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Nine reasons why Leipzig lives up to its hype

Berlin’s gritty bohemian allure has long appealed to voguish creative types. But its popularity has come at a cost. The city has undergone rapid gentrification, you’re as likely to hear English on the streets as German and, despite strict rent control laws, rental prices have soared.

Nine reasons why Leipzig lives up to its hype
Photo: "Pusteblumen" Fountain Sculpture by Andreas Schmidt

If you want to experience Berlin as it was at its height of cool in the ’90s…you might have missed your chance. Rather, look to Leipzig for your fix of modern-day German bohemia. The up-and-coming city in Saxony ticks all the boxes that made Berlin so achingly hip to begin with — plus a thriving economy and a less competitive job market. 

Presenting nine reasons why Leipzig lives up to its hype.

It’s like Berlin…20 years ago

How is it that Germany’s eighth-biggest city has, in recent years, become hailed as ‘the new Berlin’? The reality is that Leipzig is less like the Berlin of the present day, and more like Berlin ‘back in the day’.

Click here to find out more about living in Leipzig

Leipzig is small and typically German – but it’s also liberal and international. There’s a certain unfinished charm to the city; its coffee houses are more shabby chic than hipster cool and many forgotten factories – relics of East Germany – have been converted into creative spaces, like the Spinnerei, an old-cotton-mill-cum-artistic-complex in the cool Plagwitz district. 

Photos: Leipzig town by Paul Kapischka on Unsplash (Top, left). Andreas Schmidt: Lake Kulkwitz (Bottom, left), Lake Cospuden – Bistumshöhe (Right)

It’s young (but far from dumb)

Leipzig is Germany’s fastest-growing city with its population predicted to rise by 16 percent between now and 2035. Since 2005, it’s welcomed 110,000 new inhabitants, no doubt lured in by the cheap rent and eclectic, open-minded community. Today, Leipzig’s population is predominantly young – the average age is 42 – and educated – nearly a third have university degrees. 

There’s a thriving art and music scene

Leipzig suffered a period of stagnation following the fall of the Wall. In a mass exodus, around 100,000 people – 25 percent of its population – left the city. Its abandoned buildings are finally being renovated and reoccupied, with many creatives taking advantage of the cheap studio spaces. Among them is Neo Rauch, one of the most internationally recognised contemporary painters. 

The Highfield Festival draws a crowd of 35,000 visitors annually, while the Wave Gothic Festival is the largest of its kind – painting the whole city black each year. Leipzig is a city of artists and musicians with a techno scene to rival Berlin’s. Last year, its most-famous nightclub Institut für Zukunft won Germany’s prestigious Spielstätte des Jahres (Venue of the Year) award and in August 2018, Leipzig authorities passed a law to abolish closing time for nightclubs, officially making it the city that doesn’t sleep. 

It has a lively student life

Leipzig is a buzzing student city with around 40,000 students enrolled at its various academic institutions. Angela Merkel herself is a graduate of the University of Leipzig — along with German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. 

Aside from the main university, there are several options for higher education in Leipzig. Art students can enroll in courses at the Academy of Fine Arts, one of Germany’s oldest art academies; the University of Music and Theatre ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ offers programs in music and acting; and students at Leipzig University of Applied Sciences can take courses in subjects ranging from engineering to the cultural sciences. The HHL is Germany’s oldest business school, today churning out entrepreneurs for the digital age.

Photo: Andreas Schmidt: Leipzig University Library reading room (Left), Leipzig Central Station – Promenades (Right)

The UK’s Lancaster University has also recently established a campus in the city so that international students can continue to study there post-Brexit.

Career opportunities galore

Leipzig’s economy is going from strength to strength. The city has developed an impressive reputation for all things tech, energy and environment, mobility and creative. It’s an innovative research hub with a strong profile in life science and home to the Translational Centre for Regenerative Medicine and one of Europe’s largest stem cell banks.

