But this time not for a gig, a conference, or any other work reason. This time it was a trip to spend time with an old friend and rediscover the city along the way. I honestly can’t remember anymore when my path first led me to Manchester. But it’s been many years now.
Walking the city with him, a city I thought I knew inside out, opened up angles I hadn’t seen before. What pleased me most was hearing him say Manchester had surprised him, and in a good way. The city was nothing like he’d pictured.
Manchester surprises me every single time, and always for the better. On my first visit, the city still felt like it was somewhere in the middle of working itself out after Thatcher. Back then, unemployment was visible on every corner, in the people, in the buildings. It sounds odd to put it this way, but there was a feeling of “this city is broken” hanging in the air. As the world’s first purely industrial city, Manchester was hit particularly hard by the destruction of its industry and the forced shift into a service economy. Like many other cities, Manchester had to reinvent itself. These days, mind you, it’s not all sunshine either. The city faces real challenges around homelessness and how to actually help people. Spice, the cheap synthetic drug, is a problem too, and one that’s visible right in the city centre, especially after dark.
Walking through the city today, I’m surprised at every corner by how much is new, how much life there is. That wasn’t the case just a few years ago. For close to five years now, Manchester has been growing upwards. There are no restrictions on building height, and more importantly, Manchester doesn’t need to clear planning permissions with central government. What I like about it is that the buildings are creative. In Germany we mostly build shoeboxes, painstakingly “space optimised”. Here, buildings come in all sorts of geometric shapes. Whether I actually like them is another question, I’m still torn. But Manchester, a city with more than 80,000 students and a growing number of jobs in media and tech, needs housing. And on that front, it’s doing rather well.
What stands out is that Manchester is a city built for pedestrians and cyclists. And Manchester doesn’t sit around debating, Manchester just gets on with it. Streets are turned into one-way roads for cars so a single lane can be consistently converted into a two-lane cycle path. Plenty of city centre streets are set up this way now, and the physical separation from car traffic gives cyclists real protection. In Berlin, cycle lanes, not even full roads, are being ripped out again. Absolute madness. And the sheer simplicity of using public transport here has no equal in Berlin. I don’t need to buy a ticket. I don’t need to study a machine and get to know it intimately. For a tram ride, I just tap my card on a reader before boarding, tap in, and again when I get off, tap out. Another eye opener: every single tram stop is wheelchair accessible. It really could all be this simple.
The best way to get to know Manchester is on a walking tour. This time round I joined one that started in Ancoats, once the centre of textile processing and the industrial heart of the city. From there it moved through the Northern Quarter, “Bohemian Heaven”, and on into the Medieval Quarter. The city’s history goes back as far as 79 AD, when the first Romans settled in what’s now the Roman Quarter and founded a fort.
The Northern Quarter holds particular significance for me, home as it is to several wonderful vinyl record stores. I have to set myself a limit before I go in every single time, because there’s always some rarity waiting to be found. In Manchester, keeping an eye out for something special from New Order or Joy Division is, for me, non-negotiable. This time’s find was a clear vinyl edition of “The Perfect Kiss” by New Order, discovered at Piccadilly Records during a spontaneous last-minute stop on the way to the airport.
What’s special about this city, for me, is that everything is within walking distance. And when your feet demand a break, you simply duck into one of the countless cafés. There’s absolutely no reason to stop at a branch of some international coffee chain, support the small cafés instead. I don’t have a single favourite café in Manchester, there are simply too many good ones. This visit, the ones that stuck with me were Pot Kettle Black in Barton Arcade, Black Sheep Coffee in Spinningfields, and Federal Café Bar. Most of them do a properly good breakfast or brunch too. By afternoon the temptations only grow, tempting sweet treats waiting round practically every corner.
What touches me most about Manchester, everywhere I go, is the sheer matter-of-factness with which diversity is lived here, which sits so oddly against what you hear about the topic in the media, especially within the UK itself. That matter-of-factness feels to me almost like a form of lived resistance. I walk down streets where I hear more languages in a few minutes than in an entire day in most German cities, Urdu, Arabic, Polish, Punjabi, Chinese, and nobody so much as glances twice. And wandering through the Gay Village on Canal Street, I feel something that doesn’t read as a statement, but simply as everyday life.
That’s why Manchester holds a special place for me among UK cities. Different again from London, different again from Cardiff. Another city that’s quietly worked its way into my heart, another reason why I love the UK so much and feel so at home here.
And if you only have time for one museum, make it the People’s History Museum. It’s not a box to tick for the sake of it, it’s a place that shows you exactly why Manchester is the way it is: a city fought for from below, by working women, by suffragettes, by trade unions, by people who took to the streets for their rights. If you want to understand why this city carries diversity and defiance so naturally, this is where you’ll find the answer. For me, it was the moment on this trip that cast everything else in a slightly different light. Go. No question.
Travel. And stay curious.
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