Valentine's Weekend in Dresden

Servus alle,

Last weekend, we decided to take the long 6-hour train ride to Dresden, which is near the borders of Czech Republic and Poland in eastern Germany. 100 years ago, Dresden was famous for being the capital and home to numerous ruling parties and kings in Saxony. Due to its architecture, museums and art galleries, it's nicknamed "Florence on the Elbe" (referring to Florence, Italy and the Elbe River that it's located on). More recently, however, Dresden is famous for a less cheery reason. On February 13, 1945, only months before the end of the war, British and American air raids completely destroyed the city. While these types of bombings were normal throughout the war, the bombing of Dresden was especially controversial. Critics of the bombing argue that Dresden had very little military presence in the war and the war itself was almost over, so the bombing was simply to destroy a landmark city and kill civilians; the other side argues that it may have been necessary to "break the back" of the Germans and demoralize them. The minor military presence that did exist was in the form of factories outside the city, and the focus of the raids was in the city center. It is estimated that around 25,000 civilians lost their lives. Yet another note for our literary buffs: the bombing of Dresden was the basis for Kurt Vonnegut's famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut actually survived the bombing himself as a POW).

Controversy aside, our visit was on the anniversary of the bombings 69 years later, and we can confirm that they did an excellent job rebuilding the city! Dresden belonged to communist East Germany after the war, so much of the rebuilding effort has been in the last 20 years, which means a lot of it looks really new...

You can see the contrast between the older surviving parts and the new construction...

Impressive mural running the length of the entire side of the building.

This is the Semper Opera, which was completely destroyed during the bombing.

...also completely destroyed.

This church, Frauenkirche, is the most famous site from Dresden. It also collapsed after the second day of bombing. They saved the stones that they could and reused them recently in the rebuilding. This is probably the coolest example of seeing the old stones contrasting with the new. Fun fact: it seems that 99% of large cathedrals in Europe are Catholic, but this church is actually Lutheran (Martin Luther was from the same state of Saxony).

Outside of the historic city center, Dresden is also known for having some cool, trendy neighborhoods. We spent most of Saturday strolling around Neustadt. We stopped at a cool cafe for breakfast that prides themselves on having good filtered coffee (otherwise almost non-existent in Europe). After breakfast, we stopped in a few shops and checked out some cool graffiti.

These pipes run down the side of the building and when it rains, it supposedly plays music. We didn't get to hear it, but we think that's a good thing.

...just a fun pic. We saw this in a shop window advertising hot dogs and thought it was strange.

Dresden has a famous spot for currywurst, Curry & Co., so of course we had to try it. Currywurst is a food comparable to something like pizza, cheesesteaks, etc., so it's interesting that one of their options comes with prosecco. Yes, Kristin ordered it. And also, yes, that is mayo mixed with ketchup on our fries - Europeans love it. We resisted for a while, but it's actually pretty tasty with the right ratio...

Thanks to another great tip from the NY Times, we were able to have an awesome dinner on Saturday night! At this point, German food is not the most exciting cuisine for us, but this restaurant had a different take - they served a lot of traditional German dishes in Spanish tapas style. And it was delicious!

We spent the rest of our time on Sunday wandering around the city and visiting das Grünes Gewölbe ("The Green Vault"). This was a famous collection of jewels and gifts from the former rulers in Dresden, which was pretty impressive to see. It was also interesting to see some of the damage in the museum from the bombing, which is pretty unique. After that, we boarded the train for another long ride back to Munich. All in all, it was another great weekend!

Bis später,
Matt and Kristin

Spain Part IX: Antoni Gaudi

As we mentioned earlier in the Barcelona post, we saw a lot of buildings by Antoni Gaudi while touring the city, so we decided they deserved their own post. Some of these pictures are repeats of the earlier post, but the majority are new.

Antoni Gaudi was a Spanish architect from the Catalan region (near Barcelona). Thus, most of his major works are located directly within the city. He is widely known for leading a modernism movement. He was an extremely religious person, and his themes of nature and religion can be seen in a lot of his works. In fact, he is even nicknamed "God's Architect".

As we started our tour in a central plaza, our tour guide pointed out that the unique lampposts, which was one of Gaudi's earliest projects. If we're remembering correctly, Gaudi's is work is all over the city, but these lampposts are the only work that was commissioned by the city of Barcelona - everything else was done privately.

The first building we saw was the Güell Palace. Also one of Gaudi's earlier works, the Güell Palace was designed by Gaudi for an industrial tycoon. This is one of his least imposing buildings...

Here you can see the chimney tops from the previous picture from a different angle.

This wrought iron decoration is next to the entrance - the stripes represent the Catalonian flag.

Our next stop was at one of Gaudi's coolest buildings (in our opinion, anyway). He built this house in 1904 using the frame of an already existing house, which is really hard to believe. It's now nicknamed "The House of Bones" by the residents of Barcelona, since much of the exterior looks like skeletons. Fun fact: the house is now owned by the Chupa Chup's family (lollipops), and since they've ran into some financial trouble, it now costs an exorbitant amount per person to visit the inside of the house.

Please excuse the dorky red dots - they were from the tour...

The house next to it, while also a bit unique, shows what the front of Gaudi's building would have once looked like...

You can see the patterns in the sidewalk tiles outside of the building. The city put these tiles in as a tribute to Gaudi, and the pattern resembles the pattern he used inside the house.

The third stop was just across the street - Casa Mila. The facade of this building was interesting, since it's really curvy and sort of wraps around the corner. Our tour guide told us that Gaudi did not have a good relationship with the owners as he was designing it. Apparently, they hired him because they loved his work on the house we just showed before, and they thought his work here was rather boring.

It may be hard to see here, but George Lucas apparently said that the small chimneys on the roof served as inspiration for the storm troopers' masks in Star Wars.

The highlight of the tour, and one of the main highlights of Barcelona in general, was the Sagrada Familia. As we mentioned before, Gaudi was extremely religious, and the Sagrada Familia was his most ambitious project. Construction on the massive church started in 1883, and when Gaudi died in 1926 it was not even 25% of the way finished. It relies solely on private donations (especially from tourists like us who pay to see it). This, along with the fact that work was interrupted during the Spanish Civil War, led to it crossing the 50% mark only as recently as 2010. Gaudi is said to have remarked, "My client is not in a hurry."

While we've grown a bit bored of European churches at this point, Sagrada Familia is completely different. First of all, it's sheer height means it looks more like a skyscraper than a church - it's towers are a key part of the Barcelona skyline. Once it's finished, it will be the tallest church in the world. Secondly, the construction inside is strange compared to other churches. Gaudi loved using the theme of nature in his work, so all of the columns holding up the ceiling and towers resembles trees.

This was our tour guide - the picture he's holding gives a better idea of what it should look like when finished.

...another picture showing the complete plans.

Here you can see the main entrance for visitors. The doors and the crucifiction scene are bigger in the two pictures below.

This is definitely a unique version of Jesus.

Here you can see how the columns resemble trees.

The ceiling looked really cool when you looked straight up.

A really modern altar.

The decorations surrounding the entrances had extremely intricate designs.

This picture, as well as the next, show Gaudi's way of determining some of the shapes for his structures. He would take bags of sands and tie them to ropes. The outcome of the structure would then be flipped upside down, and this told him where he would need to support the towers.

Gaudi's font for holy water.

While there are more properties by Gaudi through Barcelona and Catalonia, our tour only managed to cover these ones. We don't normally do tours dedicated only to architecture in cities, so this was a great change of pace for us!

Bis gleich,
Matt and Kristin