On Monday evenings in the autumn of 1989, thousands of people gathered at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig after the prayers for peace and walked around the ring road with candles, chanting that they were the people. The East German state could have sent in the tanks, and did not, and within weeks the Berlin Wall had fallen. Leipzig is proud of that, and rightly. The church still stands in its quiet square, with a classical interior of slender palm-like pillars in pastel colours, and a plaque outside records the demonstrations.
The city's older fame is musical and commercial. Johann Sebastian Bach spent the last twenty-seven years of his life here as cantor of the Thomaskirche, writing and directing music for the choir, the Thomanerchor, which still sings there on Fridays and Saturdays. Mendelssohn and Schumann also worked in the city, and Wagner was born here. As a trading city, Leipzig held a major fair from the Middle Ages, and the arcaded passages in the centre are the descendants of the merchants' courtyards. Auerbachs Keller, a cellar restaurant, appears in Goethe's Faust as the place where Mephistopheles amuses the students with wine and tricks, and a pair of bronze figures at the entrance tell the story.
Outside, the Monument to the Battle of the Nations, a massive stone colossus completed in 1913, marks the site of Napoleon's defeat in 1813. South of the city, old open-cast lignite mines have been flooded to form a chain of lakes, and the new lake district is a popular place for cycling, sailing and swimming. The roads around Leipzig run flat and straight through farmland, with plenty of avenues of trees and long views, and the riding gets better to the south and west, where the land begins to roll toward Saxony's hills.
Leipzig has more than half a million people, with fuel stations throughout, a lively café scene and a growing reputation among young people. Try Leipziger Allerlei, a vegetable stew with crayfish tails, and the local sour beer called Gose, which tastes of salt and coriander. Traffic is heavy on the ring road, and trams use the centre, so mind the rails in wet weather. Spring and early autumn are the best seasons, and the festival of lights in October draws crowds.