No longer an ex-pat

Hello all followers and those who may stumble upon this blog!

It's been nearly a year now since we've left Dresden, that ancient Florence on the Elbe, and I figured it was time to close this chapter of An American In Dresden. We've settled in Williamsburg, VA, but not before reclaiming our stuff from storage and our cat from Wisconsin. Thanks to all of you for following this blog, as it was a great adventure in electronic media and a great way to keep in touch with friends and family.

Thanks also, to those who helped support us emotionally, whether through visits or phone calls or e-mails. It was an amazing year, and we couldn't have done it without you.

We're heading back to Dresden to visit later this summer, and can't wait. Hope to see you there, and we'll hoist a Radeberger or Feldschloesschen together.

“So where was I? Oh, that’s right – Barcelona!”

¡Buenos días! Or, tardes… or noches… I guess it depends on where you are. But, the main thing is that we're back from a wonderful trip to Spain! For those of you that don't know, for a brief time I tried to make a history MA out of the Spanish Civil War, and I've been interested in Barcelona and Spain for some time. As long ago as 2004 Nadine and I picked up a guide to Spain, intending to take a trip there in 200- well, 2000-something. You know, whenever we could get the money together. So imagine our joy when I discovered a super cheap flight to Barcelona a few weeks ago! Based on the ticket prices and the recommendations of our friends Gunnar and Kathleen, we headed off to the Mediterranean coast a couple of weeks ago.

Instead of flying out of Leipzig or even Dresden, we soon found ourselves at Altenburg airport, a small landing strip in the middle of the idyllic German countryside. The landing strip was built by the Soviets, and I think that Ryan Air, the cheap airline that we used, is the only airline operating out of that airport. Not that they have many flights and they only fly to three airports, but it makes for a convenient location for Nadine and I.

Our (albeit not quite accurate in this photo) Flight Plan.

Our flight there was overwhelmingly German. Young and middle-aged couples and single guys made up the bulk of the passenger manifest, but there was also a school group that was using the plane. On Ryan Air, there are no assigned seats, so it is first come, first served. Nadine, small as she is, was able to scramble right through the crowd and nab us a couple of seats right away. The down side was that several boys from the school trip had gotten on the plane after us and we were then forced to sit with two behind us and two ahead and off to the right. Despite their yelling at one another (good-naturedly, of course, but no less annoying) for the entire two hour flight, we really enjoyed the Ryan Air experience. Before we knew it, we'd flown over the Alps, then Marseille, the Mediterranean, and finally the Pyrenees before landing in Girona. Well, the Germans all clapped as we landed, which I've been informed is a German tourist thing, and then a pre-recorded Scottish voice jubilantly announced that Ryan Air was the only airline in Europe to be on time 90% of the time, but then we were able to set foot on Spanish terra firma.

Okay, true, Girona is not Barcelona. It's a smallish town about forty miles from the French border, but its main claim to fame (in this story at least) is that it has an international airport. And, while the Altenburg airport is really just two big rooms in a barnlike structure and an old Soviet landing strip, Girona has duty free shops, restaurants, more than one airline operating out of its terminal, and an info desk. Its main attraction for us, though, was that it not only allowed for cheap flights, but we could then hop a bus to Barcelona along with the other German tourists.

The Pyrenees from the Girona Airport.

After an uneventful hour's bus trip, we were dropped off at Estació del Nord, in the heart of Barcelona. I'd done some research before we left, so after gaining my bearings and consulting a hand-drawn map that I'd made, we were able to walk from the drop-off point straight to our hotel, Hotel España. I can actually recommend this method and subsequent accomodations, since it allowed us to check out some famous parts of the city on our way, particularly the Barri Gótic and La Rambla, plus it's only about a mile or so from where the bus drops you off. We were also able to scope out some options for dinner as we walked the narrow alleyways that make up these famous quarters of Barcelona! The sights, the sounds, and the smells of Spain were nearly overwhelming as we headed unerringly to our hotel.

The Arc de Triomf, one of our first sights in Barcelona (right near the bus station).

