The most beautiful city in Germany

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Everyone in Munich has been telling me "oh la la Dresden is the most beautiful city in Germany". Seeing as my best friend lives there I thought I'd give it a shot. Deutsche Bahn (the national German railway) had a special offer for a few weeks if you ordered through their facebook. The offer was 25 Euro to go anywhere in Germany, no matter where, so I bought a ticket to Dresden to visit Mia for the weekend. Surprisingly, even though I had three connections, I got there without any problems. The ride from Munich was about 7 hours with all the connections and I arrived in Dresden at midnight on Friday.

On Saturday I got to see where Mia (Her Blog) lives and some of the stores and shops in the area. She lives in the Neustadt, which is on the north side of the Elbe River. The Altstadt is on the south side and only about 15-20 minutes away. We went there next and walked around the Altstadt a lot. Mia’s residence is awesomeeee, it made me so jealous since I’ve had so many problems with my places in Munich.

First we walked by the opera house, which was one of my favorite buildings. It had a huge statue in front and I really like statues for some reason, maybe because I haven’t seen many in the US. Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside, but the outside was cool enough. Everything in the Altstadt is really close so it doesn’t take long to walk from one sight to the next. From the opera we walked through a small passage next to the Hofkirche and went to the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). The Frauenkirche’s in Munich and Dresden are the most famous in Germany. Unfortunately, the one in Dresden was almost completely destroyed during WWII, only one wall remained, but it has been rebuilt since then and has a beautiful view from the top tower.

We walked a bit more around the Altstadt and saw an awesome university that sits right next to the river. It’s a famous art university and is really a work of art in itself. We decided to go into the Hofkirche next and it was really nice inside. We decided to suck it up and pay the 5 Euro fee to go to the top of the Frauenkirche and it was really worth it. The climb up was almost just as interesting, because of the interior architecture of the church. The ceiling from the ground floor is rounded, but then another whole section sits on top of that ceiling like two bulbs. It’s hard to explain, but it was pretty interesting. From the top we had a panoramic view of the entire Altstadt and a lot of the Neustadt too. We could even see a golden statue on the other side of the bridge called “Goldener Reiter”.

Next we went to an awesome palace called the Zwinger. It was a really beautiful building and Mia showed me a secret place behind this huge fountain that had a really great view of the opera and the rest of the palace too. Next to the huge clock in the palace courtyard there was a ring of cute white bells that played a short song every hour. We had Chinese food in the Altstadt and then decided to go to this cool art district in the Neustadt.

I had seen pictures of the art district before on Mia’s blog so it was cool to finally see it in person. I’ll let my pictures describe most of the art, but the place overall was really neat with a lot of small shops and cafés in classic hippies style. We also stopped by an American food store in the area so I could pick up some good cereal to take back to Munich.

We had a snack in a really awesome small restaurant in the Neustadt. It specializes in soup and it has 5 set soups for the week and then 2 soups that change everyday. And the 5 for the week change every week so you can always get something new. I liked how it was like a café on the inside and felt really cozy. We shopped at the grocery for dinner, because there’s an amazing, huge grocery right next to Mia’s apartment. I felt like I was back in the US. Then Saturday night I finally got to see Harry Potter 7! We had to see it in German, because it only plays in English on certain days, but luckily we both understood all of it. I think I’ll still see it in English though, so I can get the full effect. We saw it with our friend Isabelle, who I met on a language learning website along time ago, but we hadn’t met yet. So finally getting to meet her was awesome and she really like Harry Potter too.

On Sunday we went to the Grünes Gewölbe, a huge museum that houses priceless treasures! I haven’t seen so much gold in one place since I was in China. There was one green emerald that was worth more than everything else in the treasury combined. Too bad they didn’t allow pictures in the treasury :P.

It was a really fun trip and I’m glad I got to see what Dresden is like. Plus Harry Potter was awesome! I'm not sure if Dresden really is the most beautiful city, because I really like Munich, but it was definitely one of them in my opinion.

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Photos

Fish Statue
by the fountain

The Frauenkirche
The dark part is the original wall, the rest was rebuilt after WWII

the art university
next to the Elbe

the huge organ
inside the Hofkirche

funny statue
the Zwinger

funny statue
the Zwinger

the fountain
in the Zwinger

Statue
near the fountain

the art district
lots of birds nests in there!