The travel to Dresden was a little bit crazy at the start. The first train was from Brussels to Frankfurt, but unfortunately, it did not initially make it that far. It had technical problems in Liege, the train did not have enough power to move forward 😒😒, and I had to wait in the Liege train station for 1 hour. I did get to Frankfurt fine, but then the train to Leipzig had to make a detour since the regular tracks were under maintenance. I was then able to get on a train to Dresden, and an 8-hour train ride took 14 hours.
After I finally got to the hostel, Lollis Homestay, I dropped my bag on my bed and went to a metal bar around the corner for a beer 🍺🍺. Then I finally went to bed 💤💤💤.
Full Day:
To start my day I had breakfast at the hostel. It was 5 euros and all you can eat. There was some neat homemade sauce that the staff made. It was 'tomato butter' or something, and it tasted great on my bread.
After my breakfast, I took out one of the hostel's bikes to the city center. The bike I took was an ugly pink one, so I was quite sure that no one would be stealing it. The first stop I made was to Zwinger. This place is a gigantic palace. It has many statues and a beautiful garden which is shown below. What is hard to see from the photos is the sheer magnitude of the size of the grounds they are huge. It was used by the Royals for many things and was part of the outer walls of the city. Nowadays it is a museum complex with the gardens open to the public for free.
Here are some photos from Zwinger.
The next stop was the "Church of our Lady". This Church was completely destroyed during the war, but as can be seen from the photos included below this paragraph it has been rebuilt. It was rebuilt after 50 years of being left in shambles as a war memorial. It is a beautiful domed church with an interesting history.
The Church of our Lady
The must-see part of Dresden is the Dresden Castle, which is what I saw next. The Dresden Castle itself is pretty impressive, but what is inside is even more impressive. Inside contained the treasure rooms, which included the new and historic Green Vault. The in the New Green Vault photos were allowed, but for most of the Historic Green Vault, photos were not allowed. Based on these treasure rooms, I was able to deduce that the Saxons were very rich. The first treasure room contained the most magnificent treasures, and unfortunately, it is not allowed to take photos in those treasure rooms. It was also a bit eary having a security guard in every room, making sure no one tried to run away with everything.
The stuff I was most impressed with was the statues made out of ivory. It seemed to me that it would have taken a lot of time and skill to make those statues. Some people, such as my sister, maybe saddened that elephants were every killed to create those artifacts.
The audio guide said that a lot of the artifacts were made just to be looked at. Now to me, I think it is a waste to make a cup or a spoon and never use, but each to their own.
Here are some of the artifacts. As said before there was many more which I was not allowed to photograph.
At the end of the treasury room, they had coats of arms from different States that existed during the reign of Augustus II the Strong. It was interesting to see that these coats of arms were in various states of damage from the war. During World War II, when all of Dresden was practically demolished, many of these coats of arms were severely damaged or destroyed. If they were at all recognizable after the war, people decided to leave them up so that visitors could see an example of the damage that was caused.
In the castle, there was also some exhibits about the history around Saxony. This included how people dressed, the weapons that were used and other stuff like that. I have included some pictures below of how that looked like.
Here are those photos 😀
I also walked along the Dresden river for a bit and looked at the castle from there. It is interesting to note that the Dresden Elbe Valley used to be a World Heritage Site. It had that honour revoked because of a 4 lane highway that was built alongside it. The Valley is still frequented by tourists.
After doing all this, I went to go and participate in my favourite part of the city the Christmas Market. I walked around the one in the city center and ended up buying a pair of Santa Clause boxers. I also tried many foods, such as a pancake made potatoes onions and cheese with apple sauce on top. It was delicious. I also had mushroom soup with full mushrooms and some currywurst. After eating all this, I was very full. Since I was very full, I decided to walk all the way up to the top of a cathedral 😂😂.
I noticed this cathedral while walking around and decided to give it a look. At the very top, it provided an excellent view of the city and the Christmas Market below. I believe that the cathedral is Dresden Cathedral, but I am not sure and may update later if I remember.
Here are the photos from the top
This was the point I decided to take the hostel's bike and head back. Unfortunately, I got a flat tire on the way and had to walk it back, but it was a lovely walk either way. When I got back, I enquired about any other local Christmas Markets and was advised to go to one in Radebuel.
This was a delightful Christmas Market because it was so local. Very few people spoke English, so I had to give some attempt to order gluhwein in German. I must have done ok because they did give me some gluhwein. There was also some people doing live metalworking, which was cool to watch. Many booths were selling food and trinkets. The city Christmas Markets seemed to have more trinkets for sale. At the end of the line of booths, there was live music playing. When they were done playing, I walked back to the other end of the booths looking at the booths on the other side.
One booth on the other side had deep fried mushrooms which I just had to try. They tasted glorious, and I would have had more, but my stomach was already starting to hurt from the amount of food I was eating. The biggest problem with these Christmas Markets is that there is never enough time to try all the food. Shortly after those mushrooms, I decided to head back to the hostel to have a sleep.
The next morning I woke up had some of that wonderful breakfast, watched an episode of That 70s Show, and did some work on my Chromebook. Then I had to go catch my train to Krakow.
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