Last Full Day in Dresden: Der Dresdner Zwinger, Hofkirche, and Semperoper

---

We had to be gone earlier this morning because some inspector was coming by to inspect the building Dieter and Gudrun live in so that the owner of the building could refinance or something. So, we got up earlier than we have been, and were out of the house early, and took the Straßenbahnback to the city center again.

Today, the main attraction was to be Der Dresdner Zwinger, a palace full of wondrous things, from the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, to the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, to the Porzellansammlung.

First, we went to the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, where we bought tickets, got audio guides, and stowed our bags in a locker, and then found that the elevator was out of order, which was fine because it turns out a) they were working on it, and b) most of the exhibits are on the main floor, anyway. So, we strolled around what I'm calling the "globe room", mostly because it was filled with all kinds of terrestrial and celestial globes from throughout history. It was a pretty interesting look at the development of cartography and navigation. There was also this giant clock that had 360 little clockfaces showing the time at each degree of longitude.

The next room contained all manner of timepieces, including a pendulum clock with its innards exposed so that we could see how it worked; I was fascinated by this clock and I stood and watched it work for quite a while. There was a time when Cheryl and I were both standing at the clock and pointing at various bits discussing how it worked, and one of the guard dudes seemed quite distressed that we might actually touch it, and warned us not to. Twice. We didn't get thrown out, though, and we wandered through the whole room and listened to all the audio guide stuff and looked at everything.

Back out across the lobby in the other room was a collection of automata of various types, all using clockworks, all interesting and with lots of audio guide entries to which we listened dutifully.

Now, of all the things one can do on a vacation, I think the museums are the worst for me. I can walk for long distances, no problem, and my feet don't give me trouble. What I cannot do is stand for long periods of time; my feet just do not like that. I'm not too keen on slowly strolling either, but it beats standing. At a museum, for the most part, it's "walk a few feet, read something for a couple minutes" repeated over and over, which just gets excruciating after a while. However, with an audio guide and the occasional bench, I can disguise this a bit, so I listened to all the audio guide stuff, which arouses hardly any suspicion because how does anybody know what you're listening to, anyway?

Dieter was so awesome throughout all of this, because he just figured out that we were going to need breaks from the standing, and so after the first day, he just unobtrusively built them into the itinerary. I'm also convinced that he sat down a few times even when he didn't need to so we didn't feel bad about sitting.

Anyway, we finished the ground floor, and got ready to go upstairs, which is accessible only by elevator. Well, that's not quite true. There are stairs on the outside of the building which go up there, and there are doors which can access those stairs (just setting the stage here). The group of kids ahead of us had gotten into the elevator, which was working mere seconds prior, and I don't know what they did, but they clearly jacked something up, because the elevator made a terrible beeping noise and then announced via scrolling LED display that it was inoperative.

One of the guards came over and inspected it, and told the kids to get out, and put the "Sorry, out of order" sign in the doorway to the elevator. When we asked how long it would be, they didn't know. Dieter went over and had an extended conversation with one of the folks at the reception desk, and they didn't know, and also they said we couldn't use the stairs; it was "impossible" (never mind that we saw one of the guards come down from the upper floor using the previously-described door and stairs).

We waited a bit, but it became evident that the elevator wasn't going to be fixed soon, so we decided to leave, and Cheryl decided to go find the WC, and while she was gone, Dieter got on the phone and had a quite animated conversation with the director of the museum. I didn't understand most of it, but I caught the gist; he was incensed that he had guests from Seattle and the stupid elevator was gebroken and why couldn't they fix it, and what were they going to do about it? I think it was fruitless, because he politely hung up and then made another phone call, which we later found out was to some local press outlet, in which he complained about the elevator being broken and just what was wrong with people?

This was all very entertaining, but eventually we gave up and left and ventured to the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (the Old Masters Gallery) where there was a bunch of paintings (the gallery part) of Renaissance and Baroque (the old part) masters (the masters part). Dieter kind of did "speed gallery" for us; he showed me all the stuff he thought was important, and occasionally something caught my eye, so I'd stop and look and listen to the audio guide (yay, audio guide!). There was a painting of Hercules which caused both Cheryl and me to wonder "What the hell happened to Hercules' junk?". I think you had to be there. I'm not going to be able to describe art here any more than I am music, and I didn't take any photos because I think it wasn't allowed.

