A jewel in the shores of Elba

Thanks to an incredible offer for a five-stars hotel (the brand-new QF Hotel) and a nice price in the train ticket (almost five hours from Frankfurt, though), we spent last weekend in Dresden, a city which was devastated in the last days of the Second World War, when it was clear that Germany had lost the war, with a bombing which killed more than 100.000 civilians (ask Churchill for further details): an action which should shame mankind.Afterwards, the DDR did not have neither the money nor the intention to rebuild most of the mounuments destroyed in 1945, so it was not until the unification of Germany that the city started to get back the former brightness it used to have in the XVIIIth century, when it was the splendid capital of Saxony. Our trip started with a walk from the train station via Praguerstrasse. This street has turned into a huge commercial hub in Dresden, with modern shops at both sides. Nevertheless, the three Ibis hotels are there to remind visitors that comunist architecture once ruled the place.

After just ten minutes, we arrived to the Frauenkirche, close to which we had our hotel. Frauenkirche was destroyed after the bombing in 1945 and it was reopened again in 2005. Until then, its ruins remained there as a symbol of the bombing by the allies in 1945. The area around it is still being restructured but one feels really, really well there: everything has been made with taste and care. Another points of interest are Zwinger (a tremendous baroque palace which now hostes six museums), the Semperoper (which appears in Germany for a TV-ad of beer), the Japanase Palace (with its nice sculptures supporting the columns), the Dreikönigekirche (and the lovely area around), the Hofkirche,...

The atmosphere of the city is somehow different to that of a city in Western Germany. First of all, there are no immigrants from Asia or Africa: almost everybody is white. Secondly, the proportion of people with tatoos or piercings is incredibly high; even young parents with children have them. Some of the faces and the factions are truly Prussian to me, rather different to the Western Germany faces I am more used to see. It may sound racist or old-fashioned or whatever, but, 20 years after the unification, one still feels the difference with cities in Western Germany.The most typical view of Dresden is probably that which Canaletto put in his famous painting and which I tried to replicate, probably not with big success (see below). That weekend, the city was celebrating its big festival and there were people and attractions everywhere. I think that most of the population of Dresden (around 450.000) was there, because it was difficult even to walk.In our way back to the station, we also tried to visit Volkwagen's Glass Factory, but we should have booked a tour in advance and we had to just stay behind the glasses. By the way, in that area, not much is said about how the company was founded and about how it grew in its first years of existence... Also by chance, we found ourselves walking towards the football stadium together with a lot of people with yellow and black T-shirts, fans of Dynamo Dresden, which was playing at that very same time. This year they will play against Eintracht Franfkurt, in Second Division, and some of you may be surprised to know where my preferences lay.