THE LIFE OF THE RIDDLE

THE LIFE OF THE RIDDLE

Friday, August 22, 2008

A weekend in Dresden (July 2008)

One weekend during the class they herded us up in a van and drove us to Denver. (OOPS! Spencer is watching a bronco's game as I blog...I meant Dresden not Denver!) Dresden was once known as the Florence on the Elbe. It is a beautiful city and apparently it was much more beautiful before the Americans and British bombed it right after WWII ended. The bombing is still very controversial and it was a terrible experience for the people living in the city. If you want more details you can read about it here.

We started our tour of Dresden in a nearby palace called Pillnitz. This was the summer palace of Dresden's king August der Starke (Augustus the strong.) King August visited Florence in his youth and tried to make his German kingdom into the new Venice. He positioned his summer palace just up the river from his normal castle in Dresden and had all of his visitors commute to Pilnitz by water.
Our tour leaders treated us like royalty so naturally we commuted to Dresden by ship too.

Pilnitz Palace with Whitney.

Above: Commuting on the Ship.
Above: Dresden's famous Frauen Kirche. Below: inside of the Frauen Kirche.







It was a lovely trip.

1 comment:

jake said...

Joanie - I'm loving all your travel-logs. I still can't believe you were so close and we couldn't connect. I wish you guys could have been in Dresden on that Saturday like you originally planned.

And Dresden was bombed in February 1945 - the war didn't end in Europe until May, so the bombing of Dresden was well before the end of the war, not after. It certainly doesn't lessen the tragedy, though. I'm not sure that Dresden will ever return to the way it looked before the war.