One of my most important life mottoes is: 'No expectations, no disappointment'. And very often I am pleasantly surprised of what is happening to me, especially when it comes to trips. Thus, I landed in Chemnitz, after one hour of delay while I re-discovered the spectacular Leipzig Central Station. And shortly after I arrived, on the way to the center, I stumbled upon the local Museum of Contemporary Arts. Not that I did not expected to find such a cultural offer here, but the exhibition menu was too amazing to be true: Allen Jones, a common exhibition Henri van der Velde-Munch (that I could not admire in his home at Oslo Museum), plus a surprising photo exhibition of Abbas Kiarostani. The local collection covers Romantic paintings plus a very select choice of sculptures, including among others Degas and Rodin. Can I get better than that? I spent here more than one hour without too many worries that due to being already late in town, I will have a lot of time pressure for seeing everything on my to-do-list list.
With a happy soul and a smiling mind, I continued my walk to the central area, passing by a big head of Mr. Marx with a huge billboard with messages of unity of the proletarians, written in stone. Some kids were relaxingly playing break-dancing figures without too much care about their serious neighbour. During the communism, Chemnitz was re-named Karl-Marx-Stadt, even though the German philosopher never been there or mentioned the city in his works. Curiously enough, I did not see any Karl-Marx-Strasse as I usually encountered in all the ex-DDR cities I visited.
A couple of minutes distance of the terrible black head, one will suddenly enter the very busy and monumental shopping area, with at least 2 big malls facing each other. The architecture is a bit overwhelming and not necessarily matching the rest of the buildings, especially the town hall and some classical art nouveau and Jugendstil constructions. The local selection of vegetables sold close to the outlet shops bring more friendliness to the invasive setting.
The 'old' area is made up of various big houses, not all of them fully reconstructed, but many in process of repainting. The old and new buildings are surviving on the same street, a reminder of the complex history of this country.
Often compared with Manchester from the point of view of the concentration of industrial activity - haven't been there and I am more than sceptical when it comes to comparison between countries and cities anyway - Chemnitz has enough parks and green areas to compensate the pollution uttered by the big industrial towers. Some of them were colourfully painted in order to make them more human friendly.
In a hurry, as usual, I took the tram back trying to spot as much as possible people and buildings. As on the way to Schlossberg I saw some funny statues of penguins I stopped by to see what are they all about.
The presence of the penguins has a very serious and symbolic reason. Chemnitz has apparently the same shape as Antarctica and that similarity is a good opportunity to set up a group installation of them in town. The children love them, taking them for horses maybe.
The tram journey to the central station was punctuated by the English announcement of the stops. Before leaving, I admired another irony of the history of local architecture: a very elegant villa, former private residence of a rich resident of the city in the 19th century, turned into a restaurant and dancing school is facing a furious statue of united proletarians. Nothing surprising enough for me, to be honest.
For more visual insights of Chemnitz, check my Pinterest board: http://pinterest.com/ilanaontheroad/chemnitz/
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