Wed, 27 Aug 2003

author Tim	location Leipzig, Sachsen, Deutschland
posted 20:20 CEST 28/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 2 ( all photos )

Dresden, Meißen ( 44 photos )
With the assistance of some helpful locals amused at our attempts to decypher the highly complicated Dresden local transport map, we found ourselves on a bendy bus heading to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station).
From there, we walked into Dresden itself, finding ourselves first at the tourist office. Here, for the sum of 26 euro cents (apparently 25 cents wasn't quite covering the costs), we purchased an English guide to the city, complete with self-guided walking tour. Great!
We needed coffee, and the efficent-as-a-robot girl at the first-floor café in a shoe store helped us out no end. Although the tea that David and Liz managed to acquire was of unknown type - certainly not English Breakfast or similar like they thought they were getting. It seems that unless they get used to drinking coffee (which is universal), this sort of thing is going to become very common.
I bought some cheap tacky thongs (the ones that go on your feet, British people!) as my other pair which had come over from Sydney with us had fallen apart a while back. You need them for the showers in the caravan parks, which can be a bit grubby.
Next, we headed to the start of our tour at the Rathaus. We almost walked past it, as it isn't in a square as most others are. There were some great brass statues out the front which looked like they could use a bit of a polish - Baz suggested a school group should be given a few bottles of Brasso and told to keep themselves busy for the afternoon.
Inside, there was a photographic exhibition, some of the entries of which were quite humorous, but most of the rest of the building was off limits. Or at least that's what we thought the signs said - the Deutsch language has a habit of making really nice things sound really nasty!
From there, we wandered in and around quite a lot of the Altstat (Old Town), which, curiously enough, is mostly newer than the Neustat (New Town), due to almost total destruction during World War II. We ducked our heads into the Kreuzkirche which was undergoing renovation, then into the Altmarkt, the city's oldest and largest square.
Fairly random wandering (it was difficult to follow our tour) then brought us to the breath-taking Fürstenzug, on Augustusstraße. This is a huge long mosaic of 24,000 tiles shows all the rulers of Sachsen from 1124 to 1904, made of Meißen china (more on that later).
From here, Baz decided to wander across the bridge to Neustadt, eventually finding an Internet café to organise some flights and things, while Liz and I first turned our attention to more of Altstadt.
The square right on the south side of Augustus-brücke (bridge) was quite a sight to behold. On all sides were huge old buildings - a Cathedral (which we ducked our heads inside - less ornate but still more beautiful than most we have seen), old towers, walkways and bridges all around us. It is really quite difficult to imagine that most of it is less than fifty years old, you wouldn't know to look at it.
We wandered west, taking in the also-amazing but strangely named Zwinger. This "outer bailey" is a vast couryard surrounded by old buildings and a wall. The Police Orchestra was playing at one end, which we sat and watched for a while, missing our Georges River Band quite a lot. We spent quite a while just taking photos and soaking up the atmosphere of the area - the city is famous for its music and there were little combos, buskers and here a full band everywhere you look.
The nearby Semperoper (Opera House) also had a large sign promising Jazz, but there appeared to be no way in other than for a concert at night or via German-language-only tour.
Now it was time for Liz and I to turn our attention north of Augustus-brücke to the Neustadt. Here we walked along the banks of the Elbe river (it gets around, flowing through at least Hamburg and Meißen also, and I'm sure quite a lot more) to the strangely-located Japanese Palace. Then on to Königstraße, a potent symbol of how Dresden used to look (you hear that quite a lot here). A few churches and interesting streets later, we were on Haupt-Straße. This long pedestrianised street is the focus of this part of town, lined with eateries, cafés and poky little shops.
It was here that we ate a snacky lunch, before delving into a book shop to see what it offered. What we ended up purchasing was an album designed to store all the different Euro coins. If you didn't know, all the Euro notes are the same everywhere, but the countries are allowed to produce coins with their own designs on one side, hence providing good grounds for a collection.
It hasn't taken long to gather the entire Deutschland set, of course, but other countries are proving significantly more difficult. It's a shame we didn't start earlier, having travelled already through Ireland, Finland and Netherlands which are on the Euro, but I'm sure we will work it out.
At the south end of the street (and hence the north end of Augustus-brücke), there is probably the most glittering gold statue I have ever seen - the Goldener Reiter (Golden Rider). This is of Augustus the strong, and was hidden away in safety during the war, before being un-veiled again in 1956 for the city's 750 year anniversary.
We spent a few minutes resting our legs and quenching our thirst in a café on Albert-platz, before heading back across the bridge. We met up with Baz once again, and wandered our way back in turn to the bus stop then Rosie, whom we had parked outside the camping place.

Not too much of a drive away was the fantastically-preserved little old town of Meißen. Famous for its china / porcelan (see earlier), there were refreshingly few places attempting to sell it to us. However, the ones which were were breathtakingly expensive - AUD $2000 for a tea service!
Perhaps it is because this is old East Germany which tourists have avoided for so many years, but the place was great. We wandered aimlessly amongst the entirely cobbled streets, and then up the hill to the Dom (cathedral) and Schloß (castle) perched right on top. There was a great view across the valley to the other parts of town.
By now it was dinner time, and we found a restaurant which promised great views according to the sign on the front. They weren't lying - we sat on the balcony of a restaurant which has been operating since the fifteenth century, looked out over the town and just tried to take it all in.
Something else we tried to take in was the menus. This proved rather difficult, however, as they weren't even (for the most part) written in Deutsch (which we can kind of fudge our way through now) - they appeared to be an old Saxon languange! The waitress obviously saw our distress, and offered us some English menus - much better!
We sat there and ate some great traditional meals, drank a couple of local beers, and were suprised (well, relatively) at the reasonable prices - methinks the fact that tourism hasn't quite discovered this place is a blessing in more ways than one.
From there, we walked back down through town to Rosie parked by the Elbe, and located a caravan park some way north of the town in Niederau. The intriguingly-named Campingganmeldung (careful how you pronounce that one) came complete with the most amusing English-speaking Deutschlander we have found. It was definitely a you-have-to-be-there sort of thing, but his phrases and vocabularly obviously learnt from American movies made for much amusement for us. Examples included when he came to "give us energy" (plug in the electricity cable), and the instruction to "follow with me into the meadow" (a word almost nobody uses in day-to-day English). For all that, he spoke far better English than any of us did Deutsch, so we were grateful.
The caravan park had a "pool", which actually turned out to be a small lake complete with ducks, and hence completely filled with duck-muck. Swimming out of the question, we elected to feed the ducks for a while, before doing very little and eventually sleeping, tired from our first day with two separate places in quite a while.

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