The City Nobody Wanted to Leave: Dresden

We arrived in Dresden around three in the afternoon to sunny weather with a temperature in the late 70's early 80's. I haven't felt this weather since last Oktober. Needless to say, we all got a little crazy because Marburg had been so cold and rainy. The hostel room was better than I had anticipated. It had large windows and a balcony (keyword here being balcony). The view looked out over Dresden, but I didn't take much time to scope it out because we decided to run down to the Elbe (river through Dresden).

As you can tell, it was a bright clear day and the air was humid and warm. When I stepped off the bus, I was reminded of a quote by Jack Kerouac: “The air was so sweet in New Orleans it seemed to come in soft bandannas; and you could smell the river and really smell the people, and mud, and molasses, and every kind of tropical exhaltation with your nose suddenly removed from the dry ices of a Northern Winter.” A bunch of us ran down to the grass by the river (some with a Maß beer, some with glasses of wine) and sprawled out on the long grass in a way that looked like we were photosynthesizing. As I dug my heels and hands into the grass laying on my back propped up by my elbows, I looked out at this amazing panoramic and couldn't help but smile. When the bells of the dozens of cathedrals went off and the steam boats rolled by, it seemed as though every happy feeling i've ever had, every beautiful thing i've ever seen pulsated under my skin and then exploded from every pore. It was a feeling beyond that of non-belief, it was one of those feelings where you just know that you exist. Life didn't pause, it didn't go slowly, it kept with natural time and it was perfect. I felt each blade of grass, each cool breeze, every cathedral bell that rang and every blow from the steamboats resonated in my chest. In those few moments, I found myself in my own little european pari-nirvana. After we managed to pull ourselves off the grass (you can imagine what a difficult task that was), we headed for the Altstadt to look around. Everywhere I looked there was landscape of some unbelievable baroque marvel. We stopped and watched a band of hippies perform some kind of artsy-musical piece and then continued onward through a large gateway into the Altstadt where a huge May market was going on. Flowers and flowers and more flowers throwing up everywhere. In the center of the market was a large colorful May pole surrounded by elaborately carved wooden stands selling all kinds of food, clothes, and knick knacks. We all got some kind of variation of a Bratwurst and sat down to watch the market at work. Some people were bustling along buying things left and right while others sat at long, colorful tables drinking beer and smoking. Having had a long day, we decided to go back to the hostel. On the way, we stopped for ice cream. I got my classic favorite of chocolate and lemon and walked down the street a ways to where a gypsy was hard at work plucking keys and pushing and pulling her accordion. We continued down the street and under this long arch-tunnel where an opera singer stood singing Ave Maria. We stopped to listen and then continued on our way back to the hostel where we spent a good night inside drinking tea and simply talking. That night I went out on the balcony with a book and sat there watching fireworks shoot across the Dresden skyline. The next day we were scheduled for a city tour, so we all jumped out of bed eager to see more of the city. The first half of the tour was spent, to my dislike, on a bus where we drove around the suburbs of Dresden and then came back to the Altstadt where we filed out and separated into groups. The next half of the tour was on the Dresdner Zwinger.

