Germany - A Saxony Culture Tour
Zwickau

Thursday 29th June 2006

The now ubiquitous Ryanair have a destination called "Leipzig, Altenburg". This is neither but goes to an old Soviet airbase with grass coming up through the runway at a village called Nobitz outside Altenburg. It' not even really at Nobitz, as the road comes out weither at Altmörbitz (badly signposted) or The flight was on time but, at Altenburg, while our luggage came off instantly, the passport queue was very slow & packed into a tiny space. The hire car girl was slow, too. I muttered "DDR dienst" to the couple behind us, who laughed. We had coffee & Avis, an ice cream, in the airport café (E8.40). Newly invented German word, "pott", meaning a mug of coffee. Then, I eventually discovered our car, a metallic blue Fiat Panda & doddled down very good, if narrow, roads to Zwickau. There were diversions for road up. One, the information girl warned us about but the other, we ran into. The map off the Internet of Zwickau crucially did not show the Dr. Friedrich's Ring, so we went round twice before finding the 1A Aparthotel, which is in an antique road, the Robert Müller Strasse & rather nice, with a proper German landlady, Frau Kramer but no lift & it was a struggle to get up.

Robert Muller Strasse

Zwickau is also famous for the Trabant factory!

Much pedestrianised

We went out for a mooch round the town. The centre is nearly all inside the Dr. Friedrich Ring. We found the Schumann Haus easily & went to the theatre in the Hauptmarkt to buy tickets for a Schumann ballet tomorrow night (at least, I think that is what it is!) E30.

Hauptmarkt

Hauptmarkt

Schumann House

Then, coffee & apple cake in the "City Lights" café which is in a very old building with highly eccentric roof (E7.80). A further mooch took us to the Kornmarkt & the University, which had a 'feature' solar panel array. Eventually, we got back to the hotel for a snooze before dinner. This was at the Athos Greek opposite the hotel, was very good indeed. Free ouzo, two beers, a hot meze for two, salads, stifado & 5 lamb chops was E40 with tip (36.60 without). Very good value.

Friday 30th June Decent breakfast & more available than necessary. We walked round the large park, mostly occupied by a large lake, the Schwanenleich. We came across a memorial which looked as if it had been defaced. The trees in the park seemed very large. There was an open-air theatre at the end of the park. Back into town, we had coffee at a very nice cake shop called the Schumann Café for E3 with tip. The museum itself was only E4 each & exemplary. It took a couple of hours to go round. The house itself is delightful, with big, airy rooms. All the labelling was in Deutsch but easy to decode. Schumann statue Agnes Carus. She sang, he played The 1522 theatre There were not as many cards as I would have wished but there were 7 useful ones & I bought ten to send, all for E3.60! We went to the post office for stamps & had lunch back at the "City Lights", E23 with tip. This town is cheap. The Schumann statue has had its wider taken off. We went to Alex' in the Hauptmarkt for cake & coffee (E7), before going to the theatre (built 1522) for the Schumann ballet. The very good programme was E1.5. The ballet had little of Schumann's music but was very good. Ken has a lecture with music & slides about Schumann you can ask him to give if your club is London resident.

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