Pegontheroad

Danon: I think all those buildings were reproductions. 15 square miles of the city were destroyed in the firebombing. It's hard to forget that destruction when you're in Dresden.

danon

I was very much aware of that in the church and the Opera House.( I took a tour of the Opera)
I guess the citizens of Dresden wanted the buildings
reproduced exactly the way they were.




.

Trophywife007

I'm very interested in your report as we will be returning to Berlin and Dresden next March. Thank you for your report!

quokka

>The church is built of stone, some of it quite dark and some of it much lighter. I had assumed that the darkness in much of the stone was due to its having been damaged in the horrendous firestorm of February,1945, but someone told me that the darker stone was just older.


There is more to it. The dark stones are original pieces from old Frauenkirche which were rescued from the pile of rubble, while the light stones are new. For years these original pieces had been sorted onto huge shelves around the construction site and then set together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, missing parts were subsituted by new stones. The colour is a particularity of Saxon sandstone: it is very light when it comes from the quarry but sunlight and weather and time (and pollution) darken the surfaces.

29FEB

Usually when reading a travelogue, I skip parts of no immediate interest.

But, Miss Pegontheroad, you write so well that I lingered over every paragraph.
Well done, and thank you.

Pegontheroad

Quokka, thanks. I figured that was the case. Maybe that's what "someone" meant when he said said that the dark stores were the older. They're the ones that survived the firestorm.

CarolJean

Peg, I remember visiting Dresden and seeing the piles of stone. I was very excited to go into the church when it was completed. I also have ampelmann souvenirs. Am loving your report.

Pegontheroad

CarolJean: That's fantastic--being there in a truly historic time.

29Feb: Ah, shucks...Thanks for the compliment.

Okay, back to work! I wanted to visit the Nicholaikirche (St.Nicholas church) because of its central role in the fall of the East German government and of Communism in eastern Europe. It is a beautiful church, large and very light-filled, with white-painted pews and columns and clear glass windows.

In the latter part of the 1980's--1988 and especially in 1989--groups met at the Nicholaikirche to pray for peace, for democracy, for the freedom to leave the GDR, and even for alleviation of the pollution of the area.

As the year progressed, the Communist government tried to suppress the non-violent demonstrations, which grew into the hundreds of thousands. I bought a pamphlet chronicling the events of that time, the cover of which shows a huge crowd standing in the rain in front of the church. It's really impressive--a sea of umbrellas with the silhouette of the church in the dark background.

The pamphlet is translated from the German, and it's a bit of an awkward translation, but one can see that those years were very difficult, with many arrests and much dissension.

After seeing the Nicholaikirche, I proceeded to das Museum in der Runden Ecke--the Stasi museum, the Stasi being the East German secret police. It was fascinating! A young German guy was leading a tour, which I decided to follow instead of using a hand-held guide in English. He began by telling how children of 13 and 14 were led into service of the state by tempting them with the idea that they could become pilots.

We went through various rooms, one of which held a manikin wearing the actual uniform of one of the Stati higher ups. The tour described the structure and full-time staff of the organization and also "the most powerful weapon in the struggle against the enemy"--unofficial employees, that is, people who volunteered or were coerced into informing on others.

I had heard that there are thousands of files still stored at the museum but they're only available to the victims of this spying. I wasn't interested in reading any of the files, of course, but I'd like to have seen the mass of files, to get an idea of how many there were.

I wish I'd done a better job of taking photos, because I could describe more of what I saw, but I was so interested in the tour that I didn't take as many pictures as I should have.

One of the rooms showed some of the disguises that were used. A cupboard full of fake noses, wigs, mustaches, glasses, even a suitcase with a workman's disguise, which included a yellow hard hat. Another room contained a fake belly which could be strapped on underneath the clothes to alter the shape of the spy. Amazing!

Florida1

I am loving your report Peg! I am glad to know about the Stasi Museum as I would like to see it one day too.

I was on the Queen Mary 2 ship last week and one of the lecturers inboard was an art historian who gave a lecture on Caspar David Friedrich!! I enjoyed it and had not known about this artist.

Ingo

Sorry to hear about the bad weather - it all ended in another big flood. Yuck. An excursion to Saxon Switzerland in the rain is of course not exactly exciting

A couple of comments on *odd* Dresden

Quokka already explained the deal about the dark and light (sand)stones. Just want to point out again, that these dark, old stones are now exactly at the place where they originally were.

