Dresden

My sister Christine's husband had a week's work in Dresden, so upon returning from the Glacier Express, we took their rental car from Bern all the way north into Germany, to Dresden. It was a LONG drive....!

Dresden, the capital city of Saxony on the river Elbe, is a very pretty city indeed, but you must remember that it was very heavily bombed during WWII and so even though it looks very old, with black stones and all, what you are actually seeing is only about 20 years old, having been rebuilt mostly with money from Western Europe after the wall finally came down. In fact, west Germans are still paying a few percent each year in their taxes to the East, a bitter pill for many to swallow, as they were promised this would only be for the first few years. Eastern Germany used to have lots of coal plants, so many towns had very poor air quality, and you could smell the bad odor. Lots of villages along the border were abandoned when the wall went up, and you can still see them along some of the railway and autobahn today. However, the smell is gone, and the former beauty of towns like Dresden have been completely restored.

Dresden is home to some fabulous museums, with notable collections, including Rafael's "Sistine Madonna." It was great to be able to see that! There was another museum full of knight's armor, swords and the like from the 15th-17th centuries, and I was very lucky to obtain entry into the Historische Gruener Gewolb, the personal collection of August the Strong. You can't imagine the hundreds of ivory, amber, crystal and shell figurines, in gold and silver, the ornately decorated tableware and housewares of all kinds, etc. , and of course, the jewels. Tickets are limited and sell out very quickly each day. Of course, no pictures in these museums, but trust me when I say, the vast wealth displayed here was simply too much for the eye to take in. It literally boggled my mind.

Meissen, a nearby city to Dresden, is famous for its painted porcelain. On this blog post the last picture you'll see--or the first, depending on which way you're scrolling--is a picture of a wall, yellow in color, with black figures drawn on it. This is just a portion of a very long wall, and entire city block, on which the royal history of Dresden is pictured, completely in Meissen porcelain. It's a wonder to behold.

We stayed in Dresden, ate, shopped and wandered about the rest of the week, and our hotel was very nicely located right in the middle of the "Altstadt," the old city, which made it easy.