Last weekend was my first time leaving Berlin this semester. On Friday morning, myself along with 120 other CIEE students and several staff members boarded the train to Dresden at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). My friends have always told me that Deutsche Bahn is notorious for being late. This rumor remained true, as our train was delayed 35 minutes. This was not a big deal at all to me though. I had my friends with me and this was just more time for us to relax and talk. The train ride to Dresden was only about two hours. Once we arrived in Dresden, we walked from the Hauptbahnhof to our hotel (The Student Hotel). This hotel just opened about two or three months ago. I did not have high hopes but this hotel was extremely nice. I loved the comfortable bed and pillows and the warm shower as well as the breakfast buffet. Because there were so many of us, CIEE rented out the entire fifth floor of the hotel.
After checking into the hotel, we immediately got into our excursion groups. I chose to do the excursion about Dresden's bid to become a cultural capital of Europe in 2025. A group of about 20 students and myself visited the cultural center of Dresden and spoke to one of the instrumental leaders in the bid process for this title. 2025 is Germany's turn to become cultural capital of Europe. There are 8 German cities in the competition. This Dresden representative is sure that Dresden will at least make it to the next round. The process is quite extensive to become a cultural capital of Europe. A city must draft quite lengthy proposals and show that they have the space and funding to support the role of being the cultural capital of Europe. I really hope that Dresden gets this award.
After the meeting with the culture representative, we had free time. My two friends and I just started exploring all around Dresden. Dresden is by far one of my favorite cities that I have ever visited. It is strikingly beautiful. Dresden was damaged badly during WWII. The city has rebuilt many of its historic buildings, often using the old building materials in the reconstruction. My favorite historic site is the Zwinger. The Zwinger is a baroque style palace that today serves as a large museum complex. The palace was ordered to be built by Augusts II the Strong in the late 16th century as a space for lavish festivities. The architecture along with the fountains and greenery makes for a beautiful picture. Other sites that I visited were the Frauenkirche, Semperoper (Opera House), Renaissance palace, Fürstenzug (porcelain mural depicting all 35 rulers of the house of Westin), and Dresden Cathedral.
At 6:30, everyone in my excursion group met for dinner at a restaurant. The lovely aspect about this dinner was that I did not have to pay for anything. The restaurant was a bit of a healthy restaurant and some of the dishes had ingredients that I have never even heard of before. I played it safe and ordered pasta. We were also allowed to get dessert. I ordered two pancakes with apples. Well, pancakes in Germany are basically crepes. Additionally, the apples turned out to be applesauce placed in between the two pancakes. Although this dessert is not what I expected, I still enjoyed it. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.
The next morning, I had breakfast at the hotel and then went shopping at Primark. The Primark in Dresden was very clean and orderly. I purchased three items for under 10 Euros. I roamed around the city a bit more until it was time for my tour of the old city. This tour was very nice because I was able to learn the historical significance behind each building that I had seen the day before. During the tour, we ran into a huge demonstration (around 35,000 people attended). The theme was the German word "unteilbar" meaning inseparable. Essentially, this demonstration was fighting for equal rights and embracing all of the different races, backgrounds, ethnicity, sexual preferences, etc. that are undermined and condemned by the right-wing party.
Immediately after the tour, I met up with one of my friends that I made while studying in Vienna. She lives and studies in Dresden. It was wonderful to see her and have her show me around the city a bit. We got ice cream at a lovely ice cream cafe and reminisced about our time in Vienna. She also enlightened me about some cultural German aspects of life (well, at least in her life) that I did not know about. For example, she says that Germans try to never do any homework on weekends. She also told me that Germans flip flop lunch and dinner, in respect to the USA. This means that lunch in Germany is the largest meal and is warm. Dinner is simply bread and cheese. In the USA, we have the bread for lunch as sandwiches and our largest meal is dinner.
I met back up with my friends from CIEE and we went searching for a place to eat. I was craving Schnitzel and wanted my other friends to try some typical German food but every single seat at every restaurant was taken. We ended up eating at some Asian restaurant which I was not too happy about. I got some kind of rice and chicken dish. Let's just say that I was not impressed. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful day and got to bed early again.
The next morning, I ate breakfast at the hotel and then checked out, leaving my bags in the storage room. My friends and I would head to Kunsthoffpassage which is in New Town Dresden. The Kunsthoffpassage is really cool. It is a series of buildings that are painted in abstract ways and have other art forms built into each building. For example, the main building, pictured below, has a network of metal objects that when rain hits them, make different sounds. This whole entire part of town is very artsy and feels very different from the Old Town. I really enjoyed this area. We even found a nice park to sit in and just chill.
It was now time to head back to Berlin. We took the tram back to the city center and then boarded our train back to Berlin. I must say that I absolutely loved Dresden. Dresden is a city but not too big of a city. It only has street cars and buses. The architecture is gorgeous, the city is clean, and there are many parks. I can easily imagine myself living and working in Dresden. I simply felt at home.