My love for the Bauhaus kicked in exactly ten years ago, when the design school celebrated the 90^th anniversary of its foundation in Weimar. Until then, my knowledge about it had been fairly superficial and I mainly associated it with architecture and its founder Walter Gropius. But then a Bauhaus exhibition came to London’s Barbican and a whole new Bauhaus world opened up to me. One that encompasses so much more than architecture.

I still remember the moment I caught a glimpse of a gorgeous, colourful wall-hanging by textile artist Gunta Stölzl, one of the few Bauhaus women who managed to step out of the shadow of the roster of mighty Bauhaus men to achieve international acclaim. Another lasting memory from that exhibition is not a Bauhaus art and design object but a black and white picture of a group of young laughing Bauhäusler, joyful, mucking about, clearly having fun. It perfectly captured the spirit of that particular moment in time, that notion of not just doing things differently in art and design, but in life, too.

Ever since then I’ve been convinced that the Bauhaus is the coolest thing to have come out of Germany. I’m fascinated by how modern it was 100 years ago and how timeless it remains today. Its idea that form follows function has travelled round the world, inspired the likes of Apple and Ikea, as well as countless everyday designs that surround us. And I somehow feel that the approach of the Bauhaus founders, teachers and artists of tearing down boundaries that existed between disciplines, establishing a whole new approach to art and design that has collaboration and knowledge sharing at its heart, is more relevant than ever in this digital era, where boundaries are blurred and things are forever changing.

The international take-up of this year’s Bauhaus centenary is quite amazing and almost no day goes by that I don’t read about a Bauhaus-related exhibition, book or project somewhere in the world. I guess I’m not the only one who has a bit of a soft spot for it!

Very high on my personal Bauhaus list of things to see is the new Bauhaus Museum Weimar in the central German state of Thuringia, opening on 6 April, which will sit at the centre of a new “Modernism Quarter” and house the world’s oldest Bauhaus collection. And a slightly off-the-beaten track building in neighbouring Saxony called Haus Schminke, which was built in the small town of Löbau in 1932/33 by architect Hans Scharoun for a local manufacturer, and still looks SO modern you wouldn’t believe it. Architecture experts list it as one of the four most important residential homes of classical Modernism in the world, in line with buildings by Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

And if someone then also got me one of those Gunta Stölzl wall hangings, I’d really be chuffed to bits…

Interested in a Bauhaus trail? The Cultural Heart of Germany, a tourism initiative of Saxony and Thuringia, features dedicated Bauhaus content, including a Bauhaus road trip.

The town of Mittweida lies in deepest Saxony about 50km west of Dresden. Although it has a modest population of around 11,000, it nevertheless has its own museum, the Alte Pfarrhäuser, housed in a converted old vicarage about a hundred metres from the pretty town centre.

We have been travelling to this part of Germany for 10 years now and visit the museum most years. Indeed, I strongly suspect that we might be the only English visitors the museum has ever had. So, what is so wonderful about this museum that keeps drawing us back?

Firstly, even though it is a local foundation, almost everything is done to the highest standards. Display cases are modern and beautifully made, information panels detailed and the story of the town is well told with a range of artefacts, paintings, photographs, models, rooms and documents.

Secondly, it changes a bit every year. Rooms are updated with new displays and items added, and there is nearly always a temporary exhibition. This year it was an exhibition of the work of a photographer from the region, and in a previous year, for example, there was a tongue-in-cheek exhibition on ‘Sachsische sprache’, the Saxon dialect.

The building itself has been beautifully restored and has a pretty garden, so it feels like visiting a lovely old house rather than a museum. Some of its rooms are meticulous recreations of historical living and work spaces in and around the town, focusing on the agriculture and cottage industries that sustained the region before industrialisation. A weaver’s room with its loom is on display, as well as a full set of shoemakers tools and lasts. We were fascinated to see how the many-angled pitched roofs of the town are mainly a result of adding extensions to the height and depth of the buildings, to make extra working and living space inside.

The museum also explains the unusual structure of some of the local villages, which sometimes have two or more parallel streets in the valley not far from the stream. At one time most houses would have owned a strip of land running from their property up the side of the valley and onto higher ground. Some families still own these strips of land, usually arable these days, and rent them to larger farms in the area.