So now, we had an appointment for a tour of the opera house, and just enough time to go grab a coffee or whatever, and maybe pop into the Hofkirche, before the tour. So, we did just that. Cheryl and I both got Eis (of course we did), and some fizzy water, and sat in the shade; it was pretty nice. While we were there, we got to see this weird tandem half-recumbent, half-upright bicycle which was pretty cool.

We finished up and headed over to the Dresden Hofkirche, which is the main Catholic (with-a-big-C) cathedral in Dresden.

Funny story: August the Strong (Augustus II) was the Elector of Saxony. What's an "Elector of Saxony", you ask? Well, that's a pretty high-powered dude who gets to help elect the Holy Roman Emperor, the last vestige of the formerly widespread Roman Empire. Turns out, Poland needed a king, and they wanted August to be that king. Except, that the king of Poland needed to be Catholic, which August was decidedly not at the time. So, he converted, had the cathedral built (which required bringing in outside masons and such because nobody in Dresden wanted to build a Catholic cathedral because, well, Martin Luther and all), and got to be kind of Poland, and all was well in the land. Somehow, he managed to be a Catholic king who ruled a bunch of Protestants in Saxony as well as the Catholics in Poland, and there was no mass hysteria, no cats and dogs living together, and, as far as I know, no burnings, at the stake or otherwise, nor even a defenestration.

The best part? There's an enclosed bridge connecting the palace with the cathedral so that the king could attend the Mass in his jammies, or so Dieter told us, and I trust Dieter.

Also, of note, the cathedral contains a Silbermann organ, which is pretty cool.

We finished up at the cathedral and it was almost time for our tour of the Semperoper, an opera house built by Gottfried Semper. Sort of. The original was built by him, and then it burned down, so it got rebuilt by his son, and then it was destroyed in the second world war, and got rebuilt still again.

We got a guided tour, complete with manual slides (the tour guide held up a spiral bound laminated picture book for us). The opera house has very pleasing architecture on the outside, and on the inside, the further you get from the entrance, the more lavish the decorations. The auditorium is just gorgeous, and is supposedly acoustically perfect (we wouldn't know, the only music we got to hear there was the sound check for "Stomp", the show playing that evening; don't even get me started on how I feel about sullying a gorgeous opera house with "Stomp"). There's even a royal box on the 2nd level, center.

Richard Wagner is strongly associated with this opera house because he was the conductor there for a time, and some of his works premiered there, as did some of Richard Strauss's, some time later.

After the opera house, Gudrun joined us, and we went back to the Zwinger, and wonder of wonders, the elevator was fixed, so we went up, and came out into a not-very-large room with a few more things. I'm a little sad that Dieter went to such trouble to get us into this room; everything there was neat and all, but it wouldn't have been a disaster had we not been able to get in. In any case, we had audio guides again (and there were benches), so we looked at everything and listened to all the interesting stuff, and in the end, it was pretty cool. They had an instrument there that made measuring angles a little less error-prone when combined with multiple readings, and some telescopes and a couple of vacuum pumps, and a bunch of big parabolic mirros (handy for setting giant ants on fire; remember to carry one on your next D&D adventure).

We finished up at Zwinger just in time to hear the porcelain bells of the clock chime which was pretty cool, and then we headed the mall because we were going to go try to buy some of that Kräuterlikör we had the other night. We lucked out, they had it, so we bought a bottle of that, and right next to it was Eierlikör, which Cheryl really likes, so we bought some of that, too, and then we headed for our dinner spot, another Biergarten, which was lovely, and there was more Radler, and I had this omelette thing which was very hearty and very tasty and I don't even rememeber what everybody else had. We sat there for a while and finally headed home, because there was much packing to be done. And also, more beer to be drunk. On the terrace. With more great conversation.

It had come up previously that I was a musician of sorts, and it came out this evening that I was also an amateur composer, and so I played the recording of the final movement of the oratorio I had composed at university (complete with low levels and bad sound), and then we played the videos of the last recital, and we just had a really good time, but then it was time for bed.

---

Photos

Der Dresdner Zwinger
Look, it's the Polish crown.

Terrestrial Globe
One of a pair of particularly large and detailed globes.

Celestial Globe
The other of a pair of particularly large and detailed globes.

Slow Shutter Fountain
I tried to do one of those slow-shutter photographs. It kind of worked.

Comments

[J&J]

Tired feet
Yes, standing around is tiring! Nice to have friends to take you around to places easier. You tell interesting tales of your adventure through the museums! Sure appreciate that!