Magdeburg, Germany

If you look at a large fold-out map of the VBB (Verkehrsberbund Berlin-Brandenburg, the regional transit provider for Berlin and its suburbs), you’ll find Brandenburg on the western end of the map. Travel 90 minutes by train west of that and you’ll get to Magdeburg.

It’s easy to see why its marketed as the ‘church city’ of Magdeburg with a stroll along the Schleinufer. My tip would be to get off the train at Magdeburg-Neustadt, which is just shy of the town centre. An easy 10-minute bike ride will bring you to Universitätsplatz featuring the most attractive classical and modern sights of Alte Neustadt – the old new city.

Sandwiched between the newly renovated campus of Otto-von-Guericke University and the century-old opera house, Universitätsplatz is bisected by a quiet tram route. As you cycle south along the tram tracks, you’ll eventually get into the old part of the old city where the Rathaus and the traditional town market is.

There, you may find seasonal foods available, such as horse sausages, horse steak, horse patties, and horse ham. It has a stronger flavour than beef, but a texture similar to lean beef, soldiers in WWI used to have to eat their horses when food supplies ran low. There’s also a statue of Roland in a suit of armour holding a sword, he’s some local guy that died in 778.

Back on the tram tracks, another five minutes south are a wall of splendid Soviet-style apartment blocks just like the ones on Karl-Marx Allee in East Berlin. Interestingly, the neo-gothic courthouse cum post office is opposite the famous Green Citadel designed by architect Hundertwasser. It was the last artistic building he designed, with construction completed five years after his death.

At the next block, turn left to venture down to the River Elbe to visit the Bastion Gebhardt and Magdeburg Cathedral. First built in the 1300s, this fortification, along with the church, city gates, and palace are among the oldest buildings in Germany to still stand in its complement as a complex.

Along the Elbe you’ll find the Chapel of our Lady, the Magdeburg Cathedral, the Magdalene Chapel, the Wallonener Church, the St. Peter’s Church, John’s Church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. (All loosely translated into English from their original German names.) The quiet riverside churches are what earns Magdeburg its title of being a ‘church city’.

Cross the calm River Elbe with the decommissioned Hubbrücke railway bridge to get to the modernist Magdeburg city hall. Together with the now-abandoned Hyperschale exhibition hall built in 1969 and a then forward-thinking design on Albinmüller Turm for a lighthouse in 1927, the modernist glass and steel structures remind visitors of a time when the Soviets were a real threat to the Western way of life.

Cross back to the centre of Magdeburg on the narrow Sternbrücke and call it a day. Maybe enjoy your horse sausage on the banks of the Elbe.