Click here to find out more about opportunities in Leipzig

Tech companies like Nextbike and trivago have established in the city – providing plenty of opportunities for local and international tech talent – while behemoths like Porsche, BMW and Amazon are all investing in Leipzig. 

Leipzig has also become a magnet for startup founders with an estimated 200-250 startups currently operating in the city. There are plenty of incubators and co-working spaces fueling its sense of community and collaboration and providing fledgeling businesses with both premises and expertise. In fact, Leipzig offers some of the lowest office rental prices and the highest number of flex space operators among Germany’s second-tier cities.

You can afford it

Photo: Andreas Schmidt: Plagwitz – Buntgarnwerke (Left), Classic Open in the market (Right)

Despite strict rent control laws, you can still expect to pay €12 per square meter for accomodation in Berlin. It’s even steeper in Hamburg where you’ll fork out €12.40 per square meter. In Leipzig, it’s just €6.70 per square meter – on average you’ll pay €512 for a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre – so you can more comfortably afford an inner-city life.

It’s great for families

Leipzig isn’t solely made up of hip 20-somethings. It’s very family-friendly with plenty of public support to make family life in the city easier and more fulfilling. There are many public and independent schools, including bilingual kindergartens and schools as well as several childcare centres teaching English, French, Spanish, Arabic or Russian. 

There’s tons of family fun, too. There are lots of green spaces – like Clara Zetkin Park, a merger of four parks in the south of the city – and many leisure activities for kids like family-friendly museums, the city zoo and the Schreberbad – Leipzig’s oldest bathing facility. 

Outdoorsy types

Leipzig is one of the greenest cities in Germany with many beautiful parks in the city itself. The city’s old industrial canals and nearby lake district also provide ample opportunity for fans of canoeing or water sports like surfing.

Moreover, there’s plenty of nature to discover in the greater Leipzig Region. There are more than 20 wild swimming spots, educational forest centres and a dense network of cycle paths and hiking routes. The 30-kilometer Healthland ‘beaver tour’ on the Düben Heath runs from Bad Düben to Bad Scmiedeberg and takes you through superb pine groves, gently rolling landscapes and, with some luck, you might even spot a few beavers along the way.

It’s well connected 

Leipzig is easily reached by rail, air and bus. It has its own international airport which is under 20 kilometres from the city centre and is only a two-hour drive from Berlin Tegel airport. It’s just an hour and fifteen minutes by train from Berlin and benefits in many ways from its closeness to the capital.

The city itself is still largely pedestrianised and the best way to get around is on foot or by bike. In 2018, 156 million passengers used the city’s trams and buses and a €30 million investment into Leipzig’s infrastructure aims to improve the efficiency of its public transport system. 

Click here to find out about opportunities in Leipzig

This article was produced by The Local Creative Studio and sponsored by Invest Region Leipzig.

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REVEALED: The German mobile companies with the best – and worst – coverage

Germany is known for its patchy connectivity. But which mobile providers can help you avoid the dreaded 'no signal' sign - and which is it best to steer clear of? The answer partly depends on where you live.

REVEALED: The German mobile companies with the best - and worst - coverage

If you’ve ever found yourself in a German town swaying your phone from left to right to try and get a bar of signal, it’s likely you’ve encountered what the Germans call a Funkloch – or dead zone in English.

According to the Federal Network Agency (BNA), these dead zones with no mobile reception can still be found in 2.6 percent of Germany – though this is declining gradually from year to year.

Slightly more worrying are the areas where just one or two of the three major mobile operators can provide connectivity. This year, just under a fifth (16.7 percent) of Germany counted as one of these ‘grey zones’, meaning customers with the wrong provider may just find themselves out of luck in pretty large swathes of the country.

Though progress is definitely being made on this front – almost a quarter of Germany was a grey zone as recently as 2022 – things aren’t moving fast enough for the BNA.

In September, it announced that it would be taking legal action against the three major mobile providers – Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica (O2) – over their failure to expand 4G connectivity quickly enough.