Now, first things first, let me admit that we were a little nervous about our hotel. It was recommended by Frommers, National Geographic, and others, but after we'd booked it we found it on Google Maps. Let's just say that Google Maps does a good job of conveying the tightness of Barcelona's corridors and the dirty condition of storefront security gates without illustrating how many people there are in those alleyways and the feeling of safety that one retains due to the energy in the city. Pre-arrival jitters aside, we were pleasantly reassured that we hadn't booked a guaranteed mugging, but a nice turn-of-the-century hotel. And, yes, turn-of-the-century is a good thing for a couple of historians.

The Hotel España.

Room with a view... Note the tight corridors!

After checking in (which I was able to do in English as most people here speak it), we headed back out to find some dinner. By this time it was already about 9:00 at night, but in Spain that is a fairly common dinner time. We think it has to do with the siesta that they take in the afternoon. Our first real stop in Barcelona, beyond the bus station and our hotel, was a little place called Txirimiri. Txirimiri (pronounced Cheery-meery… we think…) is largely a tapas bar that also has some select offerings from the Basque and Navarre region of Spain. The Basque region is quite different from Catalonia, but the best thing about Txirimiri is its very local vibe. We were looking for someplace that offered good tapas and a local atmosphere, and we definitely found it there.

After a false start with my Spanish (the people in Barcelona definitely do NOT speak with the Mexican pronunciation I learned from Sra. Gould in high school!) and a short wait at the bar, we were finally able to settle in for dinner, which consisted of slices of baguette topped with a variety of things like chorizo, anchovies and olive oil, sardines and cheeses, Manchego cheese and a balsamic reduction, and this amazing sort of atomized-tomato. It was really as though someone had somehow turned a tomato into a mist and smeared/sprayed it onto warm baguette slices. We also had some "patatas bravas" which were fried potato wedges covered in a cream sauce and a spicy tomato salsa. Washed down with some frosty glasses of the ubiquitous Estrella Damm beer, it was a really satisfying dinner. For dessert we hit a gelato place where I had a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of chocolate-orange gelato ice cream (Nadine was still too full from dinner), and then we finally made our way back to the hotel for some well deserved rest before our big day on the town.

Monday morning dawned bright and sunny, despite the forecast of showers we'd had for the whole trip. Much unlike our usual nature, we got up early and then eagerly hit the streets. Stop one on our agenda: breakfast on the way to the beach. We stopped by a café called Cappuccino that I had noticed the night before (cappuccino and cheesecake for me, orange juice and an almond croissant for Nadine), and then started heading for the palm trees we could barely make out. After some unintended but scenic detours including a wall and tower from Roman days and an arm around my shoulder from a surprisingly friendly police officer (I had asked him for directions), we arrived at the sandy shores of the Mediterranean.

The Barri Gótic.

Roman Wall and Tower ruins.

Barcelona from the Docks.

It was a dream come true. Despite my mother-in-laws' insistence that it would just be another large body of water like the Pacific or Atlantic, it was so different! The water was such an amazing color of blue, not the grayish color of the ocean. When we were flying over, I had even remarked to Nadine that it reminded me of the color of the sky in high summer. Add the beautiful beach with flecks of gold in the sand (from what I'm still not sure), and it was really an amazing experience.

The Mediterranean Sea.

I wasn't the only one enjoying the morning! And, no, she was not with us...

Unfortunately, though, we had already used up several hours between breakfast and finding the beach, so we couldn't really dally. By noon we were back in the heart of the Barri Gótic, eating lunch at a place called Crepes Barcelona before heading off towards the Picasso Museum. After my Emmentaler-and-Sobrasada crepe and Nadine's sugar-and-lemon crepe, which we ate while wending our way though the streets, we discovered that the Picasso Museum was closed, however. Turns out that museums around Europe, while open on the weekends, are all closed on Mondays. So instead we went to Nadine's number two destination: Parc Güell.

After taking the subway to a different part of the city, we couldn't quite find the way to the park, so we stopped at a place called Café Fiorno. Café Fiorno is a great little Catalan café, and it will forever bear the distinction of having made the best "cortado" I have ever had (cheapest, too). A cortado, for those that haven't had one, is a shot of espresso floating on sweetened condensed milk. After delicious coffee drinks and an obligatory use of the free bathroom, we got directions to the park from the girl working at the café.