Last summer we had a special treat. Having visited the museum, once more dramatically increasing the number of UK visitors, we decided to sit in the garden for a while and look out over the roofs of the town. After a time, one of the staff came out and offered us coffee. The table was beautifully laid and cups, saucers, coffee and biscuits were provided. We sat in the shade on a lovely day, in a lovely place, enjoying the sunlit view and conversation about just how good a small museum in Germany can be.

I’m not sure where locals go to buy milk and bread in the town of Seiffen, not far from the Czech border in Saxony, because as far as I could see the entire place is devoted to the manufacture and sale of hundreds of little wooden figures. Accordingly, a visit there is an astonishing and rather surreal experience.

There are literally dozens of shops, large and small devoted to all things wooden and German. Prices for this Erzgebirge Holzkunst (woodcraft from the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains) range from a few to many thousands of Euros for complex and sometimes frighteningly large models. Nearly all are made locally with several workshops in and around the town.

I believe the current industry developed from people in the 18^th century supplementing their income by making wooden toys and figures in the winter months, rather in the way that cuckoo clocks came into being in the Black Forest. These toys and figures proved popular with travellers and the trade spread and grew into an important industry and a major employer in the region. There is a museum in the town that tracks this development.

On a personal note, I discovered that a box of wooden bricks I played with as a child and branded from a UK retailer was almost certainly made in the area – I saw an almost identical set in the museum which had been made during the DDR times in the 1950s.

A lot of the production is aimed at Christmas Markets around the country. Personal favourites are the little Christmas advent models with a windmill on top driven by the warm air from the lighted candles beneath. With just one candle lit, the figures rotate slowly but by Christmas Day the kings and shepherds are racing around the crib scene with dizzying speed. Enchanting.

There are many different styles of figures but perhaps the most remarkable place for them is the hushed interior of the Wendt and Kuhn shop where the reverence with which the figures are treated might seem funny, but actually feels sincere and captivating. Tiny, and beautifully made, angels playing trumpets and little girls carrying flowers are presented in cabinets as if they were fine jewellery. There is a film that shows how the figures are made and if you indicate that you would like to buy one, the assistant places four choices of that figure in front of you. You then inspect them closely and select the one with the individually painted expression you like the best.

We parted with quite a lot of money.

It’s tempting to concentrate on the city of Leipzig’s grand cultural and musical heritage and simply to start name-dropping, since some of the world’s most eminent musical figures and institutions are part and parcel of the city’s history: Bach, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Schumann, the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the St Thomas’ Boys Choir. However, as important as all these most certainly are, 21st century Leipzig is a city that merges a number of ingredients into a very appealing urban cocktail (and lots of hidden treasures) – such as easy-going street life, innovative leisure ideas, impressive art nouveau and Renaissance architecture, plentiful green spaces plus a genuine fondness by the inhabitants for their city that is pleasingly evident in everyday life.

Just over an hour south of Berlin, locals call Leipzig ‘LE’, sounding like ‘LA’ in German. Fortunately, this is where the similarity with the US megalopolis ends since Leipzig has a proper city centre made for walking and exploring, whilst LA does not.

This is a city with a history that dates back more than 1,000 years and is still extremely buzzing. After Leipzig’s big birthday bash for the city’s 1000th anniversary in 2015, one might think the party is over but far from it: the city of books and music is as lively as ever and each year offers a calendar full of festivals and events.

The historical centre inside the so-called Ring which follows the old town fortification covers one square kilometre and is a maze of wide pedestrianised zones, small cobble-stoned lanes and a whole network of courtyards, passages or arcades and palatial trade fair halls, one of Leipzig’s stand-out features.

Much of the original city plan dates back a mere 500 years, when the distinctive city passages were built to save horse-drawn carriages from having to reverse in the courtyards and are closely connected to the city’s history as a trade hub. There are now 30 of these arcades, 20 of them originals, housing small shops, boutiques, cafés and restaurants. The old ones have been beautifully restored such as Mädler Passage, a splendid walkway featuring the famous Auerbach’s Keller which was immortalised in Goethe’s Faust. Barthels Hof, the last remaining trade courtyard from the trade fair period in the 18^th century, has a stunning Renaissance facade, the oldest surviving one from a Leipzig residence, and in Specks Hof, the oldest remaining passage, three colourful atriums feature murals and paintings by contemporary artists.