Yes, the townhouses around Neumarkt square and the Frauenkirche itself are replicas. What the bombs had not totally destroyed of the townhouses was torn down by the communists. They had plans to rebuild the city centre as a "communist" city with large blocks in post-war style. However, many of the so called "public" and "royal" buildings were not totally destroyed, some even in relatively good shape so they could be restored, not reconstructed as replicas: Zwinger, the buildings along Brühl's terrce in general (Albertinum, Academy of Fine Arts, former parliament building e.g.), also parts of the Royal Palace (Stables courtyard with procession of princes mural, Historic Green Vault, Hausmann tower e.g.), City Museum, to name a few. It was consensus between the citizens of Dresden and the administration that the old town district would be rebuilt in parts as replicas according to original plans - about 40%. The rest is (will be - not completed yet) modern.

This is one reason why I always recommend to walk across the bridge and see the so called "Neustadt" district, where many more old townhouses, are orginally preserved and give a pretty good impression of old Dresden (area between Königstraße and Hauptstraße).

Leipzig is another favourite city of mine. Love the lively city centre with the shopping arcades, old and new. Actually, it's never really been an industrial city - the saying goes that in Saxony the Dresdners spend the money that comes from selling the goods in Leipzig, which were manufactured in Chemnitz. Meaning that Leipzig has always been a city of trading (in past centuries Europe's leading place of trade fairs).

Excellent trip report, very interesting and well written!

I.

Pegontheroad

Ingo, I guess I shouldn't complain about a little rain, as at least my home wasn't flooded, as were so many in Germany.

I'd like to see Saxon Switzerland from closer/above rather than from the boat. I didn't get as close a look as I would have liked.

When I returned from my trip, I found Kästner's "Als ich ein kleiner Junge war" in my mail. I'd ordered it before I left, and will read it soon, with the help of my new German/English electronic dictionary, when necessary, if necessary. It looks very simple. The cover portrays a little boy standing on what I assume is the Körnigsufer looking across at the Augustusbrücke and all those magnificent buildings.

annhig

I wandered through the shopping center under and around Potsdamer Platz, found the golden arches, and ate a burger, some fries, part of a shake and a sundae, after which I was filled with shame and worthlessness for giving into that terrible craving.>>

Peg- travel does funny things to us, doesn't it? My equivalent is cornflakes!

loving your descriptions of a part of Germany I visited for the first time only 2 or so years ago. We were lucky enough to be staying with locals most of the time and this undoubtedly added to the interest of our trip. we also had a lot of help from Ingo - danke!

we went to a concert in the Nikolaikirche, so i'm very much looking forward to reading what you thought of it.

latedaytraveler

Peg, still with you and enjoying your solo report. You go girl!

Pegontheroad

I have a history of not finishing trip reports, and I've already made two attempts to continue this, but this time I really mean it.

As is probably apparent, I was fascinated by the Stasi museum. The guide explained the methods of capturing a person's scent and keeping the scent on fabric in a sealed container so that when necessary, the person could be trailed by a specially trained dog. Absolutely amazing!

The guide also told of Stasi safe houses and showed pictures of a bunker to be used by Stasi personnel--as I recall--in case of nuclear war. He showed us pictures of jail cells used by the Stasi, and it seems to me there was also a replica of a typical jail cell.

The art of spying was well represented in the museum--ways to open and reseal letters and packages, telephone wiretaps and ways to monitor conversations in adjacent rooms.

I have not done a really thorough job of describing this museum. There's much more to it, but by the time I'd walked to the museum and then gone through the whole tour I was pretty tired, so that I didn't go through it with the audio guide. If I ever go back to Leipzig, I will do the tour again and also go through with the audio guide.

Before I left, I asked the secretary/receptionist about the protests against pollution that had been part of the agenda for the opposition. I wanted to know if the environmental problems had been addressed--the river that had been described as a cesspool, for instance. I think the secretary was too young to remember most of this, but she did say that the snowflakes used to be black. She seemed to think that the environmental issues had been addressed.

As I walked out of the museum, I remember being absolutely stunned by the lengths the government went to in order to control the population. I just kept thinking "What was in the minds of those people--of the leadership--that they somehow thought they had the right to spy on the citizens, to lie to them, and to exercise such stringent measures."

I strolled back to my hotel, accidentally seeing more of the city than I'd intended because, as usual, I became lost. I dropped into the Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian Bach spent many years as cantor. It was interesting but not as attractive as the Nicholaikirche, nor did it have the same historical/political associations. I saw many gorgeous baroque (I think they were baroque) facades that were different from the art nouveau facades on pedestrian streets such as the Nicholaistrasse.

A couple of asides. I stayed in the Westin, and I was not very impressed. The walls seemed to be thin, so that when my next-door-neighbors started slamming around in their room at 7:00 a.m., I was awakened. And annoyed. The room itself seemed rather minimal. There was no coffee/tea set-up such as the ones I'd had in most of my other hotels.

