[HN Gopher] Leipzig: A walk around a city reborn
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Leipzig: A walk around a city reborn
Author : everbody
Score : 89 points
Date : 2021-11-04 20:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (literaryreview.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (literaryreview.co.uk)
| dansky wrote:
| Some walking videos I recorded in Leipzig:
|
| September 2020 on a Sunday - https://youtu.be/yriaEFxLblQ
|
| February 2019 evening - https://youtu.be/udrqN2QArHo
|
| edit: formatting
| entropie wrote:
| I live in Leipzig.
|
| The best thing is IMHO that we have the Gruner GUrtel ("green
| belt") which is a pretty large area of real primeval forest right
| crossing through the town and suround the city core.
|
| In future outer leipzig will be surrounded by seas (7 Seen
| gebiet) which emerged from old mining holes and are all connected
| with each other.
| AlexanderDhoore wrote:
| "surrounded by lakes", not seas. European languages are weird
| for lakes and seas. French mer != Dutch meer. German see !=
| English sea.
| entropie wrote:
| Your right, of course.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I'm surprised at the German case -- isn't U-boat a colloquial
| term for _Unterseeboot_?
| mmoll wrote:
| Yup. German is _really_ weird because you have both ,,die
| See" (the sea) and ,,der See" (the lake)
| pell wrote:
| Then there's the Ostsee (Eastern Sea (Baltic Sea)) and
| the Nordsee (Northern Sea).
| pelasaco wrote:
| Based on the number of construction sites around there, If the
| author comes today to the city, probably he would spend hours in
| a traffic jam.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Why would they be driving?
| pelasaco wrote:
| Tram, bike, you name it. But specially in the beginning of
| the Autumn, with 2 days of rain, you see few bikes in the
| street. I'm biker myself. Right now I'm seating in the tram
| 16. In the traffic jam, because of a construction site.
| maze-le wrote:
| Nice to see my hometown on HN! It is also one of the most
| affordable cities in Germany in terms of housing, and probably
| the best in terms of quality of life / cost of living ratio...
|
| If you plan to visit: be sure to check out the Museum der
| bildenden Kunste and a boat-tour through Plagwitz / Karl-Heine
| Kanal (esp. nice in spring at night).
| rockyj wrote:
| Very nice. Out of curiosity, how is it for foreigners? I see
| that AfD gets a pretty high vote share there.
| maze-le wrote:
| In Saxony yes, but not in Leipzig. About 50% of my colleagues
| are foreigners and they all love the city -- it's very
| international and you can come by with English in most
| places.
|
| Little caveat obviously: there are also quarters where it's
| not that simple and you are looked at sideways if you have
| the "wrong" skin tone -- Grunau, Gohlis-Nord etc. But these
| are the parts of the city tourists usually don't visit...
| [deleted]
| wcarss wrote:
| Anecdote time!
|
| I had a much harder time trying to get by as a white
| anglophone in Leipzig for about a month in 2018 than I had
| in Berlin, but much of that was admittedly my own anxiety
| around asking people for help in the wrong way, and travel-
| green-ness.
|
| For example, I definitely can't pronounce entschuldigung
| correctly! As in well enough for people to know what I
| said. I then often perceived a palpable disdain or
| exasperation after not having been able to ask for simple
| things in German or understand simple German responses,
| compared to other places I've been where people seemed more
| excited to try to help someone who seemed lost than annoyed
| at the disturbance. I frankly shared the feeling, though: I
| found it very frustrating that my long duolingo practices
| had yielded almost no ability to ask for or understand
| things in the language of the country I was visiting.
|
| I also found the in-town train terminal UIs to be
| _incomprehensible_ as a foreigner: long lists of
| abbreviated names of places, with sub-menus holding _more_
| abbreviated names! A name like "Strasse Something Name"
| could end up "S. Sth. N." and without fluency it was very
| tough to pick apart. I ended up with a ticket to the wrong
| place once and the fare inspector, who I had to communicate
| with via Google translate, was very skeptical of my
| innocence (and absolutely incredulous that someone would
| not be able to grok the menus) but ultimately let me just
| pay the difference and go on, after initially threatening
| to levy a fine.
|
| I still loved the city! It's beautiful and has very nice
| walks and libraries, but I personally often felt
| uncomfortable and out of place while visiting.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I also found the in-town train terminal UIs to be
| incomprehensible as a foreigner: long lists of
| abbreviated names of places, with sub-menus holding more
| abbreviated names!"
