Beautiful Dresden

By far the best city I visited in Germany this trip was Dresden. I loved everything about the trip: the city’s Altstadt, the hiking, and the company! The start of the trip, however, was tough. I got up at 4:30 in the morning, missed my breakfast, and took a half-hour bus ride to Bonn Hauptbahnhof. I met Katie and Jules there for our seven-hour train ride to Dresden. After a very sleepy ride, we arrived at around 12:30 and headed to an Italian restaurant in the Altstadt, where I got to try limoncello for the first time. I love stupid, fruity drinks!

We spent the next few hours exploring the heart of Dresden. I was amazed at the architecture: the Katholischekirche, the Zwingerschloss, the Augustusbrucke, and (of course) the Frauenkirche were all beautiful. Next on our sightseeing tour was the iconic, the delectable, Pfund’s Molkerei, a dairy shop that opened in 1882. The shop was decorated floor-to-ceiling with Meissen porcelain, which was a slight to behold. Each of us picked out a cheese to get – mine was something pink and rose-infused – and headed back to the Altstadt to visit the Porzellensammlung, a museum showcasing a former Saxon king’s finest porcelain. It was one of the coolest museums I’ve ever seen! Absolutely exquisite: now I know what I’ll spend my money on when I’m rich and famous. We ended the day with another walk through the Altstadt before taking a tram to our Airbnb. We picked up wine on the way back, prepared a small charcuterie board, and watched the last episode of Love is Blind. The finale was a trainwreck – and so much fun!

Saturday started with a lovely brunch and a photoshoot in front of the Semperoper and Katholische Hofkirche. Then we bought tickets to the Altemeistergalerie, located in the beautiful Zwingerschloss. I love art, but good God am I tired of seeing the same handful of religious scenes in every painting before 1750. However, the museum had a sizable sculpture collection! My favorite was a sculpture depicting two putti – the little babies in Renaissance art – in some sort of conflict, with one savagely whipping the other. It sounds messed up when I put it into writing, but the sculpture was very comically done and a very welcome relief from an onslaught of Adoration of the Magi paintings. We left and headed to the adjacent Mathematical and Astronomical Instruments Salon, where we got a personal tour from a very kindly German guard. He was so excited to practice his English with us! We lunched in a small park near the Augustus Bridge and learned a fun fact from the graffiti on the bench: “Kapitalismus ist cringe.” Then we went to the city history museum. It was okay? I thought there would be a greater emphasis on the events surrounding the Dresden Firebombing, but the museum barely touched on it at all. We used the remaining daylight to visit three palaces (the Albrechtsberg, Lingner, and Eckberg), all about a ten-minute walk from each other. We had a blast! Katie, Jules, and I happened upon a frozen lake, which we promptly threw rocks at to shatter – very palatial, I know. After exploring, we went back to our Airbnb and unwound with the first episode of Dance Moms, a classic. A great day!

As for my book for the week, I read Augustus, by John Williams. The book is structured as an epistolary novel and belongs to the genre of historical fiction. It’s a retelling of the life of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. The book was so well-crafted (in typical Williams fashion) and was an amazing look at the effects of power on a man and the divergence between people’s perceptions of the same event – 9.5/10. Here’s a quote from a book I really liked:

“Rome is not eternal; it does not matter. Rome will fall; it does not matter. The barbarian will conquer; it does not matter. There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die; the barbarian will become the Rome he conquers; the language will smooth his rough tongue; the vision of what he destroys will flow in his blood. And in time that is ceaseless as this salt sea upon which I am so frailly suspended, the cost is nothing, less than nothing.”

-John Williams, Augustus