The staff was helpful, right down to the porter who found copies of USA Today (Ugh!) and deposted them outside my door each morning, but in general I wasn't impressed with the quality of the facility.

I must say (she sputtered, outraged) that I don't understand why the buffet breakfasts in the Hilton, the Westin, and the Russischer Hof are so expensive--$30 for breakfast is way too much. I suppose that a business traveler on an expense account would accept that kind of cost, but I won't. It offends whatever shreds of frugality that I possess. I always managed to find a cafe that costs half or a third of that for the meager breakfast I require.

The other interesting venue in Leipzig (though I am sure there are many) was the Hauptbahnhof, which is apparently the largest in Europe. It was filled with shops, restaurants, cafes with every kind of clothing or merchandise your heart could desire. They even had Dunkin' Donuts! Which I don't eat. Too sweet for me.

I ate a couple of dinners there at an Italian restaurant where I had melon and prosciutto, a tomato salad a couple of times, and some kind of pasta. I ate (a much cheaper) breakfast several times at a little cafe there.

On my final day in Leipzig, I took the bus (#190, outside the train station) to Castle Colditz. I had long wanted to see it, expecially since 2009, when, driving down the Autobahn toward Regensburg, I saw an Autobahn exit for Schloss Colditz.

Pegontheroad

Colditz was used as a prisoner of war camp for "bad boys"--Allied officers who had escaped from other POW camps. It was SUPPOSED to be escape-proof--it LOOKED escape-proof, a medieval fortress with massive walls and sheer drops or steep terraces all around and with a large contingent of German guards always present and alert.

However, it WASN'T escape-proof. There were numerous escapes of French, British, and Dutch prisoners, including the German estimate of about 20 "home runs"--where the prisoners were successful in reaching neutral or Allied territory. About 50 percent of the attempts were successful.

Since I arrived too late for the tour in English, I did my own little tour, seeing the exhibits and reading the descriptions posted in English and German in each room. I also bought a booklet with detailed information about the castle and the escape attempts. Since these prisoners had little to do, they had plenty of time to plan and prepare for escapes, right down to building a glider; although it was never used, a picture of it exists. There were numerous other creative plans, which included fabricating German uniforms and forging documents, among other things. As far as I could tell, being imprisoned there wasn't a horrendous experience such as would have been imprisonment in a concentration camp.

The German camp commander and later security officer, Hauptmann Eggers, built up a mass of historical material which he managed to retain after the war. Until his death in 1974, he was the prime source of German material on Colditz and its escapers. On the Allied side, Major Pat Reid became the leading British historian, writing several books on Colditz. This historical material included many pictures and diagrams, so that the booklet I bought was lavishly illustrated.

I'd long looked forward to visiting Colditz, and I wasn't disappointed with my tour, though I think I would have learned more from the formal tour.

As I said, I took bus #190 which leaves outside the train station. When I looked up Castle Colditz on the internet, I found good direction and instructions as to how to travel there by bus. The trip took about an hour and 20 minutes. To those who are interested in WWII, it is a worthwhile expedition.

adrienne

Still enjoying your report, Peg. Which town did you prefer - Leipzig or Dresden. I'm still thinking of Berlin, Potsdam, and Dresden for my next trip but should I be thinking of Leipzig instead of Dresden? I don't think I'll have enough time for both.

Pegontheroad

I definitely liked Leipzig more than Dresden. Dresden has many gorgeous buildings, esp. the Frauenkirche and the Semper Oper, but they didn't seem to be integrated into the city as a whole.

I especially liked the Cold War history associated with Leipzig. The architecture was more accessible in Leipzig, too.

Pegontheroad

I would imagine that others may be more impressed with Dresden than with Leipzig, though. Just thought I had to add that.

danon

Good to hear about Leipzig......I plan a day trip from Berlin in five weeks.

I did like Dresden ...the Green Vault, the Zwinger , the river.
The Opera and Frauenkirche are beautiful, but duplication of the buildings made them seem
somehow fake.

LSky

What a fun read! You have really brought Berlin to life for me again. Thank you.

Dresden wasn't my favorite city either. But I'll never forget the Goulash we had at a little café when the guy at the desk of our hotel pointed the way and quoted the sign, "Montag ist Goulash Tag"

I like German women and don't mind that they speak their mind. They say something because they care about you. If they didn't they'd let you get run over.

A coat check woman was happy to let an Italian couple get frustrated because they didn't queue up. They could have stood there all day she wasn't budging. I got the impression she didn't like them.