Student Culture in Leipzig.

This week I took in two theater pieces the first on Thursday night. A Piece called Familienportrait which was held in The 4Room bar on Täubchenweg with free entry (with donations taken for the ANDAS organization) The play featured a story about about a dysfunctional family thrown into crisis when a girlfriend of one of the sons reveals she is pregnant. The play focuses largely on the efforts  mother Louis struggling to keep her head above water while surrounded by her oddball children.

My German held up enough to follow the story and the excellent physical acting of the cast was more than enough to fill in the blanks.

The story delved into family values, depression and suicide but held a very strong sense of bitter comedy throughout. The highlights for me where the performances of the stoic Albert and the animated Patrick providing a nice contrast and both actors turning in a very solid and funny performance especially The Albert character who despite having few lines and a mostly emotionless demeanor managed to find moments of great comedic value. The costumes used gave for a very nice aesthetic value and the play on the whole was a thoroughly well put together amateur piece

The following night I went to a student variety show event hell by the WILMA group. The show featured a series of short plays, musicians, singers and dancers. Again a wholly enjoyable evening was had. The show opened with several short plays . A young man looking through a sketchpad and building a story out of each drawing was used as a framing device. The best one was a telling of the story of Pinocchio with an interesting twist. The event which was largely but together by international students and  had each character speak in their home language, ranging from English,French, Italian, Spanish etc. It provided an interesting idea about how a story like Pinocchio can largely be told through familiarity and body language.

The action went from that to an acoustic guitar performance and a Mariachi band. One of the highlights was a performance of the ballet The Dying Swan performed by Vera Djemelinskaya.

The two days of theater made certain  that Leipzig is not short on talented young people.

A Weekend in Poland

Last weekend, I made a trip from Leipzig to frosty Wroclow in Poland with a group 20 fellow students. Coming from Ireland I was still getting used to the -2 temperatures in Leipzig nothing could have prepared me for the -10 that hit me like a bus when I stepped off the heated train. Once I got used to that, I was able to focus on the city. Wroclow is immediately recognisable for it's upkeep of it's old buildings, picturesque in its Church Towers and the town-hall in the city centre.

Arriving in the middle of winter wasn't without it's perks the whole town was decked out in lights and Christmas market taking up the whole town centre. Mulled wine and coffee was flowing from old fashioned wooden huts next to Stalls selling handmade wooden toys and woolly hats. Really doing Christmas right.

We checked into Grampa's Hostel. Cheap and cheerful accommodation in walking distance of the city centre, friendly staff, great facilities including a kitchen with free tea and coffee, breakfast was provided in the morning and comfy beds.

After the seven hour trip first order of business  was to get fed and watered. The group of about 20 and I were eager to try to local delicacy of dumplings with meat fillings. We ate at the highly recommended by are designated guide 'Pod Złotym Psem'. Right on the corner of the town square  Really nice warm, relaxed, old fashioned  interior (great attention to detail was paid even the electric hand dryers in the bathroom had wooden panelling). The food was great, chicken dumplings in mushroom sauce and a coffee with caramel syrup, perfect preparation for going back out into the frosty evening. And most importantly for a traveller on a budget, it was very reasonably priced.

The next day was set aside to see the sights which are in plentiful supply in Wroclow, the highlights being the  townhall and Wroclow Cathedral which was built and expanded on over 250 years from  the end of the 13th century though to the middle of the 16th century. It stands in the city centr

No trip to Wroclow would be complete without ascending the tower of Wroclow Cathedral for a Panaramic view of the city and beyond to get to top will only cost you the equivalent of about a €1.50 and it's well worth it. It was the last thing I did and was a perfect way to round off the weekend.

Most places I've travelled to, I;ve had a few words and phrases to get by on. "Wie Viel?" "Merci", "Uno Cervaza Por Favor" etc I had absolutely zero polish however, but this was never a problem. Everyone in the service industry has a decent handle on English so I rarely had to resort to awkward hand gestures.

Wroclow Poland was definitely worth the visit and I’d love to go back to see how it looks in the warmer seasons.

Highlights: Cheap food and accommodation and beautiful architecture.

Tips: Be prepared for the cold if you’re there in the winter.

One Year in Leipzig: Week One

On Monday the 24th of September I set off for my Erasmus year in Leipzig University in East Germany. I was nervous to stay the least. While most students had gone out in groups of three or four UCC had seen fit to send me all on my tobler. So after a four hour bus journey I popped on three of my jackets and stuck four books in pockets to get past the Rynair luggage weight allowance (scraped by by half a kilo, Success!) I jetted off to Berlin Airport.

I got off the plane and walked to towards the entrance I was shouted at by an airport security official for being a foot and half to the left of the designated walkway. I was definitely in Germany.

