Dresden

As we wait for the train to arrive in Prague, I sing happily to Tom. “We’re going to Dresden, Dresden, Dresden Germany, we’re going to Dresden. Oh I have reason to believe we all will be received in Dresden.”

“That’s pretty good,” Tom replies. “Did you make that up?”

Well, not really—Graceland, you know? But Tom doesn’t know Graceland. I pause as the train pulls in: maybe this journey isn’t a good idea. How can I travel with someone who doesn’t know Graceland? My traveling companion is 25 years old, he is the product of my third flat, and I decide to go on. Yes, I have reason to believe I haven’t been deceived by Tommy.

I must confess I didn’t know much about Dresden going into the trip—our main goal in traveling was to get out of the Czech Republic, since you’re only allowed to stay in the country for 90 days without a visa, and I was getting frightfully close. Dresden happens to be the biggest city close to Prague: two and a half hours there, two and a half back, a short jaunt over the border and a stamp in your passport.

And this too I must confess: Dresden rocks. Rocks! It’s an incredibly interesting town, a very artsy city, the cultural center of what was East Germany, and, of course, the site of the famed bombings of ’45.

Like many large European cities, Dresden is divided by a river (the Elbe). We got in to town around 6 and made our way to our hostel, located in Neustadt. Neustadt is the hipper part of town, located near the university, and everywhere you look there’s posters for theatre and readings and exhibits. All of Europe seems to have this semi-goth/semi-grunge/intellectual/I’m-a-drunkard movement going on, and there were lots of these folk in Dresden. Also, there were many cute girls with scarves and striped socks riding bicycles. Between glammed out Czech girls and cute German girls on bicycles, I must defer to the Deutsch.

Upon our arrival we were accosted by a young American girl who we were happening to share a room with. If you can guess what a twenty year old girl from Michigan named Brittany might be like, that was her. Bright-eyed, hopelessly naïve, lugging her Nalgene around everywhere. She wasn’t someone who understood the silence that exists between people. Several quotes from this Brittany:

“You don’t sound Texan at all!”

“I can’t stand Germans after a while, they’re so reserved.”

“All the people from Wisconsin have sticks up their asses, and there aren’t many people in Iowa so we don’t really talk about them.”

It was nice to sample different beers—there is a huge difference between Czech and German beers, and both are very proud of their brews. The thing about Czech beer is that there’s more or less only one type of beer: pilsners. Now, of course they make some good pilsners, Pilsner Urquell is THE pilsner, literally, it’s made in Plzen. But damn if I don’t need some variety after a while! The only other beer in the Czech Republic is a “black beer,” or a dark beer, but it’s a very sweet drink aimed at girls. It’s the equivalent of a Smirnoff Ice or something.

And that’s why Germany was so nice: Hefeweizens. Mmm. Good, flavorful dark brews. I still sorely miss the taste of a Shiner, but I got to drink a couple of beers in Germany that were similar and quite delicious.

A couple other notes from the night in Dresden:

1. It’s amazing what a good bed can do for you! The bed I sleep on at home amounts to little more than couch cushions. This was a real bed. Sweet.
2. Another difference between Czech and German beers—one gives you hangovers, one doesn’t. Oh yeah, hangovers. Huh.
3. OK, and I’m not making this up just because I have a deep love for couscous. They have African specialty restaurants that advertise couscous; there is actually a restaurant called the COUSCOUS HAUS! I refrained from going only because I eat couscous on a daily basis. But this is how I knew Dresden was a good town.

The next morning we went to see the sights, at a leisurely pace. We crossed the river to the “old” part of town. And this is where Dresden becomes interesting. Because there are old parts, beautifully old ramparts to the castle that house museums now and so forth. And then there is the reconstructed old.

The main square of Dresden was put into the ground in ’45. The beautiful old church, the Frauenkirche, was turned to rubble, as were the surrounding buildings.

In the past ten years, Dresden has been reconstructing those buildings. Not just building new ones, but building them to replicate what use to be there. I find this incredibly fascinating—what will reconstruction fix? Will it make people believe that it’s really the same town? No. Will it make people forget the war? No. What, what then?

These buildings are so new despite the old designs given to them. It’s impossible to ignore their newness. Nowhere is this problem more prevalent than with the Frauenkirche. The church was finally rebuilt last year, and is indeed beautiful—one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve seen in Europe, in fact, over most of Prague. So that’s saying something. They used what old bricks still existed, but otherwise it’s new.

The inside is similar…they added every ornate flourish that used to exist in the church, only everything is also newly made, so it looks lavishly overdone. It is what the church used to be, but it doesn’t ring true anymore.

This is the eternal trap for Dresdenites. Do you let the past be erased by bombs, and build a new future? Or do you try to preserve the past in some sort of false present? Perhaps wars and bombs make these questions unanswerable.

The rest of the day we kept on our feet, saw the German Transportation Museum randomly (saw the first motorcycle ever made!), wandered between churches and other things. Tom got tired because he operates on naps, so we made our way to the train station and back to Prague.

It’s difficult and semi-expensive to leave for a weekend to another country, especially if you head west from the Czech Republic. In a month or so I’m hoping to go to Krakow. Over Christmas break, who knows? Hopefully somewhere warm, right? For reasons I cannot explain I wanted to see Dresden, and yes, we were well received.