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Leipzigers focus on economy, jobs

By CNN's Charles Hodson

Charles Hodson is traveling around Germany by train to test the mood of business people, trade unionists and ordinary voters ahead of Sunday's election.

Leipzig's train station has been opulently restored.

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LEIPZIG, Germany (CNN) -- Arrive in the industrial city of Leipzig in the former communist east by train, and you'll be impressed.

This was the largest station in Europe when it was built a century ago. Within the last decade it has been opulently restored.

Leipzig has received a fair number of the trillion-plus dollars that Berlin has poured into redeveloping the east.

But some have no need of handouts. I take a taxi out to GeoSys.

In 15 years, Peter Hausmann has built it up from a two-man band, to a thriving specialist engineering business with 30 employees.

Hausmann: "Mostly of our clients today are situated in the former Soviet Union but also we sell to European and Arabic countries."

It's a German politician's dream: Nice export earnings and high-tech jobs.

I ask how much of the manufacturing is actually done here. "Most of the manufacturing will be done here in Leipzig," Hausmann replies.

So how can the next government help him create more jobs?

More importance needs to be given to the medium-sized companies. If the laws will be not so restricted ... I mean also the law for employment contracts and so on.

"If we can pay a lower tax with smaller regulations, it will help us for the economic development here in Germany."

Time for some quick tourism: I'm a devotee of the classical composer and organist J.S. Bach.

He was cantor here at St. Nicholas's Church in Leipzig between 1723 and his death in 1750.

More recently this church was a center of resistance to the East German regime.

I wonder if today's Leipzigers ever miss the job security they enjoyed under communism. So I head for the local headquarters of Germany's trade union federation. Well, its beer garden, actually.

I ask Thomas Juette and Andrea Seidel: Who has got the answers on the economy?

Andrea Seidel: "The Social Democrats. That's my clear view. Neo-liberalism has got something to be said for it but I'm worried that the social side of things gets forgotten.

"Just allow me to hope that a grand coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats would not lead to paralysis but that they would work successfully together."

But others in the beer garden express anger and disillusion.

Leipzig was home to composer J.S. Bach.

Jan Hoffmann: "Business isn't having such a bad time -- Porsche is making great profits -- Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen, the lot -- so why the redundancies?"

Anne Pfennig: "When normal, intelligent educated people have no job; when 35-year-olds are 'too old'; when 20-year-olds have no prospects -- I really wonder what's up."

Steffan Pfennig: "The political parties just want to win the election, not do something for Germany. As to whether their promises can ever be made good, one just has to wonder."

So plenty to think about next day as I head from Leipzig back to Berlin. The main issue is clear: The economy, above all jobs.

But after that -- well, some are confused, some have a very clear idea of what they want -- but I'm not sure that this is a decision that anyone can envy them.

I'm not sure, either, that they are going to take it themselves, since it looks, according to the opinion polls, as if it will be a hung Bundestag.