First Semester in Leizpig

Liebe Familie und Freunde, I am currently in Leipzig doing my ERAMUS year here and I have been here for 4 months now. I have ejoyed these first few months so much that I wanted to share some of it with you. First of all, for anyone who doesn't know where Leipzig is, Leipzig is about 1-1.5 hours by train to Berlin and is found in Saxony in Eastern Germany.

The picture above comes from the VaMos 2012 conference page, https://conference.uni-leipzig.de/vamos2012/venue.html. In September I began by doing an intensive german course from 9am-12.30pm for intermediate german speakers. This was challenging as I hadn't pracitsed my german properly since GCSE but was worth it as my german definitely improved and I made some lovely friends. I then spent the afternoons exploring Leipzig and even visited some the See (artifical lakes) nearby which you can swim in! You can also walk (or skate in papas case) around the lakes or sit and relax.

We also explored some of the sights such as a walking tour of Leipzig city centre, tasting local food and trying local wines at the wine festival. I tried a banana flavoured wine which was delicious but didn't taste of banana.

I also discovered that Leipzig is a very artsy city. I visited 2 different art museums, Kunstkraftwerk and the Spinneri. Kunstkraftwerk projects art on walls and makes it come to life, when I was there the main event was seeing Van Gogh's work come to life and alice in wonderland. The Spinneri used to be a cotton factory but was then sold to artists. Each room contains the work of different artists and most of the rooms are free to visit.

The pictures above show me in Kunstkraftwerk. I also discovered a beautiful part of town called Plagwitz which is covered in graffiti. This can be anything from cartoons we watched as children, sometimes recreations of renaissance paintings, and more. Below is a building in which you can see a face, this is in Plagwitz and a picture of some people graffiting.

I also went to the global climate strike In Leipzig, and visited Dresden a nearby city in September. I will do another post about Dresden and tell you more about my visit. I also moved into my first apartment in mid-September. I started my placement in the first week of October and spent 3 weeks readin literature around my project title in order to better understand what I would be doing and as a of this week I am working in the lab alongside my reading and slowly building up to doing mostly independent research. My project is in bioanalytical chemistry focusing on lipids and I think this is super interesting and soemthing I am really enjoying learning about. We are focusing on obesity research in relation to oxidised lipids modifying proteins causing cells to become insulin resistant, as the work is not yet released I will not say much about this. October was also when I started going on walks to discover more the city, and when most other ERASMUS students arrived so I met some more ERASMUS students. I went to an art event which showcases local artists in October called Lindenow, which encourages people to visit Lindenau, a part of Leipzig. This was very interesting and showcased a multimedia style of art, from painting to someone made a masks out of household items to present their mood each day of lockdown (which you can see in the picture below) to videos and more. There were also some artists on the street which you could watch create their magic. This was a great way to get to know the city.

I continued to visit tourist attractions in October including the völkerdenkmal, which is the monument to the battle of the nations during the Napoleon era. There was a choir practising inside the monument who sang like angels, as well as a beautiful view at the top. In the picture below you can see me at the top looking at the crematorium, the beautiful building behind which I discovered after the picture was taken is the crematorium, and the smoke behind comes from a nuclear power plant. It is a very ironic view.

In November Germany began its "light lockdown" so many events were cancelled and social gatherings were limited to 10 people from 2 different households. This however did not prevent me from continuing to find new places to explore, especially parks as Leipzig is abundant with parks.

By the end of November/ early December, Saxony began the worst state in Germany for COVID-19. This meant a stricter lockdown was put in place and all christmas markets were eventually cancelled. However, in the city centre there were some small stalls allowed to sell christmas ornaments and some large christmas trees were still allowed to have a small feeling of christmas.

There was also a a nativity scene surrounded by typical German fairytales. The scenes encouraged children to correct grammar mistakes in the sign posts showing the stories, which my friends and I also attempted even though I hadn't been able to practise my german properly since October. See if you can guess which stories were told from the pictures below, hint the last 2 pictures are from the same story. WARNING: the last image shows a wolf being cut open using scissors.

I also visited the nearby town of Halle as we had been told the christmas market was still open. Unfortunately this was untrue, however it was nice to see another town. Halle is very small and not very touristic, although the city centre had some lovely christmas decorations.

The picture above shows a typical German christmas decoration, seen in Halle.

The picture above shows a chandelier made of salt, also seen in Halle.

The picture above shows the nativity scene in front of a christmas tree in Halle city centre.

The picture above shows me in front of a phone box library in Halle. We found it very funny that a piece of the UK was found in the most unlikely place. For the rest of December I continued to go on walks and runs around the city. I even discovered the local alotments; some of the gardens there had swimming pools in the back! This was a short(ish) summary of my first semester here. I am really enjoying my time here and I am excited to see what the next semster in Leipzig is like.