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