Dresden

After much wait on behalf of my adoring fans (I know you are few and far between) and much writers’ block on my part, here it is: my blog, updated.

We visited Dresden on a Buddy System trip so it was slightly different than many of our other adventures. Buddy System is one of the programs that many of the study abroad students at University of Economics are involved in. It seems to be run mostly by Czech students of the same university. In my experience so far, Buddy System trips are not the greatest; they are expensive and disorganized. And while the Buddy System students mean well I personally suggest avoiding Buddy System trips in the future.

Dresden was definitely an interesting place to visit though. It was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Europe during World War II. Germany has worked very hard to repair the damage done there with amazing results. Compared with the postcard photos taken in 1942 the city is almost unrecognizable from its haggard self. Almost everything has been rebuilt to its original if not better form and while many of the stone work was compromised in the bombing workers have made attempts to reuse as much of the original material as possible.

We met up with some fellow students of Prague Technical University at the train station, and after a two hour train ride we met up with some students form VSE’s German sister school. We left our bags in a room at the university and were told we were going on a city tour.

The city tour was run by students of the German university and rather than taking us on a traditional city tour (you know with a history of statues and such) they sent us on a scavenger hunt. Three teams of Prague study abroad students competed by running around Dresden and asking strangers (all Germans speak English by the way. Yay me for studying a language where almost everyone who speaks it can speak my language better) if they knew random facts about Dresden’s history. We piled eight people into a phone booth (a small child sat on my lap), made a ring of people holding hands around a statue of Martin Luther, and waltzed with strangers. While several people that I had come to Dresden with were upset with the tour I had actually learned a lot, mainly because my only job was read aloud from a packet of information containing some Dresden history.

We visited the Frauenkirche (literal translation: Ladies Church, intended translation: the Church of Our Lady) which is one of the buildings that has seen much reconstruction since the war, but could not go inside. We also went to a castle (which I sadly do not recall the name of as this trip was almost a month ago) and a synagogue.

That evening the German students attempted to take us out to a few bars and clubs (because they assume that is all students travelling want to do) but after a few drinks me and my friends returned to the hostel.

The next day, after an amazing hotel breakfast, we went to Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister (old masters). The main floor mostly contained more modern art: paintings of upside-down women, wooden statues of heads that looked like they had been hacked out with an ax. The second floor was overwhelmingly loaded with art dating back to the Renaissance. The gallery is best known for containing paintings of The Sistine Madonna by Raphael.

It was difficult to see all or even most of the paintings because there were so many. Each painting contained a short description about the story behind the painting so by the end everyone had been so overloaded with information we were all exhausted.

I think after the gallery we returned to the train station and back to Prague.