Through My Eyes: Europe trip day 10-11: Dresden-Prague

In Dresden, the hotel we stayed in had no air conditioner-- and it was starting to get hot! The first week of our trip, the weather was cool, sometimes even cold. But summer was returning to Europe, and it wasn't an entirely comfortable night. But we were up pretty early in the morning and after giving poor Mosey a total hack-job of a haircut with really crummy drug-store haircutting scissors out in the hotel parking lot, we ready to go see the city.

Dresden is probably most known for it destruction during the firebombing in the last weeks of WWII. Huge swaths of the city were completely destroyed when 1,250 British and American bombers dropped 2431 tons of high explosive bombs, and 1476 tons of incendiaries. Up to 25,000 people, mostly women and children, were killed.

After the war, it became an industrial center for East Germany, and much of the city was rebuilt, albeit in the ugly, blocky, industrial "socialist modern" style.

We drove down into the city and parked in a parking garage near Neumarkt.

Walking into the city center, one of the first buildings we saw was the Dresden Frauenkirche. Built in the 18th century, it was completely destroyed in the firebombings. The remaining ruins were left for 50 years as a war memorial, but in 1994 after the reunification of Germany, reconstruction began.

The church was rebuilt as closely as possible using original material and plans. Each stone from the rubble was documented, and its approximate original position could be determined based on where it was in the rubble pile. Architects used computer programs to manipulate the stones 3 dimensionally to figure out how the original stones fit together. In the end, almost 4,000 original stones were used in the reconstruction. The result is really beautiful-- the church is mostly white, but the original fire-scarred stones are clearly visible.

Our first destination in Dresden was the Historic Green Vault, but we had some time to kill before our ticket time, so we walked over to see the Zwinger, a Rococo style palace that was part of the original fortress and city wall complex. It, too, was destroyed, so what we saw was a reconstruction, but impressive nonetheless.

The Green Vault (or Grunes Gewolbe) is a museum containing the largest collection of treasures in Europe. It was founded in 1723, making it one of the oldest museums in the world. It has over 3,000 masterpieces of jewelry and the goldsmith's art, as well as precious objects made of amber and ivory.
It was crowded and really hard to take pictures, so I have borrowed some from Google images here:

I loved the place, and could have spent another couple hours there at least. But the menfolk were ready to go, and there were other things we wanted to see in Dresden. On the way out, I stopped at a small bookstore/gift shop and bought a tiny wooden carved creche for my mom, and a larger Joseph, Mary, and Jesus for us.

Mosey was interested in the buildings around the city center, and took a couple of pictures:

Then it was off to the Bundeswehr Military History Museum! It's the military museum of the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, and one of the major military history museums in Germany.
This ended up being one of Joseph's favorite places.

I thought this was really cool-- it's fragments of shrapnel, as they would appear in a freeze-frame of an exploding shell.

Going up to the very top, there was a walkway out to the end of the "arrowhead." There was an amazing view of Dresden, but it had one of those metal-mesh floors, and I admit to being almost too scared to walk to the end.

And here's Brigham, finding a comfortable place to read in the museum while he waited for the rest of us to finish up.

After the Military History Museum, we next headed to the Volkswagen factory. I had reserved tickets for an English tour, but we came JUST too late, and the people at the desk wouldn't let us join the group. :-( Instead we joined the last tour of the day, which was in German. I didn't get most of it, but it was pretty interesting inside anyway. Apparently the plant wasn't operating-- vacation days I think? I'd like to come back sometime when it is humming along.

Next on the agenda was dinner. We went back toward the city center to the Altmarkt Square just south of Neumarkt. We ate at a little outdoor cafe in the square across the street from the Altmarkt Galerie.

Afterward we went into the Galerie for gelato, and I met the grumpiest restroom attendant in Germany-- he refused to let me into the handicapped restroom because it had just past the hour when it closed-- and this in spite of the fact that I had been ringing the bell for the attendant for a good 5 minutes. Nice. In general, I like the European model of public restrooms. They are usually not free-- you put a couple of Euros into a turnstyle in order to get into the restroom. But often the handicapped restrooms (which are always separate from the regular male/femail restrooms) are closed and you have to call for an attendant to unlock the door. That's fine, as long as you can find an attendant to call!

And that was our day in Dresden! One more night at the non-air-conditioned hotel, and then off to Vienna via Prague the next day.