Okay. It's honesty time. I really wasn't interested in the park. It was designed by a guy by the name of Gaudí, and if you ask me, it truly is "gaudy." While a park made of mosaics sounds interesting in theory, the juxtaposition of concrete, mosaic tile, and the garish colors used did NOTHING for me. Maybe Nadine can do a P.S. on it… Until then, here are a few pictures.

The main balcony at Parc Güell.

The view from the Parc into the city.

A salamander at the Parc. Kudos to Nadine for this shot, since there were so many people there...

... As you can see from this shot!

After the park, we made our way via the subway system to the Passeig de Grácia, which is the shopping mile of Barcelona and used to be the place where the rich and famous lived. There are some truly beautiful villas there. The best part for me, however, was that the Passeig de Grácia empties out onto La Rambla not far from El Mercat de la Boqueria: the biggest, freshest, bestest food market in Barcelona! Much like we had had bad luck at the Picasso museum, though, the Boqueria was largely shut down. We were able to wend our way through it, yes, and we did have some candied orange slices dipped in chocolate, but with most of the stalls closed (and me limping due to an aching Achilles tendon), it just wasn't the experience I was hoping for. It was late afternoon by this point and we were near our hotel, so we opted to do as the locals and hit our room for a brief siesta.

One of the houses on Passeig de Grácia, designed by Gaudí.

A beautiful statue at the Plaça de Catalunya.

An hour later, after my wife and Achilles tendon were well rested, we found ourselves eating churros and the thickest, most pudding-like "hot chocolate" that we've ever had. Now that we had the energy to stay up late enough to have dinner, Nadine suggested that we pass the time by visiting an enormous statue of Columbus (on his way back from the Americas following his "discovery," Columbus landed in Barcelona, hence the statue). For some reason, I was a little reluctant to follow along, but I dutifully went. Moments before we got to the forty-feet-tall statue, the reason for my intuition-based reluctance was clear: a low flying pigeon attacked me. Well, attacked might not be the right word. Bombed would be better. Pooped on me would be even more accurate.

Following a quick stop at a fountain to wipe away the bird-droppings, I decided it was time to go for a drink. It fit our schedule-of-events, but following the poop incident, it was that much more urgent. We headed for a place called El Xampanyet that we'd seen on the series Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown. Frustratingly enough, they had opted for the Picasso museum approach, and they too were closed. Fortunately for us, though, it was late enough by this point to respectably have dinner, so we headed to a place called Evinia for some tapas (Spanish cheeses and potato croquettes with Iberian ham) and some cava, or Spanish champagne.

The closed El Xampanyet.

By the time we were done with dinner and dessert (gelato again – crema Catalana and coffee flavors) it was getting fairly late, but because of the siesta, we weren't that tired. We decided to stop at an elegant little bar called Vildsvin for a nightcap. There were exposed wooden beams, exposed brick, and some Austrians sitting next to us with extraordinarily thick accents in their English. They were soon gone, though, and we had the evening all to ourselves.

The next morning we packed up and headed out to breakfast, our luggage (Nadine's purse and a backpack) in tow. After waiting for a Spanish church to open only to discover that it was filled on the inside with scaffolding, we stopped at a little place called the Bar del Pi for breakfast. To Nadine's extreme credit and her uncanny connection with the city, she was able to consistently pick great and local places to eat, and Bar del Pi was no exception. There was no menu, not a single person there was speaking English, and everyone but us was smoking like crazy and talking or reading newspapers. It was perfect! An espresso, an orange juice, and two sweet croissants later we were more or less breakfasted up and started towards one last park, the Parc de la Ciutadella.

The wonderful Bar del Pi.

I say that we were "more or less" breakfasted, because I was starting to drag after about five minutes from leaving the table. It was warm in Barcelona and the bathroom situation was less than conducive to drinking the amount of water that I am used to. That dehydration plus too few calories that morning made me, well, irritable. I was unfortunately not that interested in the park and spent much of it sitting on a bench while Nadine took beautiful pictures and put up with me like a saint.

The Catalonian Parliament building.

One of the last views of the city, same as the first.

Before we knew it, it was 11:30 and we were on our bus headed towards Girona. Surreally enough, a few hours later, we were back in the middle of pastoral Germany, all memories of a bustling Mediterranean city seeming like a story from someone else's life.

The welcoming committee... Yeah, locals like to sit at the airport and watch people land. Weird, right?