After two hours on a train I arrived in Leipzig. It's immediately a very distinctive city. Some really great looking old buildings with a handful of sky scrapers jutting up above them. After setting my things down and getting that much needed post-12-hours travelling-shower I headed out to rustle up some grub. I very nearly turned back towards the train station where I had seen the usual array of Burger King, Pizza Hut and KFC but something told me to take a left instead and after a couple of minutes I saw it. The absolute pinnacle of kebab engineering. A branch of the ever delicious Ali Baba Kebab chain. I was so hoping there'd be one in the area. I greeted the Kebab man like an old friend an ordered my usual (one with everything).

The next day was all about finding an apartment. My confidence in my language skills that I'd established after being able to order a kebab the night before was quickly dashed when I realized that the vocab for doner preferences was a lot more basic than that of apartment preferences. I started a game of seeing how far I could get into a conversation before the person I was talking to gave up on me and switched to English. Eventually I got it organised.

So after that I went about exploring the city that would be my home for the next year. Leipzig is really a beautiful city. One of the defining structures is the the town hall which is built from the ruins of a former castle. Making for this really unique visual of having a castle in the city centre. Near this is the newer building that acts as the front of the university. It's this huge glass cathedral in the square right at the heart of the city. The original was destroyed during the bombings of East Germany and this is the modern day remake.

 Surrounding these are many other fantastically detailed buildings and cathedrals the architecture of the city is really striking.

Leipzig as I was told by someone staying in the same hostel is "the new Berlin." People are supposedly getting tired of the influx of hipsters into Berlin and are moving en masse to Leipzig.The people who liked Berlin before it was cool presumably.

After a couple of days I'd had enough of wandering around and went for some home familiarities in the form of the new Batman flick. To kill an evening and to get used to hearing German. In case you were wondering, Batman sounds ridiculously cool speaking German. "Ich Bin Batman!"


So a couple of days in and I'm excited. Much still to see, much still to do. Can't wait to see where the year takes me.

Challenge Accepted.

It’d be easy I’d get off the plane, someone would promptly offer me a job at the airport and I’d have found two months accommodation by lunchtime.

I had decided to spend the summer abroad. Garrison Keillor said “there comes a time in everyman’s life when he feels he’s done all there is to do and seen all there is to see. That time comes around the age of 18” and that’s how I felt about Ennis. No disrespect to the place it’s grand enough town in which to grow up but damn, if it doesn’t get boring in the summer. So this year I was skipping the constant nagging from my mother about how I should be looking for a job and the endless list of sheds to paint, grass to cut  and weeds to pull from my dad and make a break for it. So I begged the folks for a plane ticket promising it could be my Christmas and Birthday present for the next two years (I needn’t have bothered they didn’t seem to glum at idea of me being out of sight for two months) So within days of putting the pencil down on my last exam I was heading for Cork Airport and on to Munich City.

Now it didn’t all quite go to plan. I landed in Munich late Saturday evening and got my train to the hostel which I had booked for three nights (after that I was all on my own). I dropped my bag and nipped out for a beer and the Ireland match. I’d get cracking on the job hunt tomorrow, definitely. Although, tomorrow would be Sunday and most places would be closed anyway. Monday no doubt. So I went back to the hostel watched ‘X-Men’ in German and hit the hay.

Woke up the next morning hit my head on the ceiling which was conveniently located an inch and a half from the top bunk that I was sleeping in. I through on a shirt and my nicest pair of jeans, grabbed my wad of CVs and hit the streets of Munich. Now what I didn’t realise about Munich is that they don’t really ‘do’ CVs  so every time you apply for a job you have to fill out a lengthy application form in which your asked to put down all the info that you have printed out on the neat stack of papers beside you. And I thought Germans were supposed to efficient. But none the less people were genuinely friendly and seemed like they might actually consider hiring you at some point. Let’s keep in mind that I reached working age around the same second the recession struck so not  being met with a patronising smile when you ask politely if the manager is hiring was an alien concept to me.

That’s when it started going wrong. I had one night left in the hostel so went to see about further accommodation, but as it happened Munich was fully booked for the next week. I must have spent more in stale smelling Turkish internet cafes than I had on food the past three days. Now seems like a good time to mention that if you are in Munich and are interested the best kebab in existence nip down to Ali Baba’s kebabarie  on Shiller Strasse by the train-station. But back to the point. There was nothing doing so I crashed in the waiting room of the Munich Hauptbahnhof. It was time to give up. My phone was dead and if any of the potential in employers where calling eager to snap up this 18 year old with a whole weeks work experience in Oxfam bookshop and a mediocre grasp on the language they’d be out of luck. So I was at a loss I could ring mammy and daddy and tell them I needed a plane ticket home to a warm bed and a cup of cocoa but I would never live that down. Besides I had told all my friends I would be gone all summer I couldn’t just waltz back into the local and act like nothing had happened. I had only been gone for a long weekend and they’d be expecting tales of my expedition. It couldn’t end here…..