Places that I have visited so far on my trips and journeys I can divide into two categories. Among those in which I fell in love immediately upon arrival and those where I could hardly wait for the day of my departure.
Through the window of the train a little place under the grey sky, with grey buildings and grey castle was suggesting that it could easily take the first place in the second category. Even my first steps onto the main square revealed no chemistry between us. "What am I even doing here?!" was my first thought when I finally settled in a small town in the heart of Germany, Marburg, where so far Lomonosov, brothers Grimm and for the next five months also I have studied.
Marburg an der Lahn is certainly not a typical
German town. If you ask the inhabitants they will tell you that it is not even a typical city. Among 70 thousand inhabitants as many as three-quarters of them are students, brushing their skills on the oldest Protestant university in the world, established way back in 1527. All residents are in one way or another embedded in the Philipps university. No wonder that the city was in March, in the middle of the exam period, completely empty and so I named it the Ghost Town.
Then, with the beginning of the semester, everything changed and the city was simply revived. Every corner was filled with students rushing back and forth from cafeteria to their classes. Due to the overcrowding of the university many of my lectures were held in a building, similar to a family house. I soon found out that the weekends always began the same way, with gathering at Lahntreppen on the bank of river Lahn, which lazily flows throughout the city, and ended at the final station in Cavett, a bar that is not worthy of the title. Because there are a lot of international students in the city, the visitor quickly gets a feeling of diverse range of languages, customs and religions.
Although in terms of the population Marburg can be compared to the Slovenian city Maribor, with which it is incidentally also twinned, the city gives an impression that it is much smaller. When you embark down the street from the Elizabeth Church past the pastry Venezia, where they undoubtedly serve the best ice cream in town, and when you turn right at the coffee shop Paprica, towards the town hall, you realize that you have been slightly moving upward all the time. If from there you carry on your journey between traditional houses, built in the so-called Lattice wooden building, towards the Lutheran church, your climb becomes more demanding, until there are only a few more dozen stairs leading to the castle. On top awaits a wonderful view, where you surprisingly realize that the town is not that small after all.
Soon it became clear to me that Marburg is something special. This is a city that is constantly seeking a compromise between the romantic Middle Ages and modernity of a recognized university. It is a city where you at every step can meet a blind or visually impaired person and wonder about how they can so confidently manage their movements in this everyday urban chaos. The city is particularly adapted to them as here is the seat of the German study centre for blind and visually impaired. You quickly get used to moving to the right as soon as you hear the sound of the white cane, hitting the pavement, you get used to giving up the first seats on the bus, and you soon you find nothing unusual about speaking schedules at the bus stops.
Marburg is also the place where hardly a day goes by without rain and when you finally get used to it arrives the summer, with all its heat and hordes of tourists, cramming the old town Oberstadt, sitting at taverns and drink a beer or enjoying a typical 'auflauf' for lunch.
It was an August morning, almost half a year later, when I sat on the train and from my sight the little town with its engaging buildings and majestic castle, bathing in the sun, was disappearing. It is true that it was not love at first sight, even at the first step or even love at the first sent postcard, but we quickly found a compromise and just before my Marburg finally disappeared from my sight, I was confident in knowing that this is the best student city in the world.