Simply a Baroque masterpiece. After the tour, we walked around the May market again and got more wurst. Then we met up with some other people and we went to heaven the Museum of Fine Art. And it is there, that I died and was reborn multiple times. I saw so many paintings that i've spent years and years looking at and studying in textbooks including a couple that I wrote very large essays on (Raphael's Sistine Madonna, and Nicolas Poussin's Realm of Flora). I also saw tons of work by Rubens, Rembrandt, Füssli, Claude Lorraine, Coreggio, and the list runs on and on. When I left that museum, there was nothing that could pull me down, I was freakishly happy. After the museum we went back to the hostel, put some things down, and then went to dinner. I also did some walking around behind the hostel in an area I decided to call, "Hippyland." And it was just that. Streets and streets of no cars and just bicycles, naked people walking around, dreadlocks, cotton clothes, multiple instruments, everyone sitting down on patches of grass or walls playing music or talking. The oldest person in this neighborhood was probably 35. It seemed to be all the students living in one massive area. I sat down on a wall and ended up talking to a few art students from Holland and Germany. We had a great time talking about nerdy philosophical stuff and geeking out about the museum of fine art. After a couple beers, I said farewell to them and went back to the hostel to find friends and wine. When my roommates went to bed I was still on a museum-high and went to the balcony below me to visit some friends there where we drank more wine and they let me ramble on and on (more passionately than normal) about all of the works of art I saw in the museum and why I loved them. After they went to sleep, I went down yet another floor to another group of people and spent some time with them. I then returned to my room and grabbed my book and went outside once more to enjoy the cool night air. The next morning we all shuffled into a bus and were swept off to the Elbe River & Sandstone Mountains. The drive there, alone, was MAGNIFICENT. We passed through fields and fields of bright yellow canola flowers.

We arrived at the summer residence of August the Strong (king of Saxony/Poland from way back when). Three GIANT and elaborately decorated mansions surrounded a large courtyard of tightly organized flowers. It was a little too mindblowingly colorful. We then proceeded into what was called, "The English Gardens." It was basically a forest with a gravel path cut through the center of it. In any case, it was simply gorgeous. Tall light green trees surrounded by long grass, multiple kinds of bright flowers, and red squirrels with long ears and colorful ducks scampering all over the place. There was a point in our tour when we walked by a bunch of lilac trees, without hesitation it seemed like half the group purposefully faceplanted into the lilac trees and for a minute all you could hear were the deep inhales of jazzed students. The Sandstone Mountains is also named, "Little Switzerland" because of the nature, and I believe it. Everything looks a lot different than most places i've seen in Germany. We went out to this look out point and could see for miles. Not far away, we could see the Czech border. We then continued on through more canola fields to an old fortress situated on the top of a giant plateau. After all of this we made our way back to the city where we all spread off, many going back to the Elbe, and others itching to take a nap in their beds. I went off by myself and walked around the city and Hippyland a bit more just enjoying what I was seeing and enjoying everything that had happened that day. I sat on a bench in the middle of a giant park and pulled out my book. After a couple hours I went back to the hostel for tea, and then went and sat on my balcony overlooking Dresden. I sat there for another hour or so listening to music and drawing. I then left to hang out with people and check out a jazz/blues bar a couple blocks away. I sat in the bar moving my head to the beat of the music, and when more and more people arrived it got louder and louder and everyone started clapping and cheering as the horns blew up and down creating insane scales and jumping from high note to low note with ease. I sat with a couple young kids from southern France and another old couple from Belgium. We all clapped along, drank, and laughed as the music escalated and eventually quieted down. I returned to the hostel with my head in a daze. I could either spend the rest of my life here or I couldn't stand how utterly perfect it was. The next day, everyone sluggishly moved around due to the madness that had been the night before. We all had to leave the city by noon and nobody seemed particularly happy about having to leave so soon. I know that I, for one, was not. Before we left there was a giant steamboat parade (for May Day) on the Elbe and tons of parades and protests around the city. I'm sad that we had to leave that day... I would have liked to see more of what May Day in Dresden produces. The ride back to Marburg went by quickly with my book and the fantastic scenery of zillions and zillions of canola flower fields. I came back to find Marburg in the full swing of Spring. All of the trees were tall and the leaves poured out of the branches mixing with one another to the point that I couldn't tell which branches and leaves belonged to which trees. Many of the trees were so full that they bent into each other creating large green archways over the dirt paths of the forest. I was happy to come back from Dresden with such wonderful weather in Marburg, it made returning a lot easier. Then again, the next day we were pelted with golfball-sized hailstones......... doesn't matter. Marburg has character. I swear i'll get around to writing the post about Estonia and Finland. I just found it a lot easier to write about Dresden because I was just there and for a shorter amount of time.