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| Erin's Journal for 9-21-02 Today was our first day in Dresden. Following our standard plan, we got up lazily and had breakfast (not worth the hostel's 4 Euro price), then followed our map toward the center of town and the information booth. As we walked, it was raining lightly and overcast, but the town seemed pretty nice. We walked down a main street with lots of nice shops. It was surprising to learn that most of town had been under water just 4 weeks ago! They'd cleaned up fantastically! We heard a band playing and detoured to find a small festival in progress, with a small brass band and several vendors with crafts and food. We watched the honey vendor cutting pieces of honeycomb into a jar for a customer, and listened to a few marching songs before heading on. After crossing the river (Elbe), we were in the old section of town, with all the big impressive buildings. We stopped in front of the Opera House for a picture, but didn't explore, as we were still trying to find the info booth. We walked through another gate and found ourselves inside the huge courtyard of the Zwinger, a royal palace to King Johann of Saxony (the region Dresden is in). It had lots of gorgeous green grass, which made Glenn yearn for his lawnmower. (The Seattle neighbors will know what I'm talking about. We circled outside and rechecked our map, then found the info booth. We wanted to ask about getting to Saxony-Switzerland, a place not far from Dresden which offers stunning views from some natural stone bridges, and the Konigstein, a huge mountaintop castle nearby. Due to the floods, the trains don't take you all the way to Saxon-Switzerland, but you train partway and bus the rest of the way. We planned to go tomorrow and headed on to find more hostel options. After looking around a bit, we found that most places offering reasonable prices were too far out of town for backpackers like us, and the local youth hostel was totally sterile when we visited it. We decided to stay in our crappy hostel since it was easy and our shuttle to Prague would leave from there on Tuesday morning. We wandered a bit further, checked out the train station (the water damage there was visible - there was a huge detour to get in), then found another information center. They gave us a list of internet shops, and we walked a ways into old town to find one in particular. On the way, we saw a festival in progress, with many booths offering crafts, jewelry, and yummy-smelling food! We wandered and looked, and I kept wanting to try the chocolate covered strawberries, but didn't insist, so I lost out! We were waiting around for a 6pm Boys Choir recital that happens every Saturday according to our book. At 5:15, we went in and grabbed seats about 8 rows back, and read while we waited. The whole church filled up while we were waiting, and at 6pm the choir started. They were awesome! The boys ranged in age from about 5 to 18, at a guess, and there were many complicated pieces of music they performed (I remember from my days in choir in high school!). Finally we went on looking for the internet cafe, and found it not too far from old town. After sitting a few minutes, we realized what a find this place was - very quick connection and lots of power! We both worked for a little over an hour preparing pages for our journals and putting up pictures so everyone at home can start seeing where we are. After all that, we were tired and walked straight back to the hostel. We did stop once on the bridge, to take some awesome photos of the old town at night! When we got back, someone in our room was already asleep in there, so we just got quietly into bed and slept early for a change (it was only midnight!). I'm sleeping much better here with my nice, firm pillow!!! |
| Dresden had gorgeous flowers newly planted in a main square - masking flood damage from just 4 weeks prior |