I arrived with Hannah into Dresden. Hannah was still calling it Dredsen at this point, and both of us were wondering if it was a good choice to leave the friends we had made and not continue on to Prague. We walked to the hostel and were too early to check in, so we put our bags in the luggage room and checked the place out.
Dresden is split down the middle by the Elbe River. It is split into two sections, Altstadt and Nuestadt (old town and New town). It is probably most famous for the fact that the Allies bombed the shit out of Dresden in the last days of WW2, completely flattening all of old town, and most of new town. All of old town has now been completely rebuilt to look exactly as it did before the war, but it makes a bit of a misnomer out of old town, as many of the buildings in New town are older than those in Old town.
Walking around New Town, the place looks like someone has been giving out free spray cans to the local youth, as there is tagging everywhere. The cars rumble down the cobblestoned streets, giving you some warning that you are looking the wrong way as you go to cross the street. Hannah and I stopped for a burger at Burger Meister, where I ordered a chicken burger with analas. I didn’t know what analas was, and the German girl behind the counter didn’t know what the English word was, neither did the German dudes hanging out waiting for their takeaway food. In the end she went into the kitchen and grabbed some analas, and as it turns out, it’s pineapple. Problem solved.
After checking into the hostel, we walked around looking for a supermarket and just checking out the town in general. We walked down to the river’s edge to check out old town, and this is why the place is so schizophrenic; Old Town has no graffiti, no tattooed, pink haired punks and dogs walking around wandering into shops. It is however, spectacularly picturesque. It was around 4opm, and like most of Europe in the time I have been here, it likes to rain between 4-6pm so we headed back to the hostel hoping to find a supermarket on the way.
That night Hannah and I had a few drinks at the hostel and she went off to bed fairly early. I decided to walk around the town and get a feel for it on a Monday night. To my surprise, there were people out everywhere, pubs were nearly full, people were drinking on corners and yet there was very little of the agro you would normally associate with such an event in Australia. As I walked the street of new Town in Dresden, I felt safer than I would normally feel doing the same through Northbridge or any similar drinking area of Australia.
The next morning Hannah and I got up fairly early to go out to the nearby town of Meissen, which we had heard was worth a look. It was about a 30min train ride from Dresden, and once we had figured out how to validate our ticket, we were on our way. The trains in Germany are fantastic. Clean, new and smooth. More than once we had to check that we weren’t in first class as it just felt too nice to be the seats we had purchased for 7 euro.
Upon arrival in Meissen we could see the castle in the distance on the other side of the river and started walking towards it. The cathedral style castle is known as Albrechtsburg, and built high up on a steep hill next to the river Elbe. We wandered through the narrow, cobbled streets until we found a steep passage of narrow steps leads up to Albrechtsburg and a beautiful view over the small town of Meissen and the surrounding hills. Hannah and I stopped on the way down for some lunch. We had both decided to have Schnitzel and chips for lunch. She was charged with ordering the food, and apart from knot knowing what ‘pommes’ were when talking to the proprietor, felt pretty confident she had ordered correctly…. Until we each got a plate of chips and no schnitzel for lunch. Oh well. We were both confused how she failed to convey the only German word she used, but it saved us some money, so we ate our chips and went on our way.
We both felt pretty ratshit when we got back to Dresden (we walked up a lot of steps!), so we bought some groceries and Hannah had a lie down while I went out to have a look around more of New Town. New town is definitely where the life of the place is, with hundreds of people at the local park enjoying the sunshine, and usually an icecream. I walked around the town, trying to soak up the atmosphere for another few hours before going back to the hostel for a nap before dinner.
I cooked up some decent but unspectacular spaghetti Bolognese for dinner as we sat around talking to some other hostel guests. There was Christine, Anna and KC from Atlanta, Georgia, who were good fun, both for their sweet personalities and their propensity to use the word “y’all” when referring to anyone. Charlie, who was in Dresden for 2 weeks from Leeds doing a dance workshop and West, who is a true traveler. He was born in South Africa, has lived in NZ for 5 years and Aus for 3. He likes to go to a place and work and stay there for a while. None of this speed travelling like I am doing. He’s definitely got a point, because I could definitely live in Dresden, as I could in Berlin, so I guess it would be nice to one day do both.
West, Charlie and I went out for a beer at a nearby outdoor pub that had been set up in what felt like a gravel parking lot. The conversation eventually got to peoples preferred word for ‘vagina’ (I’m pretty sure it was Charlie’s fault) with Charlie using “noonnie”, West saying “box” and due to it really being the only word Belle used, it was “minge” for me, with a special mention of ‘VeJayJay’ for Sara and those guys back at the Douglas street party palace.
Charlie had to get up early for her dance class the next day so she retired to bed while West and I stayed up talking to the girls from Georgia back at the hostel bar. Again, it mostly revolved around their amusing accents and the fact that it seemed one of them had mistaken India for America on the map (although I do feel that Christine was putting this stupidity on, in order to be funny). At about 1am we were told the bar was closing and we retired to our dorms, with the girls deciding that singing in the shower at 1am with the window open was pretty funny, and I assume, waking the entire hotel.
Out last morning in Dresden and I needed to actually walk around old town. We wandered in quite early to look around. Once you walk through the main gates, you are confronted not with a beautiful town square as I had imagined, but a construction zone. It seems, like most of Europe at the moment, Dresden is also receiving a facelift. Behind the construction zone there were many astounding baroque buildings, covered with amazingly details statues and carvings.
On the way back to the hostel, I really, really needed to go to the loo. After holding it for over an hour I finally found a public toilet on a busy intersection. It is one of those coin operated ones, so I put in my 30euro and went inside to relieve myself. Unfortunately I read the German instructions and pulled a handle, which I thought would lock the door, but it made the door want to open. I ended up having to wedge it closed with my right foot while I contorted my body into such a position that I could still pee with the door remaining closed. It was very uncomfortable, but still one of the best pees ever.
Back at the hostel packed up all out stuff and went downstairs to wait for busabout. I honestly feel like I only scratched the surface of Dresden, and considering I seriously thought about not bothering to stop there, I am quite surprised that I am seriously considering coming back here where I am working in Austria. If I hadn’t already booked all of my time up until world superbikes in Brno, I would have stayed for another two days. The beautiful, grungy, old world charm and new school edge of the split personalities of Dresden will have to wait for my next visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment