Dresden, Germany

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Thursday, 7 June

We left the motorways this morning and drove the country roads between Berlin and Dresden, stopping off in the middle of nowhere to eat a cheap supermarket-bought lunch. The drive was pretty, running through a couple of great little towns and showing off much more of the typical German architecture that we’ve been expecting.

Arrived in Dresden and were immediately amazed at the cityscape. This town was decimated in WWII by allied bombing and the town has rebuilt most of the downtown area to its pre-war state - it’s all grand and elaborate. Dozens of buildings - several churches, the Theatre, the Royal Palace, the Zwinger Museum, Art School, quaint squares - you name it, they’ve been reconstructed and are all as intricate as they were before the bombs. They all look hundreds of years old even though they are less than 70. In fact, the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) was only rebuilt in 2004 yet it looks centuries old. It’s amazing how much they have achieved in so little time.

We had arrived in the rain but within an hour it had passed and the temperature had shot up 5 degrees so we ventured out. It’s a compact place to walk around and two hours gave us a good feel for the place. We had dinner and lingered into the balmy night.

I’ve decided that there are 4 types of cities/towns that I like: 1) big and grand, like Paris 2) small and grand, like Dresden, 3) big and cute, like Amsterdam and 4) small and cute, like Brugge.

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