Awfully sorry to have left you alone these past two weeks. Rest assured that I have been earnestly collecting materials for bloggage purposes and that I am now fully prepared to unleash them upon the unsuspecting public. The next few posts will chronicle my travels across Germany over the past two weeks and also include a cat. Blog nirvana!
My first trip was to Dresden, the capital of the state of Saxony. This is where my family came from so I was very excited to go! The city is gorgeous, to which the following photos will attest. I'll organize the pics by location.
First, a few pics from the bus:
There are a ton of windfarms in the German countryside. Get with the program, America!
Driving into the city. You come across a bridge into the old, well-preserved part of town and it's very majestic and all that.
Next a few walking to our main meeting place in the Theaterplatz:
This dome is actually a large-scale replica of the Polish crown. Augustus the Strong, one of the prince-electors of Saxony, was also the king of Poland.
Now we're entering the Zwinger, a huge baroque plaza that used to be part of the prince's palace.
Next we came to the Theaterplatz, our main meeting place, which houses the famous Dresden Opera:
And some museums:
Here's King Johann, a famous patron of the arts:
Then came breakfast, which deserves its own little section:
There were no words.
Next was our tour of the city! First the Theaterplatz:
That's our tourguide in the bottom of the last pic. Then back through the Zwinger:
Here's the little section where everybody would go to cool off during the multi-week-long wedding parties that exhausted most of the city's budget:
Some bird's-eye views of the plaza:
Next we walked through the city towards the Frauenkirche (the famous one that was recently rebuilt) and saw various sights. First a Russian inscription from WWII confirming that the building on which it was written was free of land mines:
Roar:
Here's one of the big museums. The name translates to The Green Vault and it contains all kinds of royal artifacts:
Model of the palace:
Somebody decided it would be a good idea to put a glass dome over one of the courtyards, which made it kind of claustrophobic and indoorsy-feeling and very hot. Not sure I was a huge fan but it looked kind of cool:
Here's the procession of princes. This is a long wall with all the monarchs and prince-electors of Saxony back to the 13th century. Pretty awesome:
Here's the aforementioned Augustus the Strong and his son. His horse is the only one on the whole wall that's rearing up, and he's the only one looking at the viewer. They like Augustus the Strong.
Here's Frederick the Gentle and his sons Albert and Ernest. Apparently the sons had a bit of a spat and split the Wettin dynasty into the Ernestine and Albertine lines:
The River Elbe:
There's the Frauenkirche in the distance:
Immediately before we actually stepped into the church plaza was the moment my camera decided to run out of batteries. I was just so thrilled with it. Fortunately my friend Kyle was a nice enough person to forward me a couple of his own pictures from up close:
Hey look it's Martin Luther! HEY MARTIN!
This church is freaking massive.
Finally, to atone for my lack of recent postings, here is a cat:
That's Evy, my host father's kitty. She's very talkative and silly.
And that's it for this post! Tomorrow: Hamburg!
