Dresden! Today i have many many pictures for you because Dresden is just gorgeous. We began our day by walking into the old city. At the crosswalks i noticed the “walk” and “don’t walk” signs were way cooler than in Bamberg. Juliann told me it was the famous Ampel Man (Ampel just means traffic light in German). When Germany was divided East Germany developed these really sweet traffic lights, and after reunification the government was going to take them all down and replace them with the regular traffic lights that were in West Germany. Well the people were not happy about that so they did huge protests, especially in Berlin and they saved the Ampel Man. Now Germany makes all kinds of money from the toursits with cool Ampel Man paraphernalia.
They also had an Ampel Woman!
When we crossed the bridge we got another great view of the city.
The Hofkirche
The Academy of Arts
Our first stop in the city was the Frauenkirche. Outside of the church was a youth choir group and their horse drawn carriage.
After that we just wandered around admiring the buildings and walking into anything that looked cool and free.
The Procession of Princes representing the history of Saxony's ruling family, the Wettins.
The Semper Opera House
This is the Hofkirche again where they were having an organ concert. The sign said you weren’t allowed to take pictures, but i managed to sneak one in without getting thrown out.
The Zwinger
After the Zwinger we came across this rather scary looking fountain. I thought the lizards were cool though.
By now it was after lunch time, so we went on the hunt for food. Now of course there were the classic “Imbiss” stands
which are super good and mostly what i eat if i don’t feel like cooking in Bamberg. Dresden is was bigger than Bamberg, though, and for the past several weeks i had been craving KFC, thinking that i would have to wait until i returned to the US. When we were walking back to the hostel yesterday, however, we walked past a giant KFC sign and learned that there was one on Trompeter Str! We found Trompeter Str, but there was definitely no KFC, so we asked some lady taking a smoke break. She had no idea. We were next to a little coffee shop, and Juliann wanted to check the prices on something so we went in. After she had ordered, we asked the lady about KFC and she actually knew what we were talking about. Apparently Trompeter Str. has two sides that don’t really connect (imagine how confusing Bull St and Main St in Columbia must be for people out of town) so she directed us to the other side and we found it!
America tastes so good! After lunch we moseyed back toward the hostel. We stopped at the Yenidze “tobacco mosque” which used to be an old tobacco factory, but is now a collection of offices and stores. We didn’t realize its function had been so altered so we ended up walking into some business foyer wondering where all the tobacco was. We only found that one door, but apparently there are also a lot of stores you can enter.
We stopped by the Japanese Palace again with hopes that the inside would be more excited, but these guys holding up the building were the only really “Japanese” feature of the building which now holds a deep sea museum.
Seriously shiny Augustus the Strong
We also stopped by the Dreikönigskirche again hoping to get inside. This church was actually really cool because, except for the tower, the outside is really modern looking. The inside was similar with only the alter belonging to the old ornate style. We were trying to read the panels about the history of the church when i realized the lady next to me was translated the text into English for her husband. I asked her something about what the panel said and we started talking. The couple lived in Hamburg and they had met while the man was on tour with the US Navy. The woman did some translating for us, and we learned that, like the majority of Dresden, it had been pretty much flattened in the WWII bombing. Only the tower was left standing, and they had removed the alter before the bombing so it was also saved. After the war the church was used to store rubble for several years until they finally got it cleared out. They didn’t have enough money to really restore the church, so they just built it in a simple style but keeping the tower and the alter.
The Dreikönigskirche concluded our tour of Dresden, so we hopped on a train to spend the night in Berlin!
Barefoot in the Rain 