The Town of Bach, Nikolai Church & Stasi Museum

A town with a rich history in music, culture, trade and publishing. To write about Leipzig would take its own blog, really. I lived and studied there from 1999 to 2003 – Economy with Booktrade and Publishing to be precise. During these years I had the pleasure to enjoy the unique atmosphere of this town, and even though one could think I should have seen everything there is to see – far from it.

A good opportunity this year to finally take the loved one to the town that still has a very special place in my heart and always will have. There is the Café Kandler right around the corner of the Thomas Church for instance where I held numerous “work meetings” with my best friends – or we just went there for pleasure. Great tea and coffee selection and CAKES…. The same applies to their savoury dishes. All that at very affordable prices, and one even is allowed to buy tea and coffee, at least as long as their stock is big enough to cater for it. I was unlucky this time. My favourite Harmutty tea was out – we actually got served the last cups. Which then again was lucky.

The "Teelegraph" is the menue of Café Kandler and contains also a bit of information about Leipzig.

We took a stroll around town and took a look at the famous Nikolai-Church where the Monday-demonstrations in 1989 started. We also visited the Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian Bach was musical director of Leipzig for a very long time. Nowadays the Thomaner-Choir, a boys choir, is famous worldwide. The traditional Christmas concert with them in Leipzig is usually booked out up to two years in advance.

Then there was the “Museum Runde Ecke” (Museum on the ’round corner’) which used to be the Stasi headquarter in Leipzig and now illustrates the history of that time in an impressive and lively way. Frightening, when you walk through there and really take it in. Well, this was one chapter at that time, and one better does not think about the fact that there are quite some more of these ‘institutions’ all around the world, our modern western countries not excluded.

The "Riquet House" is another famous café in town.

Leipzig is also the town of the famous concert hall “Gewandhaus” where Kurt Masur was musical director for quite some years (1970 to 1996), re-known worldwide as a famous conductor. Friends of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s literary masterpiece “Faust” find pleasure in visiting the famous “Auerbachs Keller” in the “Mädler-Passage”. And that is another architectural specialty – lots of arcades with shops, cafés and restaurants.

We stayed in Northern Leipzig, in a little pension close to where I used to live – Pension Mockau. I stayed there before and like it because it is cheap, clean, friendly people and great breakfast. The tram is right in front of the door, and it takes you into town in less than 10 minutes. Motorcycle parking was no problem on a side road right around the corner. No garage luxury this time, but totally ok.

Oh yes, and I have to mention that the hot weather continued during our stay in town.

Very bearable it was, though, in motorcycle paradise Louis. Good AC and in general it was a slightly colder day. Take a look at the picture below and you instantly know what I mean.

A morning spent at motorcyclists' paradise...

Louis is a big motorcycle accessory chain in Germany – after our visit we now seriously contemplate about opening a subsidiary in Sweden 😉 . International mail order is no problem either, we did that before actually. The choice that you have here in comparison to shops in Sweden, but also the ones I know from the UK is just overwhelming. You get literally everything from clothing to bike accessories, and there even silly stuff should you be looking for a crazy present.

Right – two days of memory lane for myself and taking it all in for the man at my side is sufficient, some serious and nice riding lies ahead. Direction: South.