dresden

Germany, Day 18: And She Shows You Where To Look

Today is our last full day in Dresden before we leave tomorrow morning for our final leg on this German Odyssey – Berlin.  We’re pretty sad to say goodbye to Dresden because it’s a beautiful, vibrant and sumptuous city, perfect for exploring, relaxing and people watching.

I love all the different spires of the city, so on our way to Dresden’s “Green Vault”, I decided to indulge myself:

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We entered the palatial complex called the Zwinger that houses the Green Vault – a series of rooms that their 18th century Prince Elector, Augustus the Strong filled with different treasures and delights.

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There is only a certain amount of people allowed inside the Green Vault at the same time, so you have to buy a ticket for a certain time.  Security was the tightest I’ve ever experienced at a museum as we had to lock up ALL bags (including Ma’s tiny purse), cameras and phones.  You then line up at two sets of doors that a guard lets you in, two at a time, you wait, then the doors on the other side open.  Everything is alarmed and behind glass, but it is easy to see why – all the rooms are different themes (amber, ivory, jewels, sculptures, bronze, coat of arms, silver) and contain many priceless treasures, big and small – ornate crystal drinking vessels, paintings, amber chess sets, diamond-hilted swords, etc.  After an excellent hour-long audio tour, we decided to embark on one of our favourite travel events, the self guided Rick Steves walking tour.

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Before we started the tour we had to get to the starting point, and that meant cutting through the Zwinger’s stately gardens.

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The tour started at Dresden’s Opera House, known as the Semperoper as Semper built it.  It burned down twice – once in the 19th century and then again, sadly, in 1945 as did many many other of the fine structures and treasures in the city.

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The last opera performed at the Semperoper in 1945 was Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber and the first opera performed when it was rebuilt almost 40 years later, so they honoured Weber with a statue in front of a cafe.

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We crossed back into the Zwinger’s gardens and marvelled at the beautiful fountains and stonework.

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Part of our instructions were to cross from the fountains into the main garden through an orangery, but we noticed that this glassy atrium sold beer and pretzels and it was lunch time, so we stopped and had a beer overlooking the gardens before moving on.

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The Zwinger gardens are also home to this beautiful glockenspiel, outfitted with porcelain chimes that emit a much sweeter sound that the usual brass bells.

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We left the Zwinger and headed north towards the river Elbe, reading stories of Augustus the strong and some of the pre and post war history of the city.

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One of our favourite pieces was this 250 foot long porcelain-tiled mural showing a parade of the rulers of Dresden.  This piece miraculously survived the 1945 firebombing.

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Our walking tour ended along the river on a balcony walk that overlooks the Elbe.  We decided to have a sit and watch all the activity at the other side of the river.

It turns out Dresden is setting up a huge party – it’s the anniversary of Germany’s reunification and every year a different state’s capital hosts the bash – this year it’s Dresden’s turn as the capital of Saxony.  Huge white tents are set up everywhere as well as sound and lighting systems.  The festival starts this weekend, in time for us to just miss it.

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We found a beautiful river-side cafe where we treated ourselves to ice cream confections and fizzy water, ambling back into town where we bought our mandatory post cards and fridge magnets, grabbed some coffees, relaxed in the old market square before headed to dinner.  Again, Dresden spoiled us as we ate a delicious dinner on a beautiful sunlit square in the shadow of the majestic Frauenkirche while the local busker serenaded us with Leonard Cohen classics.

Germany, Day 17: Town Without Pity

Today we took a day trip to Leipzig.  I was really excited to check this city out because for many years it was the home base of the father of modern music Johann Sebastian Bach.  Bach was the cantor at the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) and is buried in the floor there.  Leipzig is also the hometown of Felix Mendelssohn (meh) and an easy 1 hour train ride from Dresden on the ICE train (express train).  We got in to Leipzig and it was cloudy and blustery – definitely started feeling like autumn.  Once we got on the correct tram, we headed into the old city, and I’m sad to say it lacks the easygoing character of Dresden and the cute factor of some of the other cities we visited.  We went right away to the Thomaskirche because I was REALLY excited to see that Bach stuff.

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From the outside, the Thomaskirche is quite different from a lot of the churches and cathedrals we’ve already seen, probably because it’s Lutheran.  We turned the corner and there he was, JS Bach in front of his favourite instrument (pipe organ) and roll of music in hand.

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We moved inside the church and gawked at the TWO beautiful organs and quickly made our way to Bach’s grave.  Turns out, it may or may not be Bach’s actual remains – because JS wasn’t super popular in his actual day, he was buried in a modest graveyard.  When people discovered that he was actually a musical genius, they dug up what they think was his remains and re-buried them in the floor of this church.

