Volunteers for Chemnitz 2025 publish reports on their experiences, assignments and adventures around the European Capital of Culture.
Maria is Italian and has lived in Chemnitz for around six years. She has been volunteering for the European Capital of Culture since 2023 and loves welcoming guests from Italy.
On 2 April 2025, I had the pleasure and honour of accompanying five Italian journalists to Chemnitz. I had the perfect partner at my side: Peter Strauss, a German who was born in Chemnitz but speaks excellent Italian.
Peter and I arrived at the hotel on time and met Michela Nicolussi Moro, a journalist from the "Corriere della Sera", one of the most important national daily newspapers. Michela doesn't look like a typical Italian, she spoke to me in perfect German. Shortly afterwards, Maria Grazia Leporati arrived, the eldest of the group, who writes for three important national newspapers. Margherita Grotta was the youngest in the group and speaks fluent English. She writes for a travel website aimed mainly at families. As I know my way around her field, I knew what was important to her and asked two particularly well-informed counsellors ;-), Teresa (5 years) and Aurelia (9 years), which sights in Chemnitz are particularly popular with children and young people. I was happy to pass on this information. Margherita was immediately enthusiastic and very grateful. Giovanni Bosi, another guest in Chemnitz, is editor-in-chief of the "Turismo Italia" portal, which mainly specialises in tourism. And then there was Domenico Vita, who works in television and publishes programmes on "Canale Italia".
One of our destinations that day was the Garage Campus. When we arrived there, we were warmly welcomed by Tina Winkel, who introduced us to the project. The journalists responded enthusiastically.
One of the guests' big wishes was to visit the penguins, a group of penguin sculptures in Innere Klosterstraße, which they had already heard about. We were happy to fulfil their wish. From there we went on to the Karl Marx Monument.
At the end of the city tour, we said goodbye. However, we stayed in touch because the journalists had set up a WhatsApp chat in which I continued to receive updates on the articles they had written and answer their questions about Chemnitz.