Week 9: Dresden, Germany

March was the start of lent, so I deleted tik tok and spent more time outside. Camryn and I treated ourselves to a steak dinner and binged watched the new season of Love is Blind! After class and thrifting for new sweaters, Jules, Nate, and I walked along the Rhine and enjoyed the sunset. For the weekend, we visited Dresden in Germany. The city center on the Elbe River was beautiful. We went to the history museum to fully appreciate the reconstruction done after the whole city was bombed in WW2. We went to the porcelain museum that had an extensive collection of the most beautiful porcelain I have ever seen. We made a charcuterie board with cheeses from Dresden's famous cheese shop and enjoyed a night in with wine and more Love is Blind. The next day, we got brunch then walked through an art museum that had  my favorite landscapes that I've seen so far. We went to the math and physics museum and the man working gave us a little tour of the old clocks to practice his English. We took the bus out of the city to see 3 palaces and walked around the vineyards and gardens. On Sunday, we spent the whole day hiking the Malerweg in the Saxon-Switzerland National Park. After an incline straight up, there was a cafe with a campfire, so we stopped for a hot drink with the rest of the Germans. We hiked to our first look out point and that's when I realized I lost my phone. We tracked it and went back to the cafe, but it was not there and now my phone was moving on Find my iPhone. Nate ran ahead to catch up to it and left Jules and I to converse with this older German couple who did not speak any English and would not give me my phone back until I proved to them that it was mine. Luckily, I had my apple watch, so I could ping it and finally got it back after 5 minutes of trying to explain over a huge language barrier. We made it back to the first look out point of the hike with a beautiful view of huge rock structures and to top it off, it started snowing! We crossed the bridge and found a spot to eat our picnic lunch. We continued our hike farther into the forest and with the snow and little German cabins, the scenery was like out of a fairytale. The hiking path led us along the highway and by then, the sun had set. We hiked down a narrow passageway in between rocks in the pitch black and made it out to a castle to finish the hike! We made it on the last bus running for the night back into the city and met Raphael from Brazil who was also hiking in the national park and we all got dinner together. After a full weekend of seeing all of the sights and taking in the nature, Dresden has been my favorite city I have visited in Germany!