Firebombing and Soviet Occupation Generally Lead to a City’s Downfall

---

Firebombing and Soviet Occupation Generally Lead to a City’s Downfall

We had been given the advice that Dresden was a worthwhile city to visit so we planned a few days here despite some misgivings from Kel. Strangely enough Kel, who is normally the most easy going and “go with the flow” type person in the world, is often the dubious one when it comes to visiting places. Kel was unsure why we would need two months in Australia and a month in New Zealand and couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to go to Scandinavia. All of these hard sells on my part turned out well. Dresden wasn’t quite as spectacular a win on my part.

The rumors going around about Dresden are that it is the Florence of Germany. I’m sure that many of you know that Florence gets its fabulous reputation due, in part, to its large collection of art masterpieces and also due to what must be a fabulous marketing campaign. While Dresden does have a lot to offer, I certainly wouldn’t consider it the Florence of the north, at least not yet.

Firebombs and Soviets

Between February 13th - 15th, 1945 one of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever unleashed by the Allied military forces in WWII was executed in the skies of Dresden. While Dresden had one of the largest military staging bases for troops heading to the eastern front with Russia, almost none of the bombs fell on the base itself. Instead, around 35,000 civilians died due to either the bombing or the fire storm aftermath. It is believed that the Allies, in hopes of demoralizing the German people and thus shortening the war, decided to bomb some of Germany’s most historically significant sights. Thus almost every building in Dresden was destroyed leaving next to nothing standing on the 16th of February 1945.

One of the many things that Germans are really good at is architecture, design and building and left to their own devices that is exactly what the people of Dresden would have done at the end of the war. Instead, Dresden was part of the Deutschland Democratic Republic, the seemingly misnamed Soviet occupied portion of Germany, popularly known as East Germany. Since the Communists believed in rapid growth at the expense of quality, and in many cases history, Dresden was rebuilt in the 50’s and 60’s modern metal and glass style of buildings which is both utilitarian and, at least in my opinion, ugly.

When East Germany was finally allowed to join its Western sister much rebuilding started to take place. To rebuild such a huge and historic city takes money and time. In order to save some of the past, “historic squares” are being built in a old looking/modern version of what used to be prior to WWII. The major construction in Dresden will not be complete until 2009 or beyond, but in the meantime, some of the most famous buildings have been rebuilt as close as possible to their original state.

Sweating and Exploring

We started our Dresden time with a pedi-cab tour. This isn’t a trend yet but one more occasion and it will definitely be a trend to our travels. Kel just loves traveling via outdoor transportation methods. I would expect that there will be more pedi-cabs in our future.

Dresden’s sights are pretty localized on the south side of the Elbe river. There are basically four important squares, Neumarkt, Schloss Platz, Theater Platz and Altemarkt. (For now you can ignore Altemarkt because it has been torn up for the creation of an underground parking deck. For those of you who have followed our trip for a long time, this square is the sight of the oldest Christmas market in Germany, YUM!)

Neumarkt, which is presently under construction to make it look like it did in the 1930’s, is the sight of Dresden’s most famous church, the Frauenkirche. The Frauenkirche was only recently rebuilt because the Soviets left it as a giant pile of rubble. The pile was considered the monument to those who died in the firebombing campaign in 1945 but the church was actually not rebuilt because of the Communist’s aversion to religion. Everyone can thank Marx’s “religion is the opiate of the people” comment for that.

Schloss Platz is named after the King of Saxony’s palace which is one of the main buildings on this incredibly crowded plaza. There is also the Cathedral of St. Trinitatis which is the largest church in all of Saxony and the Bruhlesche Terrasse which is a huge pedestrian terrace which overlooks the Elbe river.

Finally is Theater Platz which has the Semperoper opera house which was built in the 1840s and the Zwinger which was the king’s gardens from the late 1700’s. This final major square rounds out the major sights in Dresden which all are centered in a circle that is less than a mile wide. What Dresden has to offer is very pretty and very densely packed.

