Switzerland in Germany

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Dresden

9 years after our first visit to Dresden, we were both expecting to see some changes to the old East German city. The last time we visited, the city was still suffering from History, most notoriously a British 'visit' during the 2nd World War - much of the old town was somewhat shabby and in need of serious repair.

Today, whilst some work continues, progress has been made, and the centre of the city is now the bustling tourist mecca it's history deserves.

We were staying in a hostel in the Neustadt area of town, our relatives in the city not yet having found proper accomodation. The Neustadt is across the river from the historic centre, but retains a character very much of its own, reminding us of areas of east Berlin the way they looked 10 years ago, before the property developers moved in.

The Neustadt is the 'arty' area of town, with numerous bars, galleries, restaurants and generally colourful people in abundance. Our hostel certainly fitted right in. Our room, on the 3rd floor of a typical high rise tenament block had a peculiar array of glowing stars on the roof, a bed raised 2 ft off the ground and embedded into the wall, as well as some very fluffy mirrors. The room next door was more bizarre, with a full Trabant car in the middle, having been converted to a bed and hoisted up to the top floor. The other neighbouring room was like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, with gigantic wooden chairs and a huge table used as a bed.

We took the advice of the lovely East German couple we'd stayed with in Stuttgart to go and visit the Saechsische Schweiz (Sachsen Switzerland) out towards the Czech border. The GPS system in our hosts' car duly got us there, and we hiked up the hill to see what there was to see (so to speak).



And very pretty it was, too! High above the river Elbe, perched on some naturally stunning rocky columns, medieval Germans had constructed a fortress. I cannot possibly imagine how anyone could have breeched this fortress in the olden days, short of besieging it and starving the inhabitants to death - this was impenetrable. We also visited the nearby castle at Koenigstein, again a mavellous sight.

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