This break has been a real series of contrasts for me. Today we arrived in Chemnitz (pronounced as in ‘chemical’, and known as Karl Marx Stadt before the fall of the wall) to find a very different kind of city to Dresden – in fact, somewhere that is still struggling to find itself after the fall of communism, all these years later.
True, it has a beautiful ‘rathaus’ or city hall right in the centre of town surrounded by a modern, steel and glass shopping centre, there’s a spectacular new museum with huge petrified trees in the lobby and also a lovely Schloss sitting on a hill above the town with a big beer garden and large boating lake below, but they’re overshadowed by whole streets of boarded-up shops and businesses with (amazingly for central europe) entirely empty apartment blocks above them. And it’s all overlooked by the brooding, three-storey high bust of Karl Marx that simply exudes gloom and oppression (a quick look in wikipedia confirms my suspicions – the reason that there is so much empty housing is that Chemnitz has experienced a massive exodus of population in recent years, and has the lowest birthrate of anywhere on the entire planet!)
Again though, even here, people are cheerful and friendly. We had our best meal of the holiday in a charming basement restaurant just off the main square, where locals smiled with amusement as we tried a bright green aperitif that is apparently a local saxony custom, and we finished the evening in the Rainbow Cafe, where each and every patron wished us a good night as they left. Germany’s contradictions can make your head spin sometimes!