Saxony, Germany

Saxony is the eastern state with the most culture and the least money, and it has been managing that contradiction for thirty years. Dresden is the baroque city rebuilt from rubble with the Neustadt bar district across the river; Leipzig is the creative city where Berlin's artists went when Berlin got expensive; Chemnitz is the industrial city that has struggled most and has recently rebranded itself in a genuinely strange and interesting way; Görlitz is the perfectly preserved old town on the Polish border that German film production uses as a standing set for every period piece; Meissen makes the porcelain that gave the world the word; and the Erzgebirge is the mountain range with the wood-carving and Christmas-market tradition.

The state's character is eastern German — noticeably cheaper than the west, politically more complicated than most, with a real DIY and alternative culture in Leipzig and Dresden that grew out of the post-reunification emptiness. The Saxon dialect is distinctive and mocked by the rest of the country.

Expect real value-for-money confidence, genuine bar-district content, and a state where a lot of what Germany thinks of as its culture actually came from.

Nearby: Dresden Leipzig Berlin Brandenburg