It's been a rough adjustment since then, especially for Nadine. Barcelona was oddly familiar, and we decided that it had an energy like Madison, WI, just on a much, much larger scale. It was more multicultural, and more laid back than anything that we've seen in Germany for the past eight months. It was such a wonderful time, it's a bit hard to get back into the real world. But, I think that's what a vacation is supposed to be: too short, too good to want to leave.

So, there you have it. Barcelona was amazing, and we can highly recommend the city to any and all. Hopefully, the same can be said for all of our future destinations! We'll be doing a bit more traveling soon, so I'll try to keep you all posted. Until next time!

And Another Couple of Months Goes By

(Extremely belated) greetings from Bruges, Belgium!

Back in December I received an e-mail from the History department at UW-Milwaukee notifying me that I had won an award for best Master's Thesis for the previous academic year. Since we hadn't been anywhere exciting for a month, we figured why not take a trip to Bruges? (Yes, inspired by the Colin Farrell movie...) It was a mix of "Merry Christmas to us!" and "Congratulations, Adam!" and it was well worth the more than 12 hours (one-way) on the train that got us there.

Given that we had already been to Bratislava and Vienna, we figured that we were old hats at this train-travelling thing and boarded our train from Dresden to Frankfurt. It was a fairly uneventful trip, and other than a bit of a crowd at the local McDonalds for lunch, we quickly took our spot on the train to Brussels, which was our next connection. At first we were a bit nervous, since we hadn't reserved seats for the trip, but the electronic notification above all of the seats showed us a couple of open spots, and we were able to ride in style into Brussels, one of the most international cities in the world.

Our route from Dresden.

Oh, but the thing that no one tells you: Brussels, as one of the most international cities of the world, has a huge, crowded, and confusing train station. To her credit, Nadine is usually a public-transportation guru, who really enjoys the fact that I am still not quite comfortable making connections. I guess I am still worried that I will get on a tram to come home here in Dresden and wind up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with no money or a way home. Inside joke:
We always joked in Madison that I would take the wrong bus and wind up out in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, WI, also referred to as Oshkosh. In any event, our guru was a bit overwhelmed in Brussels, and as we made our way to the appropriate platform, neither of us got a good look at just what train we needed. We knew it went through Ghent and St.-Someone-or-other, but beyond that we were just hoping to catch the right one.

Another major difference between the Brussels train station and the one in Dresden: in Germany, there is only one train assigned to each track during a significant time period; in Brussels, the train pulls up for about two minutes, everyone gets off and on quickly before the doors close and the next train pulls forward and takes its spot. Now, at the time, neither of us knew about this little tidbit. So, though I was fairly sure that the train would not be five minutes early, since that DOES NOT happen with trains, I saw Nadine confidently hop onto the train at our track. Considering that she is my wife, I love her, and besides, she was carrying our money, I chased after her. In the intervening 3-and-a-half seconds, approximately 5 people had stepped in front of me and were shoving their way onto the train, so I could hardly see Nadine as I started shouting "Nadine! I don't think this is our train!" I could see Nadine's fashionable gray coat moving forward, deeper into the train, so I tried again with the same lack of success. Finally, we came to a compartment between two train cars, and I finally said, "Nadine-" The train slowly pulled forward. "-I don't think this is our train." Her mouth agape, Nadine the guru asked me: "Now you tell me?"About thirty seconds later, we noticed that we were standing under a sign that warned travelers without valid tickets (and ours were only for the other train) would be fined a minimum of 200 Euros. Exciting times!

In an unplanned brief detour we swooped into Ghent, but luckily hopped the right train to Bruges there and finally arrived in that city, tired, hungry, thirsty, but otherwise none the worse. Well, "swoop" is probably not the right word, considering that the train was agonizingly slow, all the more so because we knew about the fine and kept dreading that a ticket controller would catch us. In any case, we got to stroll into the by-then-darkened old city of Bruges - only 30 minutes after our ETA, mind - and it was really a sight to behold. Bruges was spared the destruction of WWII and still looks like a medieval market town, complete with old church towers, canals, and beautiful sculptures. After a short walk, we happily checked into our hotel, the Hotel Malleberg, and went in search of dinner.

Pretty building near our Hotel.

