---

January 13, 2011

We have a really great teacher at the Goethe Institute that makes our lessons really interesting. Since it’s a C1 class (higher level) we don’t learn much new grammar, its mostly practicing using the language and expanding our vocabulary. Our lessons have been really interesting so far. He usually throws in a few songs to listen to, interesting articles, or tells us something about German history. He grew up in Dresden in the DDR times, when the Soviet Union was running the show in East Germany, so he has a lot of first hand knowledge. He’s also an art history major, so all things cultural fascinate him and I think he enjoys the class just as much as we do.

So on Thursday he organized a little field trip for us after class (on his own free time) to give us a tour himself of the Gemäldegalerie Alter Meister, a really famous art museum here in Dresden, located in the Zwinger Palace. It was really an awesome tour and he showed us all of his favorite paintings. The most famous one was the Sistine Madonna by Raphael. I had seen the two angels at the bottom of the painting in my grandma’s house, but had never known who they were or where they were from. It was the first time I’ve been in an art museum and I found it really interesting.

January 15, 2011

Today Mia and I decided to visit the Großer Garten. It’s a huge park, kind of like the Englischer Garten in Munich and I think both are probably a lot better in summer (them being parks and all). All the plants and trees were pretty dead and it was a bit overcast, but the sun came out a few times and brightened things up. We walked to a big palace in the center of the garden with a small lake behind it and discussed searching for a big golden fountain that Mia hadn’t been able to find before. We decided it was too cold and that we would try to look up where it was on the Internet later. So we switched directions and headed back to the Neustadt to visit the Japanais Palace (it’s not a Japanese style building, but it used to, and maybe still does, hold a large collection of Japanese and Oriental paintings).

They have different exhibits here throughout the year and today there was a really cool one called Tiefsee (Deep Sea). It was all about fish and plants that live really deep in the Ocean, how they live, what they eat, and how deep they live. It was really pretty cool and had a lot of jarred specimens too.

January 16, 2011

Mia and I took a walk around the Altstadt today and the weather was really nice. A lot of sun and relatively warm. We were going to go up in the tower of the Altes Rathaus (Old City Hall), but it’s closed on Sundays. Instead we walked along the river and past the huge, gorgeous art university and then took a tram to the banks of the north side. From there we got to watch the sunset over the city skyline.

---