All My Liverpool Loving — Katrin Figge

It seems that most travellers visit Liverpool for two reasons: either, they are passionate football fans and want to watch their favourite team live at the stadium, or they are loyal Beatles fans and want to wander the same streets and visit the same clubs as their musical heroes.

I am neither one or the other – well, I am a football fan, and although I don’t harbour any animosity towards Liverpool FC, I’m a Bayern Munich girl through and through. Meanwhile, I enjoy listening to the Beatles, but I wouldn’t consider myself a devotee of the Fab Four.

Being neither, however, didn’t prevent me from having a marvellous time exploring the city of Liverpool one fine weekend earlier this year – before the Coronavirus brought life as we know it and with it all upcoming travel plans to a staggering halt.

My travel companion was my cousin from Indonesia, a die-hard Liverpool fan wanting to fulfil his dream of attending a match at Anfield. I seriously thought about joining him, but I couldn’t rationalise spending so much money on a football game that didn’t even involve my favourite team.

While my cousin excitedly donned his jersey and hummed Liverpool’s football anthem “You’ll never walk alone” before heading to Anfield, I was busy putting together an itinerary for the day, taking me to some of the city’s most famous landmarks.

Whenever I travel and visit places I have never been to before, I make it a point to – if possible – explore them by foot: it allows you to feel the true vibe of a city, to pay attention to little details and to linger when you come across something that piques your interest.

I started my day at the Liverpool Cathedral – the biggest in Great Britain and fifth largest in the world – which sits on top of St. James Mount, also known as Quarry Hill, and began construction in 1903. The cathedral has survived two World Wars as well as various periods of recession and over the years became a centre of activity and encounter for the people of the city, regularly hosting events in addition to the scheduled services. The cathedral is also home to impressive stained glass windows, sculptures and artworks, classic as well as contemporary.

Just below the cathedral lies St James’s Cemetery, which is well worth a little detour. With the risk of sounding a little too morbid, I rather enjoy the peaceful stillness that usually envelopes a cemetery and trying to decipher the engravings of almost decayed tombstones, wondering what kind of life the people who are buried here have led.

After spending some time in the cathedral and the cemetery, which was also the city’s first public park, I headed to Chinatown, which is unmissable thanks to the paifang, a traditional Chinese-style architectural arch, standing tall at 13.5 metres. The first Chinese settlers arrived in the mid-19th century, initially as traders, establishing strong links between Liverpool, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Chinatown today, home to a big part of the Chinese community in Liverpool, is lined with Chinese supermarkets, restaurants, book shops and other businesses.

From Chinatown, it is a mere 15-minute walk to the bustling city centre, where both tourists and Liverpudlians come to shop, hang out and mingle. The people of Liverpool are a friendly lot: I truly appreciated their quick wit and legendary Scouse sense of humour and found them to be approachable, down-to-earth and very much at ease with the city’s diversity – a trait that can’t be appreciated enough these days.

Next stop on my itinerary was Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool’s historic waterfront. A complex of dock buildings and warehouses first opened in 1846, it has since been redeveloped into a vibrant mix of restaurants, shops, galleries and museums – it’s a place where history and present have come together.

Since time was of the essence, I was forced to select just one museum to visit, since I hate nothing more than rushing through an exhibition. The Merseyside Maritime Museum, the International Slavery Museum, Tate Liverpool… the list was long, but in the end, I chose the Beatles Story. This museum offers a fantastic trip down memory lane, which took me to the band’s humble beginnings to the Beatlemania in the 1960s, their painful breakup and the lives (or deaths) of each band member thereafter – their story told via an excellent audio guide.

Still enthralled by the journey of the Beatles, I continued my daytrip to the Pier Head, past landmark buildings and the landing site for passenger ships, to pay homage to the Fab Four: the Beatles statue, unveiled in 2015, has quickly become a photo hotspot for tourists, but there was no pushing and shoving as everybody was patiently waiting for their turn.

The famous Cavern Club in Mathew Street.

A visit to Liverpool wouldn’t be complete without at least a glimpse into the Cavern Club, the birthplace of the Beatles. It was here that the Beatles played their first show in February 1961 and soon became its undisputed signature act, it was here that they found their sound and musical identity. The Cavern Club – though also the first home of many other famous musicians – and the Beatles are inextricably linked.

We left Liverpool the next day, after taking a last morning stroll through the city centre. One weekend surely isn’t enough time to fully explore all wonders and sights of Liverpool, but it will leave me with a perfectly good reason to return someday. As we were sitting in a train en route to London, my cousin couldn’t help but scrolling through the dozens of photos and videos he took at Anfield, a happy and content smile on his face – while I wistfully listened to John Lennon, promising to take me down to Strawberry Fields, Strawberry Fields forever.