Up until this weekend, I hadn’t spent more than a day away from Berlin. I traveled to Dresden, which was a 2 ½ hour bus ride south of Berlin. It’s considered the Florence of the North here in Europe, but having never gone to Florence, I didn’t really grasp what all that that meant. It is also the capital of the German state of Saxony. I was meeting with a German friend who I met a few years ago on a mission trip with my church youth group. He was doing his civil service alternatively in America (at age 18 every German male is required to do about a year of military or civil service). Part of Freddy’s was coordinating the groups that would come in and out of a farm that housed homeless people in Maryland, like our youth group. I was excited to get out of Berlin for a little bit, as well as seeing Freddy, and just spending some time with actual German people who were my age. Anyways, as we were driving into Dresden I woke up just in time to see the city across the river. I was impressed. I had read about Dresden but really hadn’t looked at any pictures of the city to know what to expect… but even then, I’m sure pictures just cannot do this place justice.
When I arrived in the city, Freddy was there waiting for me (thank goodness) and we went straight to his brother’s apartment right in the middle of the Altstadt (old city). The location was AWESOME, and his brother was gracious enough to allow us to stay there while he was away visiting friends in Frankfurt. I was given approximately 10 minutes to drop my stuff and change for a big street party that was being held in the Neustadt (new city). And when I say big street party, I mean there are really not words to justify the size of this, truly. We met up with some of his friends for this party both on Friday and Saturday night. There were police officers at each entrance checking to make sure no one was bringing in glass bottles, which were apparently banned, because they can be dangerous? I found this to be the case also when I went to the Fanmeile (fan mile) for the World Cup at the Olympic Stadium; an interesting safety precaution that I appreciate from the Germans. The party was CRAZY, each block had to have had at least one or two DJs playing their German techno dance music ridiculously loud, stages with live bands playing, and all the restaurants were open and serving to the party-goers. Interestingly enough, this was not just attended by young Germans wanting to get drunk and dance to weird music, but there were also middle aged people along with families with young children. Never EVER do I think we would find that in the US. The first night we just walked around, meeting up with different people, etc. and the second night we spent a good amount of time at a Disko (our equivalent to a club). Freddy’s friend was connected to the bouncer and we got in without any problems. This was actually my first adventure into a Disko since I got to Germany this time around. We had fun dancing to, what I feel, was a surprising mixture of music. Germans like old American songs and weird techno beats. They’ll dance to anything without any inhibitions. It’s great.
Saturday was spent walking around Dresden. There were honestly so many buildings of interest that (dare I say) kind of ran together. There were churches and palaces and gardens and bridges over the river, fountains galore, an opera house or two, and did I mention, churches? (Naturally, Matthew, I didn’t leave one without pictures of the organ.) Of course, there was the usual weekend tourist crowd; surprisingly a mix of old Italians, students from Poland and middle-aged Germans. With the tourist crowds come the typical tour guides dressed up in garb and the crazy street performers, including a man who was singing soprano solos, in full voice. Fun. The Zwinger is listed in my Lonely Planet Guide to Germany as the number 4 site to visit– a party palace for the royals of Saxony. It just has gardens and terraces and fountains on every side. We also were able to walk up on the roof where there were many balconies to overlook the city. Fighting the lines to get up in some of the towers of the churches, however, was just not something I was really wanting to do...
So, we admired what we could including the Frauenkirche, which was absolutely 100% destroyed in World War II. This is a little bit of a sensitive subject in Dresden, though. The complete annihilation of Dresden happened two days after the end of the war. Why would the United States clean out a whole city for no reason? The argument is that the Western Allies were afraid the Nazis would run to Dresden (which, as I mentioned isn’t far from Berlin) to rally once more. After the bombing, all that was left were the women and children of the city cleaning up the rubble from all of the buildings, because the men were either off in the war, dead, or prisoners of war. This is the first city I’ve really been to, I think in all of Europe, that was truly still feeling the hurt of the Allied Powers from WWII. It was a bit humbling, whether or not I wanted to really admit it at the time. But as Freddy and I were talking about it, I couldn’t really think of a good answer as to why we would have really bombed the city full of innocent people and gorgeous buildings. Dresden’s all better now – it’s all rebuilt and beautiful. I guess it’s just the nature of war. But don’t I look special when 70 years later people are still asking why, and I didn’t even know our military carried out such an attack.
After walking around the Altstadt and enjoying a nice long meal where we just talked and people watched, we made our way over to the Neustadt. There wasn’t too much there to see, but there was a gorgeous gold statue called the Goldener Reiter (Golden Rider) of Augustus the Strong. Dresden is very into remembering all of its kings in the feudal days. There’s a mosaic on the side of a building in the Altstadt that is called the Fürstenzug, displaying all the kings of Saxony lasting about 800 years. Little reminders like that allow us to understand German history, because it really didn’t have it’s own history as a whole Germany at all. It was broken into different feudal states including that of Saxony.
Sunday we ventured to Freiberg, not to be confused with Freiburg which is located in Bavaria. This is where Freddy attends school, and is very much a small college town – something I can relate to. I appreciated it for every little thing it was. It has the VERY old theater, solid university, and a VERY unique and large collection of minerals and stones. Random, I know, but Freiberg University actually has the top ranking geology program in Germany. Who knew? So, I got to see where Freddy lives... a great space for seven college aged guys, and got to see a smaller university with housing on campus, and a university with a clear outline of campus - much different than what we have here in Berlin. We toured this mineral/gem stone collection which is located in a castle not far from campus, though, nothing was really far from each other. Another big part of this town is its history in mining - another thing I can relate to. Apparently men did not go around saying „Guten Tag“, or „Hallo“ when greeting each other, but „Glück auf!“ Meaning “Good Luck!”, because it was so dangerous to be going down into the mines. Some buildings in Freiberg were completely run down… no one has cared for them for years. Which is typical in East Germany. So many people are moving out and into the West, that it’s becoming a problem for the East. So many people were trained in one specific job usually within a certain industry, and when reunification happened many of these factories were shut down because they were producing more than anyone on their side of the world needed. Therefore a lot of the Easterners have moved to the West to possibly find a job. The government also spent a good chunk of money in the Eastern part of Germany and more specifically Berlin, building all these new places for people to live, only for them to become empty and run down.
Our last night in Dresden was really kind of special. We walked around taking pictures of Dresden at dusk and then Freddy and I met with a couple more of his friends he hadn’t seen in a few years and we sat by the river, drank wine, and talked. The city was gorgeous at night. It was cold, but the water was clear and the reflection of the lights from all the buildings in the Altstadt just shimmering on the surface was breathtaking. What a gem. How had I not been here before now? How had I missed such a great place in Germany? Freddy told me he fell in love with Dresden all over again this past weekend and I certainly fell in love for the first time.
The lights went out at midnight in the Altstadt, but the chimes kept ringing through the next hour that we sat there. Perhaps a good lesson that the lights may go out, but time doesn’t stop. Wars may destroy cities, or even countries, but the people are still living there, so start cleaning up, learn from what happened, and enjoy what you can become. Dresden, despite it’s past, is a city that Germany should be proud of; it’s beautiful, clean, livable, and even though you walk there among some extremely old buildings, you can’t help but feel young.
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