Tuesday morning we got on the road to head out of Germany. I had wanted to stop and see the Saxon Switzerland National Park, but it was 45 minutes away, and I got voted down. :-( Here's what we might have seen there:

Ah well, next time.

The drive into the Czech Republic was cool. It's a lot different than I had envisioned. I had imagined kind of a flat, industrial, depressing communist-era landscape, but instead there are big hills/small mountains there between Germany and the Czech Republic.

Still, you can definitely feel that you are heading deeper into former Communist/Soviet territory. We'd be driving on the freeway enjoying the beautiful scenery, and then see these appalling concrete monolithic apartment buildings, or whatever, rising up in the middle of a picturesque little village.

We finally got to Prague in the early afternoon. Prague is a big city!! It's the capital of the Czech Republic, and has a metropolitan area population of about 2 million people. It's doing alright-- it has the lowest unemployment rate in the whole EU. It's built on the Vltava River, and one of the must-do items in Prague is to cross the Charles bridge. It's really old, being completed in the 1400's, and replacing an older bridge that had been there since the 1100's. But, it was really, really crowded and we didn't want to try to find a place to park, so we had to just admire it from the car.

Instead, we decided to drive up to the Prague Castle. It's perched up on the top of a hill overlooking the river and the rest of the city. Getting up there was one of the most harrowing experiences of the entire trip.
I was driving, attempting to follow street signs and the car's GPS. Intersections in Europe can be really confusing because there are trams/trains that go everywhere, often sharing the road with the cars. It's not always easy to tell where the cars are supposed to go and where the trams go. Prague was especially confusing because there were almost no lane markings on the road! So I was vaguely following the car in front of me when I made a left turn to go up the hill to the Prague Castle. Like I said, the trams often/usually share the road with cars. But going up the hill, I suddenly found myself in a tram-only lane, with a curbed median and trees between me and the street I was supposed to be on. It was very narrow with no way to turn around. It seemed the only way to get out, was to keep going up the hill until it opened up again at a cross street. So I drove as quickly as I could, praying I could get out before a tram came our way. But sure enough, up ahead I could see a tram coming down the hill! This was a very narrow lane with NO way for both of us to fit. It was like playing chicken-- I raced up the hill trying to get to the cross street before the tram came down. And I made it, just in time. I felt like such a jerk. I often felt like it would have been useful to have a sign in our car window: "I'm sorry, I'm just a stupid American driver! Forgive me!" But, we did manage to get out of the tram lane, and found a parking place along a cross street road.
It was CROWDED and HOT. But we made our way to the castle complex. Here's what the castle's website had to say about it:
Prague Castle was most likely founded in around 880 by Prince Bořivoj of the Premyslid Dynasty (Přemyslovci). According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Prague Castle is the largest coherent castle complex in the world, with an area of almost 70,000 m². A UNESCO World Heritage site, it consists of a large-scale composition of palaces and ecclesiastical buildings of various architectural styles, from the remains of Romanesque-style buildings from the 10th century through Gothic modifications of the 14th century.
And it was really cool!
Going inside the front gates, there was an outer courtyard, and then through a tunnel in the wall, another courtyard, and then through another tunnel in another wall, you're inside the main castle complex, with the amazing St. Vitus Cathedral right in front of you. Again, it was crowded, and we had to make a decision about how we'd spend our time. So we decided against the Cathedral tour, and instead wandered around the castle complex for a while before heading back out.

There were these guards in front of the outer gates as well as in front of both courtyard entrances. They stood in front of these little guard houses, and were perfectly still, not making eye contact or acknowledging the existence of anyone in front of them.

St. Vitus Cathedral was huge and ornate.

Back outside of the castle complex, we went to the walls overlooking the city. It was a great view.

On the way back out, it was so hot, we stopped and bought way overpriced sodas. It was cool to see the Czech coke bottles.

Then back in the car for another hour or so of driving to Vienna.
It turns out that Vienna is a BIG city! We drove to our hotel, on a pretty suburban street west of the historic city center, and attempted to find a place to park. The hotel advertised free parking, but it turns out there were only about 5 parking spots in an underground lot. Sure, it's free, if you're one of the lucky few to get a spot. So instead we drove up and down the street a few times before we finally found one empty spot a few blocks up the road. But, that's the way it goes.