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Published: July 20th 2014
After another late night, we were up earlyish again, had the usual breakfast, and then piled into Dieter's Volkswagen and headed off towards
Festung Königstein (King's Stone Fortress), which is quite a ways southeast of Dresden, towards the Czech Republic, and affords awesome views of
Sächsische Schweiz, and the Elbe River, plus a distant hazy view of both the Czech Republic and of Dresden.
The fortress itself is up high, huge, built into a giant rock, and as far as I can tell, completely unassailable except by a single road with several very defensible gates. According to Dieter, the fortress has never been captured, although, in 2014, the idea of capturing a fortress is a bit quaint; I think you'd just ignore it and go around. Nevertheless, it is pretty impressive. We never did get a viewpoint where I could have gotten a decent photograph of the whole fortress, so what I got were photos from the battlements.
Königstein is solidly a gunpowder-era fortress, complete with cannon and everything; one of the armory exhibits shows many kinds of cannon, plus various black powder rifles and so forth, and even a mannequin dressed in the typical coat, breeches and tricorn hat, only
Königstein, from Königstein
And a view of Saxony Switzerland in the backgroundwith different colors from the customary red and blue we're used to seeing. The fortress had a hospital, and a church, and quarters for the king for when he needed to be somewhere more secure than in Dresden.
We walked around the whole fortress and looked at pretty much everything, and then, after a surprisingly (to me, at least) short time, Dieter said "Okay, on to Pillnitz". The fortress can be accessed by a glass elevator, a conventional elevator, or a foot path; we chose to go up in the glass elevator when we got there, and left by the same way. Going up was a bit unnerving, but going down was a bit terrifying; I held it together, and we made it safely down, found the car, and were on our way again.
Dieter said
Schloß Pillnitz was a "fun castle", which after some explanation meant that it was more of a summer home for entertaining and didn't serve any functions of state or anything like that. The architecture was inspired by the Orient; Dieter specifically it was Chinese-inspired, but also said it ended up being more what Europeans imagined buildings in China must have looked like. In
Schloß Pillnitz
Inspired by Asian architecture any case, I thought everything quite beautiful, and took a lot of photos.
Now, "
Schloß" means "palace" and not really "castle" (that's
Burg), and this was definitely a palace. There were all manner of citrus trees which had been taken outside for the summer (in giant pots), but they are put away inside the palace for the winter because even though the winters are mild, they're not mild enough to leave your citrus lying about outside.
The garden had many varieties of trees, some labeled, some not, most old and huge, and all interesting. We didn't ever see an actual Douglas fir, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were one lurking about. There was an English garden, too, but it was fenced off; "under construction". There's also a huge old Camellia, imported from Japan in the 18th century. In the summer it's outside, and in the winter, they put this giant glass building around it, as in, the building is on a track, and they can move it back and forth (almost like the space shuttle, except more glass, fewer thermal tiles, and infinitely more operational at this time).
In the garden, we happened upon a
pond, and near this pond was a duck. Really. There's a picture. Even more cool were the baby ducklings right at the edge of the pond, just hanging out, doing whatever it is ducklings do, which looked like not much, to me. We got photos, because ducks!
The palace, or at least one part of it (it's pretty huge), is situated right on the Elbe river, with steps down to the river, where the royals would have exited their gondolas when coming from Dresden to Pillnitz. It turns out that the Elbe floods occasionally, and there's a flood gauge there showing all the floods, with the highest recorded mark in 2002, and a more recent, but less severe flood in 2013. We got a picture, with a Cheryl for scale (2002 was over 2 Cheryls high).
When we had seen all that there was to see at Pillnitz, we headed back to Dieter's car, and off to
Lingnerschloß, which is another old palace, now a hotel and beer garden with a terrace overlooking the Elbe and Dresden. We sat there and had some
Radler and some food (Cheryl got me a steak as a snack for 4 Euros!)
and some conversation and some shade. There wasn't a lot to see here, but we had a good time, and then Dieter dropped us off at the
Standseilbahn Dresden, which Gudrun, Cheryl and I rode down to the bottom, and Dieter met us with the car and we all went back to their house.
When we got home, Gudrun went off to the kitchen on some mysterious errand, Dieter went out on the terrace and started fiddling with something, and Cheryl and I went and freshened up and dumped our bags off in the bedroom, and when we emerged into the living room, we found that the thing Dieter was fooling with was an electric grill, and that Gudrun had prepared some pork steaks and wurst for the grill, and we had a wonderful dinner of steaks and wurst and beer, and got to taste some
Grappa (a liquor that is pretty similar to
Pálinka, which we had in Budapest). The talk turned to
Schnaps (which is not that nasty junk you put in a Fuzzy Navel nor any of the other DeKuyper brand liqueurs, but rather a tasty liquor distilled from various fruits), and I described the
Hausmischung I
Flood Stage!
This is the lower floor of the palace. In 2002, the Elbe flooded to the top mark, over 2 Cheryls high. had gotten from
Sporer in Salzburg, and he said, "Oh, Kräuterlikör!", and ran off to get a bottle, which we sampled, and it seemed almost exactly like what we'd had in Salzburg. So, a trip to the liquor store immediately went on the docket.
We drank and talked late into the night, and then it was time for bed because we had another big list of stuff to see the next day.
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J&J
non-member comment
Fort
Pretty views of Elbe river and the palace. Still trying to get on their websites for more details. Server must be having problems. Keep up with your interesting details.... Cheryl's too!