Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
This morning we had one of our earliest starts of our holiday as the train to Dresden was leaving at 7:35am, fortunately we were only a 15 min walk from the station. Todays train would take about 7hrs and required one change in Wroclaw and then onto Dresden.
We had our own 6 berth cabin on the first leg of the trip which can often happen on the regional runs. Five hours later, traveling through town after town and through forests lined with big burch trees with golden yellow and red leaves, we made it to Wroclaw. The change was swift as our connection was waiting on the other side of the same platform, always good when it's a smooth transition to your next train. The trains here add and remove carriages throughout the journey and if you're not careful you can get yourself on a carriage that isn't going as far as you are, even if you're on the right train. This almost happened to us at one of the stops, the conductor informed us just in time to get off and jump onto the next carriage up. By the time we got to Dresden the train only had two carriages.
Tonight's bed was only a 10min walk from the station, Hofgarten 1824, which was in fact more of a hotel at hostel prices. After checking in we sought advice from reception, then with our map all marked up we headed out to see what Dresden had to offer. The old town was about a 15min walk away and took us over the Elbe river via the Augustusbrücke bridge, the views of the old town are terrific from the bridge. At the other side we found ourselves in Scholßplatz which is surrounded by a number of magnificent looking buildings including museums and Cathedrals, all of which stand in imposing fashion over the square.
On the far side is the Fürstenzug (Procession of Princes), an awe inspiring mural on the side of a building completed between 1904-1907. It depicts the history of the Princely house of Wettin through a procession of 35 Saxon Kings who ruled from 1127-1904, it runs 102m long, 9.5m high and contains 25,000 Meißner porcelain tiles, one of the largest porcelain artworks in the world.
From here we walked a very short distance to the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), which has an amazing and quite recent history. Built in the 18th century it was brought to ground by the allied bombs in WW2, only the alter survived the two day onslaught. For the next 45yrs the rubble stayed where it fell as Communist rule took over, becoming a war memorial where state-controlled remembrances were held. In 1985 it was decided to rebuild the church with the intention of using as many original materials as possible, construction beginning in 1993. The remains were cataloged and based on their size, shape and position in the rubble they could approximate the original positions of the usable stones. Today 3,800 stones stand as close as possible to their original positions, identifiable by their considerably darker colour than the new material. The church was finally reconsecrated in 2005.
After meandering around for a while we headed back along the Brühlsche Terrace, which runs along the river and is a popular place for tourists and locals to take an evening walk.
On the way back we headed up into the new town, an area that on weekends is bustling with bars, cafés and restaurants popular with the young crowd here. We grabbed some bakery items for dinner and took them back to the room, we were keen to put our feet up for some well earned rest. These past 3weeks have been non-stop and we're feeling the strain a little, next time we'll dedicate more time to the west so we can spend more nights in each place. Packing and travelling every second day gets quite exhausting, we'd love to have time to just stop somewhere for more than 2-3 nights but there's just so much we want to see while we're here.
- comments