Life in the town of Erfurt

First off, I'm impressed with the new function which forces you to type in some keywords before starting a new topic.

So, my new topic is to people who LIVES in Erfurt, how do you like it there? I wonder if it's a nice place to live in. It would be great if anyone of you have lived in Munich or Hamburg and let know what Erfurt has/not have as compared to Munich or Hamburg since I live/d in these 2 cities before. I like the compact-ness of Munich, the rivers/streams of HH... I don't really want to try all the cities in Germany but I might have to spend 3 years in Erfurt if I decide on a postgraduate so I just want to know from the "locals" there how it is like living there.

I read in the other thread that there is an English cinema - good - and a couple of English Stammtisch. I guess I'm interested to know:
- the "mentality" of Erfurters;
- the standard of living since it's near/was in the East;
- the situation with the Neo-Nazis (somewhat covered in another topic too);

I know it's very subjective but I'm interested to hear them.

I have visited Erfurt. It is a medium sized provincial city, it has some nice buildings and a nice cathedral. You can't compare it with Munich or Hamburg at all. To be honest you can't even compare it with Leipzig either.

Compared to Leeds it's a rather pleasant city.

Compared to Leeds, Baghdad is a rather pleasant city!

One of my favorite cities in Germany.. Very quaint, old half-timber style houses, the Krämerbrücke is nice, etc.. I also like Thüringers the best of all Germans.. In Thüringia the people tend to be more laid back and down to earth. A minor example to illustrate - you can go downtown wearing hiking boots and have a coffee at a nice cafe. and read the paper., and some snobby plastic surgery bitch won't stare down her plastic looking nose at you for being so crass as to not give a shit what she thinks... Lots of cool stuff in the surrounding area - very green..., etc.. Kind of the Colorado of Germany, if you know what I mean.. Outdoorsy, relaxed.. I dig Thüringen...

Oh it's lovely on the surface, but scratch a bit deeper and it becomes deeply provincial, which is why Erfurt and (in particular) Weimar was one of the launching spots of the Nazi party. In complete contrast to Munich, there is virtually no expat scene there. To use a bit of Denglisch, this is Germany-pure. I'm not saying this a bad thing, but you need to be fully integrated into the country (and in particular the people) yourself for such a move to work.

Well unfortunately "provincial" in Europe tends to mean "not too run over with loud mouthed annoying Americans and Brits.."

And as for Weimar and Erfurt - Thüringen in general - IMO it's not only the green heart of Germany, but in many ways the cultural heart as well - Goethe and Schiller were much here(the Goethe stuff in Weimar is great..), Luther at the Wartburg, Nietzsche in Weimar, Wagerian myths set here (Meistersinger von Nürnberg or Tannhäuser, one of those...), Bach was born in Eisenach, old universities in Jena and Erfurt, Napoleanic history in Jena and Erfurt, etc etc... Expand that a little to Saxony and a few places a tad "east", and you get Händel from Halle, Mendohlson-Bartholdy in Leipzig, Luther in Wittenberg, Grimm brothers and all the fairy tales set in the Harz, etc etc...

Naziism really got started in Munich btw...

But back to Erfurt.. I anyway definitely don't want to see more Americans and Brits coming over.. So yeah, it's just full of lazy unemployed old communist hard-liners and neo-nazis and big ugly grey buildings.. - a cultural and physical wasteland of ignorant xenophobes...

Oh I agree with you about the region being the cultural centre of Germany. But an expat asked what life is like there and my opinion is that an expat might struggle there, Goethe or no Goethe. That's why I stick to visiting the region.

To each his own.. Our reasoning is kind of opposite - I love visiting Munich, but don't know about living there..

But yeah, you are right in that respect, it would be nice now and then I suppose to have a more extensive ex-pat scene - like when I lived in Prague or Tokyo.. It can be harder in more provincial places to find larger groups of people to hang out with.. In Prague I was getting invited to ex-pat X-mas parties within like two months of living there... Tokyo same kind of deal..

There are currently more native English-speakers in Baghdad as well