Dresden

Last weekend, I traveled over to visit Dresden. I have a friend there, so this time I was able to have a place to stay and an expert tour guide (Thanks, Selina!). It was really interesting to see and definitely a fun weekend. Dresden, of course, is partly famous for being brutally firebombed at the end of WWII. This was a bit controversial because Dresden was seen as more of a cultural city and less of a military target. And also, because of the magnitude of the destruction and death toll and because it was bombed so close to the end of the war. And of course, the bombing of Dresden was part of the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Believe it or not, there is still a lot of evidence of this in Dresden today. A lot of places in Germany that were bombed, have preserved a place or two in a state of destruction to act as a memorial to war. They had some of that in Dresden too. But, they also had some stuff that was just still not finished being rebuilt or recovered. This partly speaks to the magnitude of the destruction, but also the speed at which this recovery has taken place may partly be due to it's place in the former East Germany. Anyway, some of this history makes Dresden an interesting place to visit.

The first day I was there, we went to the Sächsische Schweiz, which is located just outside Dresden. My guidbook had said that it was nearly impossible to capture the place in a photo, and they were pretty correct. The Sächsische Schweiz is near the Elbe river and has these big bluffs and sandstone rock formations which are really interesting looking. Also, there used to be some people who lived up there a number of centuries ago, because they found it easy to defend from intuders, with all the cliffs. So, there's some evidence of them as well. Here is a photo to give you a taste. ;

The next day, we looked around the city of Dresden itself. It has a very pretty and historical city center. One of the highlights is the Zwinger. It is a huge palace built for the sole purpose of having royal parties. I think no one lived there. It was only for parties. Supposedly, one of the more famous parties lasted for 43 days. For a prince's birthday, or something. Can you imagine? When was his birthday, then? The beginning, middle, or end? Hard to imagine. Anyway, the Zwinger is gargantuan, but here is a photo to give you an idea, below. Here, I am in the middle of the complex, and the building goes 360 degrees around.

Overall, I had an awesome visit in Dresden. Thanks again to Selina for hosting me, and for an awesome weekend!

Hamburg

A couple of weekends ago, I managed to visit Hamburg to see a new place in Germany. It's the second largest city in Germany, so I'd felt like that was missing from the list of places I'd been here. It has easy transportation connections from Berlin though, so I took the train up. I didn't know anyone there, so I'd just made a central hotel accomodation to check out the city. Pretty interesting. It's a very large port so it has a large harbor for ship-building and fishing. It also has a pretty international feel there because of all the different people a large port brings. The city was much more centralized than Berlin; you don't have to go very far from the city center to see most of the things of note. If Berlin is Techno, then Hamburg is Heavy Metal. Anyway, the city had a pretty interesting feel. The Reeperbahn is kind of the center of party scene in Hamburg and that place is no joke. One of the most interesting things was the fishmarket. Here is one of the salesmen selling some eels. They don't taste too bad.

The salesmen get really into selling their particular fish (or whatever product) and so it's become a big attraction there. They are always yelling something or another about how they sell the cheapest and the freshest and the guy next to them sells overpriced, rotten fish. Makes for an interesting atmosphere. Also, below here is a photo from a barber shop in Hamburg. Staying with the previous theme that Germans love the Simpsons. I guess they are claiming that the hair stylists there can bring about a similar transformation to you, as seen with Marge here. I didn't try it out, but I like the advertising effort.