Welcome to LE where classic culture and street life meet

A walk around Leipzig’s city centre will also automatically lead to some of the aforementioned musical powerhouses. There’s the Bach Museum opposite St Thomas’ Church where the composer served as cantor from 1723 to 1750, the Mendelssohn House, the only remaining private residence of the composer, or the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Leipzig was able to transform and reinvent itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and one example of creative reinvention is the Spinnerei, a former cotton mill that is now a thriving artist community with galleries and artists’ workshops, most notably that of internationally renowned Neo Rauch, a key figure of the so-called ‘New Leipzig School’.

Another example of new uses for old industry is the Panometer, where Berlin-based panorama artist and architect Yadegar Asisi creates monumental 360-degree panoramas inside a former gasometer. The current exhibition (until 15 January 2017) is called  ‘Leipzig 1813 – in the turmoil of the Battle of the Nations’, and after that, a Titanic panorama will feature.

Apart from a very lively restaurant and bar scene with about 1,400 establishments including almost 400 with al fresco seating (or, a Freisitz, as they say in town), Leipzig also offers some attractive outdoor features: a maze of canals within the city that includes a water route from an inner city marina to Lake Cospuden outside town. ‘Route 1’ with a length of 11 km takes canoeists and paddlers along park landscapes and past late 19^th century villas to the Leipzig New Lakeland recreation area about 10km south of the city, a system of lakes that developed from former opencast mines.

Further waterways interconnect Leipzig with the whole of the New Lakeland, and that along with surrounding villages and countryside is now all being promoted as a region, and not just as a city. And there’s a new four-part Leipzig Region brand logo to go with the enlarged profile, representing the castles and history of surrounding Burgenland, the lakes and waterways of Lakeland, the nature experiences of the local heathland, and finally of course the city itself.

Leipzig seems to do it all with ease.

There’s no one here but us Saxons. That is how it feels sometimes – we have landed in a place where the people are friendly, the landscape attractive and no one knows about it but us. The locals appear pleased we have come to visit but not in the least surprised – they have known all along that it is a good place to be.

We first holidayed here while seeking out family roots in Zeitz, southeast of Leipzig, six years ago. My partner Liz felt that we should spend a few days in the countryside and booked a farm stay near Mittweida, about 40 miles to the east. For us and our now 13 year old boy this has proved the best holiday decision ever. We have been welcomed almost as family and have been back every year since. It certainly helps that Liz is fluent in German as many locals do not speak much English.

Mittweida itself has a pretty centre, but the town museum rather reluctantly admitted that we were the only English visitors they had ever had. We like pork, potatoes and cucumber and that is a very good thing in this part of Saxony. It’s best not to be a vegetarian.

The town is within a fairly easy drive of Dresden, Meissen and Saxon Switzerland, the biggest tourist attractions hereabouts. A visit to the Meissen factory is interesting and the prices eyewatering. The Saxon Industry Museum in Chemnitz is the best I have ever been to anywhere, with the comedy highlight the camper Trabant, essentially a Trabant with a tent perched on top. The Trabbie was made a few miles away in Zwickau.

As for the farm where we stay, it has been wonderful for our youngster Henry. There is real work to be done with feeding the animals, mending farm equipment, moving the electric fence to allow cattle onto fresh pasture and best of all – driving farm machinery. Seeing your own 13 year old in sole charge of a combine harvester is quite an experience. This is no theme park and children need to behave very well indeed to be safe and to make a proper contribution. We enjoy ourselves wandering around the farm, sitting in the yard and chatting with the family and visitors.

Trips to the open air swimming pool in Rochlitz are a great value treat – a lovely pool in landscaped grounds with a café serving chips and mayonnaise followed with homemade pear ice cream by the pool. It all adds up to a little bit of heaven in Saxony.