Dresden

Hey all! Well it's been a while since my last post...mainly due to the fact that I've been doing a whole lot of nothing here really. Nothing too exciting has happened here in Marburg, unless you count going to class from 9-12:30 then 2-4, and the occasional drinking as fun or out of the ordinary for me.  So last weekend we went to Dresden. And let me start off by saying that I wasn't really expecting a whole lot out of this trip.  I was thinking Dresden was going to be some dull Eastern German city....but boy was I wrong!  Dresden was bombed to hell during WWII and the large majority of the city was destroyed.  However, the people of Dresden and the German government have put a lot of time and money into making it again the beautiful city it once was.

We left Marburg around 9ish on Friday morning, even though we were supposed to leave around 8. This was due to a certain Mexican sleeping in later than we would have liked her too. But to be fair, it wasn't just her (hahahaha I wonder if Christina will read this). The bus ride lasted about 5 hours and we got into Dresden around 4 pm, checked into our hostel really quick, and then went on to meet our tour guides for our city tour.  We went around the city of Dresden which is really cool because everything's close enough where you are able to walk through the city and see everything. First we went and checked out the Frauenkirche (Lady's Church or Church of the Holy Mother). The Frauenkirche is a Protestant Church that is surprisingly built in the Baroque fashion-which is unusual for Protestants who like to keep their churches very simple.  The church was severely destroyed by the Allies during WWII.  The church was left as a pile of rubble while Eastern Germany was under Communist control and wasn't rebuilt until after re-unification in 1993. The church was breath-taking and the interior matched the grandeur of the exterior.

Next we perused around the city a bit more and made our way to another castle/now museum called the Albertinum which was still under reconstruction.  After that we made our way to Dresdener Zwinger which is another palace but is mainly famous for it's open air courtyard and its clock tower with porcelain bells from the famous porcelain manufacturer in nearby Meissen.

Clock with Meissen Porcelain Bells

We wrapped up our tour by walking out of the Zwinger Palace and right in front of the Semperoper-the Opera house of Dresden which was originally opened in 1841 but burned down less than three decades later. It was rebuilt in 1878, but like the rest of Dresden, it was pummelled in WWII and reopened only in 1985 after the communists invested millions in restoring it. We parted ways from our tour guide and headed back to the hostel.  From the hostel my friend Kevin and I decided to walk around nearby our hostel and find somewhere to eat.  After passing many potential bars for the ensuing night, we found a promising sandwich shop.  I managed to pick some gross variant of an Italian sandwich and was not very happy with my decision.  We picked up some booze before heading back to the hostel to meet up with the rest of our friends.  We pregamed at the hostel before heading out to an outdoor patio/bar place where we had a few adult beverages. From there I headed to a hookah bar with my friends Kaleigh and Savino.  It was a pretty cool place and we had just planned on getting hookah, but we were told we had to order drinks as well-so I ordered some drink and we got our hookahs.  I haven't smoked hookah in a long time so the tobacco hit me REALLY hard and I got super buzzed to the point where I couldn't even drink anymore or smoke anymore hookah.  After a while of lounging we figured we should get back to the hostel and get to bed for another early day.  Funny story: the three of us thought that we were the night owls of the IUSP group that night-but boy were we wrong...some people stayed out way later than us...and we got back at 3ish!

The next day we headed first to Pillnitz-a former Saxon palace outside of Dresden.  It was a pretty big castle, but it had even a larger surrounding park/garden where we saw some of the coolest looking ducks that were a present from a Chinese emperor a while back ago and they have managed to survive there and stay there. One really cool thing at Pillnitz was when we walked by the Danube, there was a building that had marks on it where the flood waters had reached it...most recently in 2002 when the river flooded over 9 meters!

Super cool looking Duck at Pillnitz

Wall that marked the river heights of past floods

  After that we headed over to, as our tour guide called it, "Saxon Switzerland". It was an area where there used to be an old snadstone quarray but it was also a rugged mountainy area...however it was also one of my worst nightmares as it included large drops that only prevented my fall due to waist high railings.  I made my way through some of the paths by staying either in the middle of the path, or by pathetically clinging to the sides of the railing with a death grip.  Although I was scared to death, the views were absolutely amazing and we got some great views of the Elbe River.  I only had a few near heart attacks during our stay here...mainly thanks to my buddy Chris who SAT ON THE FUCKING RAILINGS a couple of times. I honestly had to look away until he was off of the ledge. 

From there we made our way to our last stop-Koenigstein.  Koenigstein was a big fortress built some time ago (don't really remember what the tour guide said), but it was MASSIVE.  The place was built up some height up and completely protected by big walls.  We made our way up to the castle level and saw the remnants of former life there...some old buildings, look out towers, etc.  One of the really cool things/things that also freaked me out was the old well of the castle....that was only about 164 METERS deep (so around 580 feet deep). At one point the guy talking about the well dropped a glass of water and we counted to 11 before the water finally hit the bottom (as we saw on a monitor). 

Koenigstein

 

So let's just say that looking down into this well was a bit frightening for someone like me.  After the castle we all headed back to the hostel....and literally everyone fell asleep on the bus ride back. 

We got back to the hostel, grabbed some dinner at a nearby cafe after wandering aimlessly for a bit, and then went back to the hostel to start our pregame.  Some of us may have pregamed a little too hard and may have puked in the sink before heading out and then passed out in bed for the remainder of the night....thankfully that was not me though.  So a half a bottle of bourbon later (sadly for myself), me and the IUSP group were ready to head out into the night.  We headed to this club place called Downtown, but it wasn't quite my cup of tee (mainly due to the cover charge) so I headed back towards the hostel with a few others to meet up with another group of people who were at the restaurant that was under our hostel.  From there we headed to a wine place that our friend Tom wanted to go to...but it was kinda low key and not really what we were in the mood for so we headed out to meet up with some more of our group who were at a place called Cocktails to Go...which I think you can get the picture of what the place was.  I ordered a Jameson and a Long Island Iced Tea, but the Long Island absolutely sucked so I didn't finish that one.  We walked along the street for a bit and then I ran into a Donner shop to get some food, finished my Donner Box (which is kinda like Gyro meat, with fries, and a garlic sauce....so needless to say it was delicious-especially in my current state).  I was apparently still hungry so I went in and ordered a simple Donner and came outside to find that everyone had left.  So I started to head back to the hostel and ran into some friends along the way and we all headed back together. We got back to the hostel and I caught my second wind so I went back out with some people to meet up with our friends that we got split up from.  We got to the bar which was split up into a bar and then a dance area.  We went into the dance area for a bit, but I was starting to get SUPER tired...seeing that it was no later earlier than 3 at this point.  So I headed back to the hostel with some others and passed the F out....and I was out cold, because I managed to sleep through basically a party in my room that arrived about 45 minutes later. Woke up the next morning feeling a little tired....and a little hungover from the previous night's activities...ate a quick breakfast so I could pack my stuff up before having to check out of the hostel by 10. We threw our stuff onto the buses and then we had until 3 o'clock to do whatever we wanted in Dresden. So Kevin, Bri, Hillary, and myself decided to rent bikes and bike around Dresden for the rest of the time there.  We had a great time biking around seeing everything again in Dresden.  We went and checked out the Volkswagon factory where they build the Phaeton (the top of the line VW) and then we biked along the Elbe until we got to a quaint little outdoor cafe/pizzeria/winery.  So we got two pizzas and a glass of wine and enjoyed a nice little lunch before returning our bikes and then meeting up with the rest of the group to return back to Marburg.

The group of us in front of the Volkswagen Phaeton factory