|
| They are allmost incomprehensible for natives, too. They
| could be a textbook example of bad UX design.
| rockyj wrote:
| Thank you :)
| tgv wrote:
| I was most impressed by the Stasi museum and the City museum.
| The town sure has a lot of history.
|
| Edit: And Bach, of course.
| k__ wrote:
| I was visiting it 2010 and it had many empty houses. I even read
| the Deutsche Bahn wanted to cut them off from long-distance
| trains.
|
| Today it's the new hip location to live at, like Berlin. People
| are gentrifying it in swarms.
|
| It's a pretty nice place and compared to the rest of east Germany
| pretty leftist. But, yeah, when you leave the city there is
| nothing much.
| jamil7 wrote:
| People in Berlin are always threatening to leave for Leipzig as
| Berlin becomes less and less affordable, I guess a lot do,
| especially now that remote working make it actually feasible. I
| even had a colleague years ago who commuted a few days a week
| to an office in Berlin.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "But, yeah, when you leave the city there is nothing much. "
|
| Well, there are lots of nice lakes around. (left from open coal
| mining and renaturated). And if you drive a bit, you can reach
| quite nice mountains, for example, or other cultural
| interesting places, like Weimar or Dresden.
|
| And the average village around is indeed quite right leaning,
| but more and more nice projects are growing as well.
| wirrbel wrote:
| When I visited the streets were fairly dark at night. Albeit
| beautifully renovated houses. My cousin who lived there said
| that everyone rented Appartments that would not face the street
| because there were much more appartments available than
| renters, the apartments facing the street were mostly vacant
| and thus dark in the evening.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| When I studied there in 2004-2007 (Art History and Archeology of
| all things) Leipzig was just amazing. It was raw, chaotic and
| dirt cheap. I lived in the very center of the city in
| Hainstrasse, right next to the market and the street with all the
| bars. I had a beautiful 70 square meter apartment as a student
| that I paid 320 Euro a month for. Down in Suedvorstadt things got
| even crazier. We went to underground bars with 1 Euro beers and
| cockroach races. We went to death metal clubs and Absinth bars.
| We dressed in top hats and steam punk goggles for Wave/Gothic
| meeting in spring. We spent a lot of time in nature in Leipzigs
| Auenwald (a permanently flooded forest) and countless lakes. It
| was awesome!
|
| Today, when I come back to Leipzig, things feel very different.
| More refined - true. But also much more bland and faceless.
| Leipzig's countless little quirky shops have largely made way for
| the same cookie cutter shopping malls you find everywhere - with
| your Zara's, H&Ms and G-Star stores. Lot's of places are empty,
| such as Karstadt and Petersbogen, owing to an over-supply of
| department stores for what's still a fairly small city. Larger
| industries have attracted more settled workers - and the crazy
| punks and metalheads of 2004 have grown into eco-conscious
| citizens with pension plans and immigration concerns.
|
| Maybe (certainly) I'm just getting old - but god, I miss the raw
| and wild nature of the post-reunification days...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| When I went over to Germany for my Oma's 80th birthday in 2001
| or so my girlfriend (now wife) and I made a trip out of it and
| were going from the party (which was in Bavaria, though my
| grandparents are from Mainz) to Berlin afterwards to visit
| friends and check out the city. When I was telling my Opa and
| his friend about our plans, his Bavarian friend remarked
| something like "Ah, yes, Berlin, it's not very nice now, it's
| pretty ugly and dirty, but we're working hard to fix it. It
| will be much better in 10 years."
|
| We then went to Berlin and had a wonderful time similar to what
| you're describing. It was still a pretty chaotic and
| interesting city, with lots of art squats and cool parties.
| Probably not as cool as it was a few years earlier, but still
| pretty neat.
|
| I understand in the intervening years Berlin has started to
| become a sea of condos and boring glass buildings and inflated
| real estate like every other western city. Or so I hear. So
| yeah, they "fixed" it.