While around 90 percent of the country enjoys access to 5G, there are apparently around 500 gaps in the 4G networks where people are unable to get internet speeds of 100 Mbps or more – a speed generally considered ‘fast’ internet. The mobile companies have claimed that these are impossible to fill but the BNA rejects this explanation, saying antennas could have been put up in many of the regions in question.

With the battles raging over when – and how – the country can enter the 21st century, it may feel like having a bad connectivity in Germany is simply a fact of life.

Nevertheless, there are important differences to know about between the three major providers.

Who has the best and worst coverage?

According to multiple consumer advice agencies, Deutsche Telekom continues to top the league tables as the provider with the best mobile and internet coverage throughout the country.

In a recent connectivity test by Connect, the mobile company achieved 98.75 percent coverage for calls and 94.75 percent coverage for internet throughout Germany. According to digital magazine Chip, Telekom also offers 87.15 percent availability of 5G. 

On the speed side, Telekom also came out top, with speeds of almost 300 Mbps achieved on most 5G networks. In general, Stiftung Warentest gave Telekom a ‘grade’ of 1.6 for its overall coverage, with 1.0 being the highest mark and 4.0 the lowest.

READ ALSO: Fact check: Is Germany’s internet really that bad?

Vodafone, meanwhile, landed in second place in all four of the tests carried out by consumer rights agencies. Connect found a slight drop in coverage compared to Telekom: for calls, 94.75 percent coverage was available, and internet coverage stood at 89.75 percent. 

Vodafone Düsseldorf

A Voafone shop in Düsseldorf advertises deals on internet. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Henning Kaiser

Maximum speeds were also slightly lower with Vodafone, with download speeds of 205.81 Mbps reported on 5G networks. These networks were also a bit harder to come by, with an 83.5 percent availability of 5G networks compared to Telekom’s 94.75 percent. 

All of this resulted in Stiftung Warentest giving Vodafone a grade of 1.7 percent for its overall coverage and internet speeds. 

At the bottom of the rung comes Telefonica, or O2, which despite recent expansion efforts still lags behind its two competitors in terms of coverage.

According to Connect’s testing, O2 offers just 86.5 percent internet coverage around the country with maximum speeds of just 133 Mbps – less than half of what Telekom can offer on its 5G networks. In addition, 5G was available on O2 just 70 percent of the time. 

For people who prefer making calls to browsing the internet, O2 does provide a slightly better service than Vodafone, however. When it comes to calls, mobile users with O2 can expect 95.75 percent coverage, compared to Vodafone’s 94.75 percent. 

READ ALSO: More than half of Germans regularly experience bad mobile coverage

Are there any regional differences?

Though there isn’t necessary a blanket rule for which regions offer the best connectivity outside of the cities, a glance at some 2020 date from the Federal Network Agency can give you a rough idea.

According to the BNA, Telekom meets the requirements for connectivity in at least 97 percent of households in the majority of the federal states. Specifically, it was able to hit this threshold in every state except the southwestern states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland.

Vodafone also hit the 97 percent target in the majority of federal states, with the exception of Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland. 

Telefonica’s results, however, were a bit more disappointing: the O2 provider only met the required threshold in the three city states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg. According to a coverage map by Forbes, O2 is particularly patchy in eastern states like Mecklenburg Western Pomerania and Saxony along the Czech and Polish borders. 

How can I check what’s best in my region? 

As a general rule of thumb, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone may be the best options for people who travel regularly or live in a smaller town or in the country side.

For someone in a bigger city, O2 is generally just as good, and you can orientate yourself more according to pricing and deals rather than coverage. 

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: How Germany is trying to tackle its slow internet problem

However, if you want to be really sure that you’re getting the best coverage possible in your region, you can check the connectivity maps of each of the three major providers.

You can find out the coverage for Deutsche Telekom here, Vodafone here and Telefonica/O2 here to give you a concrete idea of what gives you the best deal in your postcode. 

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