After taking our incredibly informative pedi-cab tour we decided to return to the hotel and get ready for dinner. Sadly, Dresden marks the beginning of a leg of our trip where many people don’t speak English. Since we have been in either major cities or highly English speaking countries like Scandinavia we have not had to struggle for food for a while. This part of our travels can be the most tiring thing we ever do.

It is easy to go to museums or see huge castles no matter what language you speak, but finding a decent restaurant and translating the menu is always a challenge when English isn’t present. Throughout our time in Dresden we struggled with food, specially at dinner. In order to get good and less expensive food you must venture out of tourist areas but in a place like Dresden that doesn’t get many English visitors you also find no English menus. We did our best over our three night visit but it was always tough and sometimes even a bit stressful.

Whiling Away the Time While Kel Suffers

Throughout our time in Dresden Kel had a killer headache. She does a great job of bearing up to these nightmare headaches that she gets from time to time but she can only do so much exploring while she feels like poo. Both of the remaining days in Dresden she ventured out to get meals with me but spent the rest of her time in our hotel room trying to get better. Thankfully, since we leave tomorrow, it appears that she is doing better.

I, who was little or no help to her in her misery, ventured out into Dresden to see what I could see and entertain myself. On Wednesday I spent a huge portion of my day working on pictures of Dresden. Its always good to have a hobby which keeps you busy, especially when you are on your own.

I did get to have one adventure while Kel wished her head would fall off, I’ll call it the corn starch odyssey. We have had it pretty easy in the last few months when it comes to finding corn starch but it turns out that eastern Germany is an area where corn starch is not used. As we often do when we first get to a town, we found the local grocery store to see if corn starch was readily available. Sadly, no luck and no cornstarch to be found. Thus, we found another, larger, grocery store to no avail.

We have a decent backup supply of corn starch for Kel after our experience in Vietnam (see Worries in the Tailor Town of Hoi An) but that backup supply will only last so long. Thus, at least I, the worrier, was getting worried about finding more corn starch. After worrying for a while we finally sought help from some of the people who worked the desk in our hotel. They called all sorts of places and finally found a natural food store that had what we needed.

As Kel felt bad I trekked off to find some corn starch. The walk, which looked short on the map, was actually a hot, sweaty 5 mile round trip hike to a small, out of the way grocery store. Once there I had a devil of a time finding what I came for because corn starch is usually sold in boxes, here it is sold in big jars, go figure. Finally, with three jars of corn starch in tow, I made the return journey.

The normal traveler does not get to have fun like this. As my Grandmother would have said, these are character building activities. But, you should all rest easy that we now have enough cornstarch to get us back to Rome where we know we can buy more. YAY!

Art in the Florence of the North

Once again, on our final day in Dresden, Kel wasn’t feeling well so after a late breakfast/brunch we headed back to the hotel so that Kel could get some rest. I had one last thing on my list of accomplishments for Dresden that needed to be done, the Dresden Old Masters gallery located in the Zwinger off of Theater Plotz.

Dresden’s art gallery is one of the nicer, small collections of art in Northern Europe. It focuses on Italian masters with a smattering of paintings from other secondary artists from around Europe. The number one painting in the gallery is the Sistine Madonna by Raphael. This painting is famous to most of us because of merely a piece of the painting. In the lower portion of the painting are two angles looking almost bored. These two little guys seem to pop up in book marks and advertisements all over the world. Overall the painting is considered one of the most balanced works of art in history and was an inspiration for hundreds of later great artists. Check out some history and a copy of the painting here: The Sistine Madonna.

After spending a considerable time in the museum I returned to find Kel feeling much better and on the phone with her Mom. We played it cool for the rest of the day and got a great Italian meal for dinner later that night. We capped off our final eve with some of Dresden’s most favorite snacks, ice cream. This food, which is merely a treat in the US is a ubiquitous food in Dresden and the root of many successful businesses. While we have a few Baskin Robins or a Ben and Jerry’s or two, these people have easily twenty ice cream parlors in one small area and all of them do a great business. With some ice cream in our stomachs, we headed off to a good nights sleep before our travels to Prague in the morning.

Hope you are all well at home! We miss you and thank you for your support of us!

---