The ladies all had breakfast at the hotel while Romik and Danik went to get our mini-bus. With the girls getting bigger every year we no longer can fit into a 7 seater and had to get a 9-seater this year. They could not park this monster downstairs so we all walked next block with our stuff.
Dresden is marvelous. Allies leveled this town and 20km on the perimeter so it is hard to believe that this magnificent age-darkened architecture once lay in ruins. Every last fat-bottomed cherub looked to be centuries old. That said this was a the territory of DDR after the war so plenty of cardboard box buildings reminiscent of the cookie-cutter architecture of the Soviet block filled every other area of the formerly Saxon candy-land.
We’ve started at the Old Master’s gallery of the sprawling Zwinger complex. Owing likely to the same art-books we were raised on we could practically recognize most of the paintings - Tizian’s Venus, Michelangelo’s iconic Sistine Madonna and others. And so could likely almost exclusively Russian crowd of other visitors. All in all there was also an Asian group, aforementioned Russians, a handful (literally) of tourists and us. Hard to believe we could see all with so little distractions.
We had lunch at Alex, punctuated by what we later read about was purely German service - “you will die tomorrow” quality of the bedside manner. No offence there. Just cultiral directness. Non-German (visually) staff usually appears to be much warner. That said, the weather was warm enough to continue our exploration and so we went back to Zwinger, then the opera house, then the churches, and finally to the balcony of Europe - extra-wide boardwalk overlooking another portion of town across the semi-dry river bed. What a wonderful town to have to ourselves.
We stopped by on a way to cool at a street fountain that looked like a portal with a water curtain. Very welcome at a 96 degree heat. Kids were running in an out; they were completely soaked and extatic. Occasional passerbys and cyclers ran through thw portal too. Then it all stopped at 3:30, due to some unknown rule that prevents fun beyond this point. We picked up and continued our walk.
We stopped for an afternoon beer at Edelweiss. Apparently there is a bottled beer shortage in Germany due to the heat and increased consumption. We’ve congratulated ourselves with sticking with the tap and so not exacervating the problem.
The black denim lederhosen waiter was awesomenly direct too - though in a very funny way - “going swimming here is f&cking dangerous,” and “we are expecting a f*cking huge crowd tonight.” We decided that we need more and came back for dinner. As our waiter would say “f+cking awesome.”
In the evening we did a pleasant walk through the giant mall outside our hotel and retired to our rooms for the next day of adventures.
Dresden is marvelous. Allies leveled this town and 20km on the perimeter so it is hard to believe that this magnificent age-darkened architecture once lay in ruins. Every last fat-bottomed cherub looked to be centuries old. That said this was a the territory of DDR after the war so plenty of cardboard box buildings reminiscent of the cookie-cutter architecture of the Soviet block filled every other area of the formerly Saxon candy-land.
We’ve started at the Old Master’s gallery of the sprawling Zwinger complex. Owing likely to the same art-books we were raised on we could practically recognize most of the paintings - Tizian’s Venus, Michelangelo’s iconic Sistine Madonna and others. And so could likely almost exclusively Russian crowd of other visitors. All in all there was also an Asian group, aforementioned Russians, a handful (literally) of tourists and us. Hard to believe we could see all with so little distractions.
We had lunch at Alex, punctuated by what we later read about was purely German service - “you will die tomorrow” quality of the bedside manner. No offence there. Just cultiral directness. Non-German (visually) staff usually appears to be much warner. That said, the weather was warm enough to continue our exploration and so we went back to Zwinger, then the opera house, then the churches, and finally to the balcony of Europe - extra-wide boardwalk overlooking another portion of town across the semi-dry river bed. What a wonderful town to have to ourselves.
We stopped by on a way to cool at a street fountain that looked like a portal with a water curtain. Very welcome at a 96 degree heat. Kids were running in an out; they were completely soaked and extatic. Occasional passerbys and cyclers ran through thw portal too. Then it all stopped at 3:30, due to some unknown rule that prevents fun beyond this point. We picked up and continued our walk.
We stopped for an afternoon beer at Edelweiss. Apparently there is a bottled beer shortage in Germany due to the heat and increased consumption. We’ve congratulated ourselves with sticking with the tap and so not exacervating the problem.
The black denim lederhosen waiter was awesomenly direct too - though in a very funny way - “going swimming here is f&cking dangerous,” and “we are expecting a f*cking huge crowd tonight.” We decided that we need more and came back for dinner. As our waiter would say “f+cking awesome.”
In the evening we did a pleasant walk through the giant mall outside our hotel and retired to our rooms for the next day of adventures.
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