|
| That same trip we passed through Leipzig and it seemed pretty
| run down but kind of interesting bit obviously not as "active"
| as Berlin. My techno friend had good things to say about it,
| though.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| A great look with a lense at what is going in Berlin is the
| documentary "Punks vs. Billionaires" by Vice. [0] The bar in
| question was truly like the guys in the video were describing
| it: A living room for people who didn't have one at home. And
| it isn't the only one, so many of the essential spaces for
| working class people in my neighborhood died in the last few
| years. Rents exploded and people get pushed out of the
| districts they've lived in for decades. It really sucks, and
| it is an ongoing process slowly changing the whole city.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7sb-AziEn4
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> A great look with a lense at what is going in Berlin is
| the documentary "Punks vs. Billionaires" by Vice. [0]_
|
| Don't know why, but I stopped being shocked by the things I
| saw in that documentary a while ago.
|
| _" Super rich corporate entity buying properties in soon-
| to-be hotspots while avoiding taxes through complex foreign
| based shell structures, with the working class squeezed to
| death by higher rents and taxes, all while our elected
| officials look the other way since they've been well
| greased, wined and dined and their privately schooled kids
| are offered top positions in said corporate entities"_, has
| become such a common M.O. behind the facade of free market
| capitalism, that I'm not even surprised at this point.
|
| I just wonder when we'll have the next violent revolution
| or civil war and radical regime change as inequality can't
| continue to rise like this forever and still have a stable
| and peaceful, functioning society.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > the crazy punks and metalheads of 2004 have grown into eco-
| conscious citizens
|
| Isn't some of that just generational change? In the US, kids
| seem a lot more tame these days than kids of the previous few
| decades. They have a different set of pressures, and social
| media has grown in power quite a bit over a decade.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I think the last few generations have ruined rebelliousness
| by yelling a lot on the internet.
|
| Can you imagine watching your parents flame war over politics
| and social issues on fucking Facebook? I feel like the only
| way to rebel would be to act like an adult.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| TL;DR: Most activities we used to do as kids have now moved
| on-line. Socializing, playing, fighting, loitering, dating,
| shopping, going to the cinema, etc. is now on Instagram,
| Snapchat, Tinder, Discord, Twitter, Amazon, PSN, Xbox-Live,
| Netflix, etc.
|
| Why are people surprised about this? This is all old news.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Your response seems to have completely missed the
| subject.
|
| Did you accidentally hit reply under the wrong comment?
| xtracto wrote:
| I lived in Halle (Saale) between 2008 and 2012. We used to go
| to Leipzig quite often to hear the philarmonic, shopping and
| just around town. I remember it as an amazing little city with
| plenty of culture. I hope I can visit it again in the future.
| FredPret wrote:
| Cockroach... races? I don't know whether to laugh, place a bet,
| or barf!
| scrubs wrote:
| Been there several times in the 1990s. Got some work done. Also
| got into trouble!
| guenthert wrote:
| > Also got into trouble!
|
| Oh, come on, don't be such a tease.
| cameronperot wrote:
| I lived in Leipzig for three years during my physics studies, and
| I really enjoyed the city. It's there that I really learned to
| love long walks. I've walked through and around that city more
| time than I can count. My favorite time to stroll through the
| city center is when they have the (Christmas) market set up, it
| has a very welcoming feel to it. It's a city with a lot of
| culture and usually always something going on, but much more laid
| back than Berlin. Summertime there is especially nice, I always
| enjoyed walking or biking to the lakes in the south on a bright
| summer day.
| miniwark wrote:
| I had the chance to stay for a couple of days in Leipzig, in 1990
| just a few month after reunification :
|
| 1) The city was 100% Steampunk !
|
| There where steam heat pipes everywhere along and over the
| streets. Those pipes where the main source of heating for the
| city houses and facilities.
|
| Things like this one, but everywhere in the city :
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haltepunkt_Leipzig_A...
|
| The steam was produced by dedicated factories near the city, and
| the main energy to produce this steam was lignite (brown coal)
| excavated near the city at Bergbaurevier Sudraum Leipzig.
|
| There was gigantic and very impressive bucket-wheel excavators
| south of the city (some of the biggest of the world at the time)
| :
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bucket-wheel_exc...
|
| But the pipes where in bad state, so you could see steam escape
| from every tubes at every street. At the time it was estimated
| than 50% of the energy produced by the factories was lost during
| transport...
|
| 2) The houses where all greys and dusty because of said lignite
| factories around the city. There was steam from the pipes, but
| also smoke from the factories... That said you coul still imagine
| the former glory of the houses under the grey.
|
| 3) There was still many "bomb holes" here and here along the
| streets since World War Two. The GDR did try to patch the city
| centre with impressive (and ugly) buildings and but i did see
| plenty of missing houses in the main streets.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > 1) The city was 100% Steampunk !
|
| District heating was quite common across the former Eastern
| Bloc and Russia. In the winter, you could see bands of melted
| snow on the sidewalk where the pipes ran. I hear the ones still
| in use have been better insulated since then.
|
| > i did see plenty of missing houses in the main streets.
|
| Yeah, this I've also been told. Compare that with the
| impressive rate at which Polish cities were rebuilt (aside from
| the beautiful historic centers, we can debate about the
| desirability of the modernist architecture that was built in
| places where it was decided that the historical building was
| not to be rebuilt; some of them are actually quite interesting,
| to be sure, but certainly not all of them). Not sure why the
| GDR took so long, or how they fared next to West Germany.
| dugmartin wrote:
| I was in Leipzig for a few days for my brother-in-law's first
| wedding in the early 2000s. Driving around we saw quite a few
| abandoned villas with pockmarks from bullets from WW2. We also
| saw one street with apartments that were still occupied by some
| hard-core communists that the government seemed to leave alone as
| they were contained.
|
| It kind of felt like time had slowed in Leipzig after the war. It
| reminded me of a quote I heard from a guide when we toured a home
| near the harbor (now government owned) in Gloucester, MA that a
| family had lived in for generations and never updated: "Nothing
| preserves like poverty".
| beefman wrote:
| I traveled in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, as well as
| Western Europe, in the 1980s. Visited Leipzig in 1986. Also
| visited Beijing in 2015 on the worst air-quality week of that
| year. Leipzig was by far the most polluted place I have ever
| been. It's wonderful to see its transformation. I hope to see it
| in person again some day. (Pittsburgh and Bethlehem, in my native
| Pennsylvania, as well as major cities like Philadelphia and NYC,
| are all far cleaner and nicer today than in the 1980s. NYC is
| dramatically cleaner than it was as recently as 1999.)
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| "Bach, Bombs & Books" is an amazing title. I think it should have
| been included in the HN title submission.
| brycemice wrote:
| so crazy to see this story, I lived on Patrick Henry Army Base in
| Heidelberg for several years and there was a great skatepark in
| Leipzig I basically lived at. good times...
| woodpanel wrote:
| For comparison, take a trip through Leipzig ~1990, After 40 years
| of socialism: https://youtu.be/_cDOqb53Kfk
| 08-15 wrote:
| Very important document. Thank you and your friend "from the
| West" for making and preserving it!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Go visit the Volkerschlachtdenkmal at the outskirts of Leipzig to
| get a visceral understanding of the dark undercurrent of Teutonic
| culture that led to militarism. This is a war memorial that
| _celebrates_ war and military sacrifice, no pacifist message
| there at all. It was inaugurated less than a year prior to the
| outbreak of the Great War.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Battle_of_the_...
|
| The feeling you get inside under the unyielding gaze of the
| granite "Watchers of the Dead" is absolutely creepy.
| swayvil wrote:
| Teutonic culture didn't spawn the militarism. That's just the
| angle that was exploited by the propaganda campaign.
|
| It's how you turn an innocent population into a unified
| fighting force (or whatever). You exacerbate and channel
| existing tensions and/or exploit a crisis. You frame your story
| in terms of popular narratives.
|
| They teach this stuff in Dictatorship 101
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, I specified it as "dark undercurrent". Every culture
| has its own dark undercurrents. This specific undercurrent
| worshipped German-ness a lot. As a Slav you definitely feel
| as an alien visitor there :)
| grimoald wrote:
| I'm German and I felt very alien as well when I visited. It
| is an historical monument. People don't go there to
| commemorate the Volkerschlacht (the small museum nearby is
| better suited for that), but to see how they commemorated
| the Volkerschlacht 100 years ago.
| layer8 wrote:
| 90 years ago: https://youtu.be/CETIdLkJM4k
| stenl wrote:
| Leipzig has a nice zoo, and it's one of the rare zoos that has
| Bonobos. They are amazing to watch: mothers happily walking
| upright holding their baby, lots of playing, just generally
| enjoying themselves. To me they seem much more human than
| chimpanzees do (they are equally distant in evolutionary terms).
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