Leipzig for those of you who may not know is a city located in the Saxony region of Germany, just over an hour by train from the capital Berlin.
Even though it’s January, it’s reasonably busy, but not as busy as I imagine it gets during the summer. There’s some fantastic architecture and several museums to see and a guy you may have heard of is buried in one of the churches, Johann Sebastian Bach.
We flew from Dublin on Friday departing at 3 p.m. and believe it or not our flight arrived in 35 minutes ahead of schedule – who would have believed it. Which worked out very well as we had plenty of time to catch our train to Leipzig. We’re staying at the very central Steigenberger Grand Hotel just off one of the main squares which is surrounded by plenty of shops and places to eat and drink. As usual on arrival at a new place, we checked in, made our way to our room, dropped the bags and hit the town.
Around the Mart square is where most of the bars and restaurants are located. We opted for a place called Villa Tunnel one of the oldest restaurants in Leipzig. I went for the schnitzel and C went for duck, both dishes sufficed as we were hungry but were nothing special.
The following day we walked around the entire centre and picked up a little shopping. We visited St.Thomas church where Bach is buried and there’s a large statue of the man outside.
Lunch was an inexpensive affair opting for Leonard’s restaurant on the top floor of the a big department store. It was reasonable and filling which is what we were looking for as we knew it’d be much later that evening before we ate again.
So the evening roles in and the purpose of our visit, going to see 80’s legends A-Ha on their MTV Unplugged Solstice tour at the Leipzig Arena. The gig was fantastic, it included a brass and string section which worked brilliantly. The light show and accompanying displays on the video screens suited the music perfectly. Thankfully they played all their biggest hits, unlike a previous gig we went to – I’m looking at you Depeche Mode!
We got back to our hotel around 11:00pm and had a few drinks at the bar and a light bite to eat, chicken and noodle skewers, which were tasty. The bar is a large space which at one point or another was actually a courtyard but is now covered over creating a large airy space with impressive modern chandlers, this is where we also went for breakfast, rather than the upstairs restaurant which has a more substantial offering.
With our last few hours on Sunday we visited the Bach museum and did a little more walking. It was finally time to leave so we headed for the (impressive) Leipzig station to catch our train back to Berlin and then a bus to the airport.
Until next time.
C&J
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