A Trip to Dresen

We had our last group excursion down to Dresden, Germany this past weekend. Although it wasn't the best trip, it was still nice to see the city. Dresden is the historical city of the once powerful kingdom of Saxony. Saxony, before German unification in 1871 under Otto von Bismarck, was one of the richest and most powerful kingdoms in what used to be the Holy Roman Empire. Dresden is also known for being completely devastated and destroyed by Allied bombers at the very end of World War II. It was carpet bombed and the entire city burned to the ground.

We left Saturday morning, taking the regional train there. Our guide is the same guide (Helmut Franz) that showed us around Potsdam at the very beginning of the semester. He was born and grew up in Dresden. He showed us around the old part of the city (Altestadt). We saw the former palace of the Emperors, the Treasury housing their jewels and other priceless belongings, and also a few churches. One was a stunningly beautiful Catholic church and the other was a Protestant church with a magnificent organ. We toured the other parts of the city, looking at what had been rebuilt, what was ruins, and also the different architectural styles of the regimes that controlled Dresden.

Our hostel was very nice, and located in the new part of the city (Neuestadt). The city is seperated in two by the river Elbe. The new part has less of the old buildings, and we walked around more to look at the architecture. The hostel was located in the part of the city where most of the students live, because there are nearby universities and schools. It was quaint and quiet. The weather wasn't the bus...in fact it was much colder and rainy than predicted. We ended up leaving a couple hours early, because we were looking to get back to Berlin to get work done and there were a couple of people who had started to get sick from a bug or something. All in all, it was a nice city to see, but would have been better as perhaps a day trip and with much better weather.