Dresden
After a short train ride and two more stamps in our passports we arrived in Dresden, Germany. I had read that it’s a nice mid-sized city with a lot of history, and since it’s halfway between Prague and Berlin, we decided to make a one night stopover there. We took one of the many very quiet and modern street-cars across the Elbe River towards our hostel. The hostel was nice and new and for the first time we had a room all to ourselves. It was a tiny double room – the twin beds were almost touching each other. We were pleasantly surprised to discover an unprotected wireless network so we both spent some time catching up with news and emails online. I was able to post pictures too. We ate from our food stash and then went out looking for some bars that Charlie found in a guidebook. We got a kebab (there seems to be a little Middle Eastern falafel & kebab restaurant on every street corner in Germany) and tried Beck’s and Guinness. And then we spent some more time online and snacked back at the hostel.
The next day we took a street-car to the train station to store our stuff in a luggage locker and then walked through a mall and some shopping streets. They were in the part of town built under Soviet rule so it was very plain and boring. Then we got to the river, which is lined by beautiful and historic buildings. Like all the statues in Prague, the buildings were dark gray or black. They must be black from coal soot or maybe acid rain, I’m not really sure but everything that is old is black. I had heard about the huge Lutheran Church in Dresden that is not only important because it was the first Lutheran Church to be a German national church, but also because it was almost completely destroyed by bombings in 1945 and was only recently rebuilt using as many of the original stone blocks as possible. I was amazed to discover that it really is true that the building looks like a chessboard – with the black original stone blocks that survived the bombing mixed with the newer white blocks. The statue of Martin Luther outside the church was also put back in place. The old bridge that spans the Elbe River has a similar checkered pattern of new and old stone. Dresden was once the most important cultural center in Germany, and was known as the Florence of the north. It lives up to that claim with all the old buildings, palaces and museums along the river. We saw tons of neat old buildings – the coolest place was a courtyard, lined with royal seals and ram heads carved out of stone, which held jousting competitions a long time ago. We didn’t go inside many buildings or museums, but we saw a lot on foot.
We went back to the train station to catch a 2 pm train to Berlin. While snacking in the train station and waiting for the train to come, an ear-piercing siren went off and a announcement (in both German and English) played over and over telling everyone to immediately evacuate the station. So like a fire drill everyone made their way outside and stood around, wondering when we could all go back inside. Charlie and I went inside the mall across the street and stood next to the heat vents. We were worried that our train would be really delayed or that there was a terrorist attack somewhere that preempted the evacuation. We never knew what was going on but luckily they let everyone back in 20 minutes later and our train only had a short delay. Just a false alarm, apparently.
The next day we took a street-car to the train station to store our stuff in a luggage locker and then walked through a mall and some shopping streets. They were in the part of town built under Soviet rule so it was very plain and boring. Then we got to the river, which is lined by beautiful and historic buildings. Like all the statues in Prague, the buildings were dark gray or black. They must be black from coal soot or maybe acid rain, I’m not really sure but everything that is old is black. I had heard about the huge Lutheran Church in Dresden that is not only important because it was the first Lutheran Church to be a German national church, but also because it was almost completely destroyed by bombings in 1945 and was only recently rebuilt using as many of the original stone blocks as possible. I was amazed to discover that it really is true that the building looks like a chessboard – with the black original stone blocks that survived the bombing mixed with the newer white blocks. The statue of Martin Luther outside the church was also put back in place. The old bridge that spans the Elbe River has a similar checkered pattern of new and old stone. Dresden was once the most important cultural center in Germany, and was known as the Florence of the north. It lives up to that claim with all the old buildings, palaces and museums along the river. We saw tons of neat old buildings – the coolest place was a courtyard, lined with royal seals and ram heads carved out of stone, which held jousting competitions a long time ago. We didn’t go inside many buildings or museums, but we saw a lot on foot.
We went back to the train station to catch a 2 pm train to Berlin. While snacking in the train station and waiting for the train to come, an ear-piercing siren went off and a announcement (in both German and English) played over and over telling everyone to immediately evacuate the station. So like a fire drill everyone made their way outside and stood around, wondering when we could all go back inside. Charlie and I went inside the mall across the street and stood next to the heat vents. We were worried that our train would be really delayed or that there was a terrorist attack somewhere that preempted the evacuation. We never knew what was going on but luckily they let everyone back in 20 minutes later and our train only had a short delay. Just a false alarm, apparently.
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10:17 AM
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