Leipzig and Dresden

We were told that Leipzig was a little, hidden Berlin but more cool and hip.... it would seem that we were a few years too late for that. Yes, it's quaint and beautiful but it's been discovered. It's full to the brim with tourists with money. The winding streets around our hostel were solely upmarket restaurants. It was painfully oppressive walking through the streets during food service, which is basically all day. The closest that we came to eating in a restaurant was perusing the menu.... over 15€ for a pie, 12€ for a bowl of Pho, 16€ for a Thai curry. The saving grace was the wonderful hostel that we had private rooms in. Our rooms were more like an apartment with a roof terrace. We met cool people from all over the world, a sweet Albanian/ Italian who cooked a free hostel meal. A whole gang of music students from the UK.
Dresden on the other hand was a real surprise. I was expecting a bombed out, uninteresting city. I was very wrong. It has a beautiful, reconstructed old river front part and an interesting, cosmopolitan new part. As a happy accident, I had booked a room in the new part. We took a short evening walk to the hip neighbourhood and the Kunsthof Passageway. Such beautiful colours and textures on the walls.
That's it for Germany. How do you know when an area has become a tourist trap? When the most common word that you see is Vegan!!Læs mere