Leipzig Train Station

When Grieg arrived here in 1858, this was the biggest building of its type in Europe, and it was later expanded.

The family friend who took Edvard to his lodgings in Leipzig immediately left him to his own devices – and his loneliness.

‘I’ve been struck down by homesickness. I went to my room and cried non-stop until my hosts called me to dinner. The man of the house, a native Saxonian, a postal official, tried to console me: Just look, dear Herr Grieg, at the sky here, you have the same sun and the same moon as back home, and the same merciful God’.

Although his fellow students laughed a little at the short lad from the distant North, mainly on account of his childish appearance (they bounced him among themselves like a ball), Grieg soon showed them that his juvenile appearance concealed a musical talent that far outstripped that of his fellows from the Conservatory.