After passing a few places, we settled on the Panier d'Or. At nearly nine-thirty at night, with more than twelve hours of train travel under our belts, we picked that restaurant because they advertised authentic (well, for tourists, anyway) Flemish cuisine and were close to our hotel. We actually got a fair deal with their tasting menu, and I got to have some locally made ham as an appetizer, a tall glass of Stella Artois beer (which I loved all the more since this was the first time I drank it when it hadn't been imported) and some Flemish Beef Stew that had some good dark beer in the sauce. Nadine had some breaded, fried cheese sticks (which a blasphemous heathen might have called "mozzarella sticks" until they, too, partook in the deity of all things fried and cheesy) and some Flemish rabbit. Topped off with some delicious ice cream, and a frosty yet oddly shaped glass of the local beer, Kwak, it was the perfect end to a very long day.

A word of caution regarding Kwak: while one may think, "Hmmm. 'Kwak' beer. Sounds like beer for ducks. Hee-hee. Quack! 'Kwak!' Ducks drinking beer…" and proceed to drink without caution, given the logic that duck-beer can't have that high of an alcohol content since they still need to be able to fly home, consider yourself warned.

Dangerous Kwak beer.

The next morning, we had a full schedule since we were leaving very early the following day. After a GREAT breakfast at our hotel, we headed out to the city. First stop was the Dalí Exhibition, where we got to see some pieces that were used in illustrations and small galleries, but which haven't been published anywhere. Nadine loved it, since she's quite the Dalí fan, and she even found a statue that she loved. Unfortunately it was out of our price range, but now we know what to look for at Christmas! Okay, maybe not this past Christmas…

The Dalí Exhibition sign that lured us in.

After that we hustled over to the Diamond Museum, to watch diamonds being cut. Turns out that Bruges was one of the major European cities to deal in diamonds in earlier centuries, and the city grew incredibly wealthy due to their trade. The diamond cutting show was really interesting for us, and we learned a lot about the terminology and the process. Not that we're ready to go into the diamond cutting business ourselves (although it would probably be more lucrative than our current career-paths!), but now we can spout out random diamond facts to amaze friends!

Canals on the way to the diamond museum.

Diamond museums are a historian girls' best friend.

Detail of a statue spotted during our meandering.

After Dalí and diamonds, we headed through town to find someplace for lunch. I picked a bustling bistro that turned out to be one of the hot spots in town. Their Panini were great (I had a local ham and cheese Panini… Mmm!), and I also had some weird chocolate drink to wash it down with. Then we went off to do a little shopping and scale one of the towers that dominate the city skyline.

Lincoln comics are apparently popular in Belgium for some reason.

The Market Square

Unfortunately, by this time I wasn't feeling the greatest. I'd been sickly off-and-on before then, but I think that the train ride the day before and the sneaky duck beer did me in. By afternoon on our only full day in Bruges, I was really starting to feel feverish and getting chills. Despite this, we climbed an enormous tower to get a look at the city, but discovered that Bruges looks rather unimpressive from above. Really, it was just a lot of red roofs and a few points of church spires dotting the roofscape. Plus, to make matters worse, as soon as we got to the top, the batteries in our camera died. We stayed to hear the tower bells play, but without any pictures, it just wasn't the same experience. Not that hearing old bells play needs pictures, but still.

Me, starting to feel feverish...

...and the tower we climbed.

Even though I was starting to sway a little bit and I was starting to sweat, we hit one last museum: the chocolate museum! The other thing that Bruges is famous for is that it is where the praline (chocolates with a filling, like Whitman's, for example, are pralines) was invented. Suffice it to say, we had to have freshly-made pralines while we were there. Not that I hadn't been eating them all day, since they were sold at nearly every shop, and one can't walk more than ten feet without getting to a new shop that boasts Belgian chocolate and pralines. Mmm. Even sick, they were phenomenal.

The chocolate museum was interesting, but it's about that time that things started to go a little fuzzy for me. I vaguely remember eating a true Belgian waffle, and I know that we had some pommes frites, since in my fever-addled brain I remembered that the Belgians are supposed to make a mean French fry. Dinner and dessert taken care of, we hit our hotel room to try and get some sleep before our 5:00 a.m. train left.

Yay! Belgian waffles!

We took a cab from a square near our hotel (I tried to make it on foot, but was simply too exhausted), hopped our train, and started out.

