, I didn't understand the story behind it, so you'll have to wikapedia that. But they're delicious! After our tour Eliz and I met up with a girl from couchsurfing and we walked for a while outside of the Altstadt. I really liked this part of Leipzig because it reminded me a lot of Queen Street in Toronto. Not so glossy, definitely not touristy and always under construction. Leipzig is famous for it's little passageways between streets and even outside of the old city you can take a small passageway between two shops and find yourself in a small, beautiful park or a weird courtyard with massive art displays. For someone who likes just wandering around a city and watching the people who live there, Leipzig is ideal. The most famous passageway in Leipzig is called the Mädler Passage and it is a beautiful glass roofed passage that made me think of Milan's indoor shopping. Inside this passage lies two sets of stairs that I would have completely passed if I hadn't been looking for them (or if there hadn't been two massive signs specifically for tourists like me). The stairs lead down to Auerbach's Keller, made famous because it is the second oldest restaurant in Leipzig (from the 1500's), a favorite of Goethe's, and also the setting of a scene from Faust. It costs a fortune to eat there. so instead I breakfasted the next day at another famous restaurant. Riquet & Co was a coffee and tea manufacturer at the time when Goethe was a customer and today is a very swanky resturant/cafe. I loved it for the fact that the waitress spoke to me in German, even after hearing my accent and seeing my suitcase. Also a tip: if you're feeling like you aren't taken seriously in a nice restaurant because you're a tourist, just pull out a notebook and pen, start to thoughtfully jot a few notes, and they'll perk right up. No one wants to risk offending a (fake) travel writer with an American accent!
The next day we visited the Stasi museum. Stasi is the name for the secret police in East Germany during the GDR/DDR. The museum is housed in the former building used by the Stasi in Leipzig. There are offices still intact with cool things like the steamer used to open people's mail, the cameras and eavesdropping devices that they would stick inside electrical outlets and old machines used to shred documents and meld them into cement. They talked about the recruitment process for undercover agents, and the infrastructure built to keep it all running. They founded a law school specifically to have accredited lawyers trained in manipulating the legal system. Children from young ages were identified as potential recruits or potential threats. My favorite was the exhibit on Zersetzung, which translates to decomposition. Stasi agents would actually stage seemingly inconspicuous negative events in target's lives, with the express purpose of causing psychological, and thus covert and plausibly deniable, damage. (These weren't supposed to be major things, weird phone calls or breaking into homes and rearranging furniture, but the note said that officers often got carried away with these tasks, sometimes such as smear campaigns and ruining marriages). The government was able to fund itself partly out of the profits made when searching incoming mail for conspicuous objects. They often recorded eavesdropping on cassette tapes stolen from mail sent from West Germany. There used to be a joke: An East German man writes his grandmother, "Thank you for the pistol you sent me. I buried it in the back garden". A week later he writes again, "You can send the flowers now, Grandma. The Stasi dug up the garden for me". It was so fascinating how well oiled a machine it all was. A huge and impressively undercover infrastructure. It all came down with the fall of the wall, and so we visited the Nikolaikirche too. This was where the Peaceful Revolution, that led to the fall of East Germany, all started. The church still has a the famous sign outside saying "open for all". Leipzig is also apparently somewhat known for it's coffee and cafes. There is even a coffee bean museum. But my tour guide spoke too fast so I couldn't tell you why. Better than that though, is the dessert that Leipzig is known for, the Laipziger Lerche. It's like a marzipan cupcake with a little pastry cross on top and once again, I didn't understand the story behind it, so you'll have to wikapedia that. But they're delicious! After our tour Eliz and I met up with a girl from couchsurfing and we walked for a while outside of the Altstadt. I really liked this part of Leipzig because it reminded me a lot of Queen Street in Toronto. Not so glossy, definitely not touristy and always under construction. Leipzig is famous for it's little passageways between streets and even outside of the old city you can take a small passageway between two shops and find yourself in a small, beautiful park or a weird courtyard with massive art displays. For someone who likes just wandering around a city and watching the people who live there, Leipzig is ideal. The most famous passageway in Leipzig is called the Mädler Passage and it is a beautiful glass roofed passage that made me think of Milan's indoor shopping. Inside this passage lies two sets of stairs that I would have completely passed if I hadn't been looking for them (or if there hadn't been two massive signs specifically for tourists like me). The stairs lead down to Auerbach's Keller, made famous because it is the second oldest restaurant in Leipzig (from the 1500's), a favorite of Goethe's, and also the setting of a scene from Faust. It costs a fortune to eat there. so instead I breakfasted the next day at another famous restaurant. Riquet & Co was a coffee and tea manufacturer at the time when Goethe was a customer and today is a very swanky resturant/cafe. I loved it for the fact that the waitress spoke to me in German, even after hearing my accent and seeing my suitcase. Also a tip: if you're feeling like you aren't taken seriously in a nice restaurant because you're a tourist, just pull out a notebook and pen, start to thoughtfully jot a few notes, and they'll perk right up. No one wants to risk offending a (fake) travel writer with an American accent!