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.