Now, please remember that our trip to Bruges was exciting, but that we were all healthy and hale. On the return trip, it seemed like nothing could go right other than the fact that we got onto the right trains. For starters, when we stumbled onto our connecting train in Köln, the electronic system was not working properly, and we couldn't tell which seats were reserved and which were free for us to take. After being ousted from several seats, we finally found a place to crash for a few hours. Or so we thought. The reservations system wasn't the only thing that wasn't working, and before long there came an announcement that everyone would have to get off the train and board a new one. We had been scheduled to couple with another train, but when the electronic coupling from our train malfunctioned, we were all packed into the single train in front of us. I, of course, was near delirious at this point, but we somehow managed to find seats and I settled into a fitful fever-dream-riddled slumber.

Wyatt, have I got some dreams to tell you about!

Anyway, we knew that we had a short layover in Berlin, and that it was jeopardized by the failed train coupling, but the final blow came when the announcer said that we would be 27 minutes late getting into Berlin. We looked at our train tickets. We had exactly 27 minutes as a layover in Berlin.

Fortunately, we flagged down a train agent who called ahead, and the train was held for us. Okay, for us, other passengers on our train, and a different train coming from Hamburg. By this point, my fever had broken, and I was becoming more coherent, so I was able to fully appreciate that we'd made our connection. Finally, nearly fifteen hours after we'd started that day, we walked in through our front door. Home, sweet home. And it was all the sweeter with the chocolates we brought back!

So, we're finally caught up with the big trip summaries! On a side-note, we are heading to Barcelona tomorrow, which I'll hopefully blog about before we come back to the States!

P.S. Thanks to everyone that congratulated me for finally finishing grad school! It was and is much appreciated.

Congratulations!

Adam just found out that he passed his master's exams, so now he's the proud holder of two master's degrees. Congratulations! - Nadine

Nadine’s Interlude: Having fun in Dresden

Adam’s update on our trip to Bruges might be a while since he’s composing the final essays for his second master’s degree at the moment (good luck!), so I thought I’d share a little about what we do here when not traveling or haunting various libraries and archives.

In no particular order, we’ve really enjoyed:

-Eating at Las Tapas. Las Tapas is a Spanish-style restaurant with two locations downtown, which serves, as you might have guessed, all sorts of tapas. The main restaurant is located near the famous Frauenkirche, and a smaller place in the main mall, the Altmarktgalerie. Nothing beats a day of shopping topped off with a dish of small potatoes served with a cilantro-based dip!

-Getting take-out from Sushi-Circle. Both Adam and I love sushi and it’s not been easy to find an equivalent to our favorite restaurant in Madison, Sushi Muramoto. Our first trip to the ‘best’ sushi place in town (per the most well-respected city guide to Dresden) proved quite a disappointment, but we recently discovered Sushi-Circle, a small place located in the food court of the biggest department store downtown (Karstadt). Although the selection is a bit limited and they don’t sell my favorite unagi rolls, the quality of the rolls is top notch and the soy sauce comes in little fish-shaped plastic containers. Plus, nothing beats the price of Euro 3.95 for six tasty rolls!

-Seeing Yadegar Asisi’s panoramas. Fed up with today’s over-saturated visual culture, the Berlin artist revived the 19th century art of painting city or landscapes onto large canvasses that stretch across 360 degrees. Visitors standing atop the platform in the middle of the panoramas actually feel like they are part of and overlooking the depicted land or cityscape. We saw both his panorama of Rome as it would have looked in 312, which was exhibited until February in the Panometer Leipzig, and his version of Dresden in 1756, on exhibition at the Panometer Dresden. Both were amazing, but we liked Dresden a bit more because we are so familiar with the buildings as they are right now and it was amazing to see what they city looked like 250 years ago in all of its baroque glory. For those of you who want to find out more, here’s the link to Asisi’s website: http://www.asisi.de/de/Panometer/_start_/index.html [German only, though].

Panometer Dresden.

