I came back to Jena for the first time in more than 30 years at the beginning of 2022. Of course, a lot has changed, but the flair of a university town has remained. The Friedrich Schiller University of Jena was founded in 1558 and today there are more than 16,000 students per 100,000 inhabitants. The density of pubs, bars and clubs is correspondingly high. Jena is also a centre of the German optics and precision engineering industry around the Carl Zeiss company. Numerous research laboratories and institutes are based here.