In Jim's Opinion: Thursday, 1/16

I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet.

Earlier this week the New York Times put out their “52 Places to Visit in 2020” list, places that a traveler should explore that they may not have before thought of visiting. It was a nice, diverse list of places around the planet, places mostly chosen for their historical sites and/or their dedication to climate change. Therefore, I'm not totally surprised that one of my favorites places in Germany made the list.

But like I said, I don't know how I feel about Leipzig making the list. Especially just a few months before we go back.

I mean, don't get me wrong—I think more people need to know about the city, and the beauty and history it contains. It's an amazing place, and I'm really looking forward to doing a little more exploring of it in a couple of months (oh, and seeing the soccer match that's the primary purpose for the trip, too). But it's one of those things that's both good and bad, something to which we here in Marquette can attest. As soon as you get featured in an article like this (especially a spotlight article in one of the world's biggest newspapers) people descend upon you.

Sometimes, they descend upon you a lot.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a place (like Marquette) that has a huge tourism industry. Leipzig's a city like that; in the past couple of years, people have been discovering the charm and beauty of the city, leading it to be referred to by some as “Hypezig”. That may account for the reaction in the city when the story was announced. On some of the Leipzig city and tourism Facebook pages the second reaction after “like” or “love” was the angry face. I can understand that for a couple of reasons, the first being I know what it's like when American tourists run roughshod over a foreign place (like the ones Loraine and I saw in France one year complaining (quite loudly) about how the locals eat a lot of cheese). Americans...how I can say this...can be a little, well, uncouth at times.

Let's just leave it at that.

The other reason I can agree with those angry faces? It's a purely personal reason. Not a lot of people know about Leipzig, and it was kind of a little secret that Loraine and I had, a place that was unfamiliar to most and a place that we could show off. Now our secret will be spilled. I realize that happens with secrets, and that can actually be a good thing.

But it won't be something unique to us.

Not that that matters. We're still going in just over three months, and no amount of newspaper hype will take away a view like this--