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We then moved across the lane to the small but thorough Bach Museum.  Of course I had to buy some Bach goodies in the gift shop and then Ma, Pa and I moved into the “Treasures Room” – ACTUAL handwritten Bach manuscripts!  There was not photography allowed of that room, but had there been I would have taken ALL the photos of those manuscripts.  The museum had a lot of really cool features, including a room that played a Bach piece and you would press different buttons to isolate the different instruments in the piece, a room that had organ pipes suspended from the ceiling and if you clutched one and put your ear up to it, it would play you a Bach piece.  My favourite room was what I can best describe as an opium den for Bach fans: couches with screens and headphones affixed to them.  You put on the headphones and commandeer the touch screen where you can pick exactly what kind of Bach piece you would like to listen to – Sacred organ works, secular cantatas, etc.  We must have stayed there about a half our and all listened to our own streams.  Before we knew it we had walked through the whole thing and it was 1330hrs – time for lunch!

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I wanted to go to a place called Coffe Baum for lunch as it claims to be the oldest coffee bar in Europe still in operation.  We decided to brave the winds and sat outside.  Unfortunately, our server was not only completely disinterested/hated her job, but it’s the first time I have actually felt that a server hates me and everything I stand for.  Like, the kind of hate where she would have vandalized my car in high school or spread shitty gossip about me at the office, not because I’ve been mean to her, but because she’s awful.  Despite her terrible attitude, lunch was very good.

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We decided to call it a day in Leipzig and walked past the Thomaskirche, heading back to the tram station in order to catch the 1631hrs ICE train back to Dresden.

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We got to the train station at 1530hrs, so we went to Starbucks and had a coffee before heading to our platform to catch our train.  1631hrs rolled around and our train hadn’t come yet.  Pa then noticed the sign for our platform stated our train would be 3o minutes late (the stereotype that German trains run on time is a myth).  After the 30 minutes passed and still no train, we checked again – this time the board said 40 minutes late, and we noticed no other ICE trains had entered the station.  At 60 minutes, Pa noticed that the board had taken the entire train info down, so we made the quick decision to run a few platforms over and take the regional train.  The ICE train is a super fast express train and would have taken a little less than an our and the regional train makes all the stops and ended up taking 1 hour 40 minutes.  We got into Dresden at 1945 hours, over 2 hours later than we expected to be.  We headed to a pub for some pan fried potatoes and beers, headed back to the hotel and called it.

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Germany, Day 16: Slow Train A-Comin’

Today we got up early and said goodbye Franconia, hello Saxony.  We were leaving Nuremberg for Dresden, but in order to get there we had to survive a 5 hour train ride (with a transfer in Leipzig).  We had the foresight to reserve seats on the train so we didn’t have to elbow anyone out of the way to get seats together.  After breakfast we taxied to the train station and stopped in at our favourite train station shop Yorma’s to buy some drinks, baked goods and gummies (we’re been really into gummies on this trip since we learned that the gummi bear was invented in Bonn by the guy who created the company Haribo).  The train ride was actually really nice as the scenery was gorgeous – green hills and mountains, slow moving streams and brooks, herons, gardens, church spires, sunflower fields all entertained us and made me think of Goethe and his Romantic poetry about the German countryside.  We transferred trains in Leipzig and had an uneventful 1 hour train the rest of the way to Dresden.  We grabbed a cab that took us to our hotel in the old town, dumped our stuff and headed out to explore prior to beer time/dinner.

Dresden is old/new.  As I’m sure many of your know, Dresden was firebombed and completely devastated by the Allies in 1945 and 25,000 people died.  75% of the old town was destroyed, including an important Lutheran icon to locals, the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady).  I read somewhere that it is like the St. Paul’s for Lutherans.  The Church was reduced to rubble and because Dresden was in East Germany during the DDR days, the Church was not rebuilt until recently, construction being completed in 2006.  I was really excited to see this Church and was not disappointed.

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The inside of the church does not allow photos, so I will have to describe it – it’s light and bright, using a lot of lighter woods and white stone with a giant black and gold Baroque alter in the front and centre.  We soon discovered that we arrived in Dresden in the middle of their Bachfest, so if we’re up to it, we may try and catch an organ concert.  Also inside they have on display the original cross from the top of the church.  It fell and was covered up by rubble after the firebombing.  It’s a strong and somber symbol to the tragedy and heartbreak of war, as well as the resilience of a people who endured a horrendous event.  In a show of friendship, the man who forged the new cross for the cathedral in Coventry (a town in England that was flattened by the Luftwaffe) also forged the new cross for the Frauenkirche.

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We did a little more poking around, but as we have a whole day dedicated to exploring Dresden’s old town in a few days, we decided it was time for a sit and a drink.

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Dresden is historically a friendship city with Prague, so there is a lot of Czech and Bohemian influences in the city, including the beer and cuisine.  We found a pub directly beside our hotel (how convenient!) and Pa and I drank some Czech Pilsner, Pa and Ma had some delicious goulash and I had chicken and vegetables.  Soon it was time for coffee, cake, and boots off.

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