Eine Kurze Reise: Dresden

I got some really exciting news a few months ago: one of my friends from Ohio State, Grace, was awarded a stipend and would be moving to Dresden!

I was hype. Grace did CBYX in high school, and as a result, had been a tremendous help during my own application process. In addition to that, she's one of those super-driven, hyper-focused, alarmingly-enthusiastic people that everyone needs in their life to help remind you that you can always be doing more because hot hell, look how much she's doing.

Hej du, Powerfrau. That's Grace.

So Grace arrived in Dresden on January 3rd, and I got there on January 4th to help her get settled. After being appropriately excited to see one another, we wandered over to her sad, bunker-like dorm to drop off my stuff. I thought my dorm was bad, but at least mine was carpeted. Grace had found herself living in an oblong, concrete cage, dooming her to grayness for the foreseeable future. 

So we went to IKEA. 

We bought... a lot. All things warm and soft and fluffy and cozy found a home in our ginormous yellow bag. It wasn't enough to fill up the room, but it shooed away the bleakness to at least some extent. 

We spent the next couple of days really just exploring. We wandered through the beautiful streets of the city, gawking at the mixture of modern shopping plazas and old, meticulously reconstructed buildings. They were enchanting at night, and beautiful during the day. 

Note the sooty bricks left behind by the firebombing.

An old road in Dresden. In the background you can see the Frauenkirche.

The same street from the below. That little star up there is a remnant of the Christmas season--they're everywhere in Germany, but I saw the most I've ever seen in Dresden.

While I was in Dresden, I started reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (also thanks to Grace). For those who haven't read the book, it's super weird. It's--very generally--about the firebombing of Dresden, which Vonnegut witnessed as a prisoner-of-war. I don't want to say any more about it, because I think it's one of those books where, the less you know going in, the better. I will say, however, that it is a hilarious, strange, harrowing, stomach-turning, honest, and incredible read. I couldn't put it down. If you haven't read it yet, do it now. 

Though I hadn't finished the book at the time I was wandering through the Dresden Altstadt, I reflected back on my experience within the city later. Dresden was bombed to nothing. That was very evident as I looked at all the buildings very clearly built from the 50s onward. It was also evident and I looked with simultaneous awe and disdain on the Frauenkirche in the middle of the city. The Frauenkirche, like the rest of the city, was annihilated.

The remnants of the Frauenkirche after the war.

And the rest of the city, viewed from the Rathaus (city hall).

After spending 50 years in ruins as a war memorial, the city decided to rebuild the Frauenkirche in 1992. However, as is characteristic of Germany, they wanted to avoid whitewashing the war by completely rebuilding the church. They eventually decided to use every salvageable brick in the reconstructed building to ensure that the marring that had taken place would not be forgotten or ignored.

The Frauenkirche, completed in 2005. Note the stones with the darker patina--due to the severity of the bombing, that's all they managed to save. They also placed all the salvaged stones in their original position within the wall.

Here you can see the largest chunk salvaged in the reconstruction effort. It is, too me, a very poignant and tangible reminder of the stains created and left by war.

The buildings in Dresden were stunning, but we decided to explore the countryside as well. Dresden is the capital of Sachsen (Saxony):

Sachsen highlighted on a map of Germany.

Saxony is also home to cities Leipzig and Chemniz, as well as the Sächsische Schweiz. 

The Sächsische Schweiz is a surprisingly mountainous region filled with interesting rock formations. Grace and I were bent on going, and luckily the international office for TU Dresden invited us both to go along on a trip to the Königstein (King Stone). Grace and I actually had no idea what exactly we were doing on this trip other than some light hiking, so we were pleasantly surprised when we ended up on an old fortress on top of one of the plateaus in the middle of the Sächsische Schweiz.

The view walking up to Königstein. It almost looked like the walls had grown out of the stone.

Don't let this picture fool you--the tunnel to the top was STEEP. And long. And steep. And this was just within the fortress. We had already been climbing for at least fifteen minutes before we reached the beginning of this tunnel.

But the view was very worth all the steepness.

Very, very worth it.

That is the Elbe--the same river that runs through Dresden and Hamburg.

It really was stunning. That, however, was not enough for us--we wanted to see the Basteibrücke (Bastei Bridge), which was about 7.5km away. Being the young, enterprising people we are, we decided to hike to it. The weather was beautiful, it wasn't really that far, and the scenery was incredible. Why not hike?

A large chunk of the hike looked like this. I loved it.

Sure, chickens. Cool.

The Elbe, rather annoyingly in our way. We had to catch a ferry across.

But the town on the other side was  a d o r a b l e.

Once we crossed the Elbe, we were only about a 30 minute hike from our destination. However, it was 3pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we stopped at a local hotel/restaurant for some food.

By the time we finished eating, dusk was falling, so we hightailed it up the mountain in an attempt to beat the twilight. We failed miserably, but the darkness provided its own special brand of mysterious beauty.

As seen on the way up. No, this was not the way we took--this way would've been much nicer than the slick stones and mud puddles we slogged through. But I'm pretty sure this went to someone's house.

The view from (almost) the top. In the background to the right you can see Königstein glowing high up on a plateau.

We got to the top, and bought ourselves some victory food and Glühwein. Knowing that we'd eventually have to climb back down, cross back over the river, find a train station, buy tickets, ride back to Dresden, and then walk back to Grace's place.... we procrastinated. But we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, and eventually gave in to reality.

Climbing back down was a nightmare. Everything was slick, there were no lights, and both of our phones were dying. It was a frightening, yet entertaining experience. It made the eventual return to civilization very rewarding, and from there we returned to Dresden and slept heavily.

The next morning, I was on a train to Frankfurt for my mid-year seminar, already excited to plan my next visit with Grace even as we were waving goodbye.