As Dan mentioned, it’s usually me who sits in conference rooms while he goes out to explore London/Leipzig/Thessaloniki/Jyväskylä/wherever. Leading up to the conference, I kept telling everyone how excited I was to be the one to get to wander around and do things while he was stuck in the conference. But when the prospect of being the one to go out and explore Dresden arrived … I wasn’t actually sure what to do. Luckily, Monday had a vague plan — I was going to find an ATM, I was going to find a place to get German SIM cards for our phones, and I was going to go get tickets to the Arcade Fire concert that we had just found out was happening in Dresden on Tuesday night. I just had no idea where I was going to do all those things. But things happened, and with money, SIM cards, and tickets acquired, I set off to see something about Dresden that didn’t have to do with trip administrivia.

The Altstadt, or Old Town, of Dresden is very interesting. It was pretty much bombed to bits during WWII, so a lot of it is a reconstruction. The most interesting bit of it is a historic church, the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed during the bombing and then just sort of left there as a memorial. (Seriously — apparently they just left the ruins right there and went, “Good enough.”) After reunification in 1989, there was enough outcry that they began the process of cataloging the remains and rebuilding the church, using as much original material as possible. There were two sides of the church that had remained partially standing, one of them being the side with the altar, and you can very clearly see the older bits in the exterior of the church.

Frauenkirche, exterior (altar side)

The interior of the church is also striking. It’s open to the public, and despite the no photography signs at the door, everyone takes lots of pictures and the ushers do nothing about it.

I at least tried to be inconspicuous and didn’t use a flash.

The other main thing in downtown Dresden is the Procession of Princes, or the Fürstenzug. It’s a giant mural depicting the various rulers of Saxony, originally painted in the 1870s. When paint on the exterior of a building proved not to be the most permanent solution, they replaced it with porcelain tiles in the early 1900s. (Porcelain is a big thing around here.) Fortunately, there was only minimal damage in the WWII bombing.

Beginning ….

… middle … (did I mention this thing is HUGE?) …

… end.

After that, I went back to collect Dan from the conference and we went to dinner at a Surrealist cafe called Stilbruch. We were clearly nowhere near hip enough to be at this cafe, but they served us anyway. We experienced our first currywurst, which is essentially a sausage cut into pieces and covered with what appears to be curry-spiced ketchup, served with fries. It appears to be the German thing to eat when drunk. It’s possible we weren’t drunk enough to fully appreciate it.

The cafe itself had lots of cool art installments throughout, including a game called “Gollard” that I forgot to take a picture of, so here’s a picture from the cafe’s website.

It’s a pool table lowered onto the ground, covered with artificial turf, and you hit the billiard balls with a golf club. The website goes into rather a lot of details about the rules of the game. It’s convoluted, but it still makes more sense than cricket.

And what Surrealist cafe would be complete without a Magritte homage?

Magritte is watching you eat.

Statistics:
SIM cards acquired: 2
SIM cards that actually worked: 1
Water that wasn’t for drinking that Dan actually drank: 1