-Catching movies at the Schillergalerie. This tiny mall is located right across from the ‘Blaues Wunder,’ a bridge built in 1893 that translates as the ‘Blue Wonder.’ ‘Blue’ because of the steel construction’s color and ‘wonder’ because it was one of the technical masterpieces of its time and spans the Elbe without actually having an anchoring pillar in the river itself. The ‘Blaues Wunder’ connects our part of town to the rest of Dresden and we cross it every single day at least two - or more often four times - to transfer from our bus to the trams heading downtown at the Schillergalerie stop. We also do our grocery shopping at Schillergalerie, or, as mentioned, catch a movie there. We usually try to stick to German movies (since English ones are dubbed here and more often than not the dubbing takes away from the quality of the film) and we saw a few good ones in the past couple of months, including “Anonyma – Eine Frau in Berlin,” a story based on the diary of an anonymous woman chronicling the arrival of the Red Army in 1945 Berlin, and “1 ½ Ritter,” a hilarious comedy containing the crème de la crème of the German acting world about two clueless knights setting out to rescue the king’s kidnapped daughter. I am now looking forward to seeing “Der Vorleser/The Reader” with a friend of mine, because we both had to read the book in German class. Oh, and apparently Kate Winslet’s very good in it, given the Oscar and all.

'Blaues Wunder' bridge.

-Attending Fasching. Now Fasching, held right before Lent, is a cross between Halloween and Mardi Grass with Cabaret stand-up comedy/political satire thrown into the mix. We attended a Fasching celebration in my home village, not Dresden, but Fasching events are pretty standard across Germany: adults dress up in silly costumes, gather at the local festival hall to listen to a program containing political and very off-color jokes mixed with some musical numbers for one to two hours, then proceed to get drunk and dance until the wee hours of the night. You might guess from the picture below what our costume choices were. The prize that night went to a couple of guys parading around as a six-pack of beer, however. They looked amazing and I wish I had pictures of them!

Scenes of a marriage...

-Playing Ubongo. This game is simply amazing. Two or more players solve a variety of geometric puzzles using a number of pre-determined Tetris-like pieces and whoever solves their puzzle fastest wins the round. Players work on different puzzles but use the same amount of pieces (three, four, or five). After picking up the small travel version we were hooked and proceeded to buy Ubongo Duel. In this version, two players solve the same puzzle and whoever solves five first becomes Ubongo Master. I am sad to report that Adam has won that title a bit more often, but I have been Master once!

An example of a completed puzzle.

-Taking walks around various parts of Dresden. We hopefully get to do this more often when the snow and ice begin to recede. We live close enough to the beautiful area of Pillnitz - which contains a very nice park and a summer castle built by the Saxon monarchs - to ride our bikes there and then take leisurely walks on the grounds and along the Elbe. We also like to stroll along the beautiful Brühlsche Terrasse downtown, which was originally a city rampart but has been open to the public since 1814 and was known as the ‘balcony of Europe’ in the 19th century.

Pillnitz Castle grounds.

Brühl Terrace collage.

-Visiting with friends! This is by far our favorite activity. We love hanging out with our friends who live here in Dresden and we also love picking up visitors at the main train station to show and share this city with them. Dresden is full of lovely restaurants, cafes, and touristy sights, so come visit us!!! To whet your appetite, go to http://www.dresden.de/dmg/en/Culture_Leisure.php

Where were we (several weeks ago, you know, the last time I actually posted something)?

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah! Vienna!

So, the morning of October 31^st we hopped on our train from Bratislava bound for Vienna. It was hard to leave our friends Saskia and Matje, as they had been such wonderful hosts and we’d had such a great time, but other cities called. After a short trip across the border (I think it was only about an hour to an hour-and-a-half), we arrived in Vienna’s “Train Station South,” or “Hauptbahnhof Süd.” I must say, however, that it was a bit of a let-down. When one walks through the doors of the train station, that particular part of Vienna is rather dingy and dirty. It was not at all like the Old World European Capital City that I was expecting. Then again, considering that it is a modern European capital with a lot of tourists, residents, etc., it really should be no surprise that the area near the train station was chock-full o’ cars and the resulting smog.

Just in case anyone was confused about where we were, they do make t-shirts to help clarify.

In any case, we quickly made our way to our hotel, Hotel Kolbeck, and checked in. Like the first impression of Vienna, the hotel was not really anything to write home about, but since that defeats the purpose of the blog, here goes. The reception area of Hotel Kolbeck was nice, with a quaint exhibition that showed what the menu at the turn of the century looked like, fashions of days past at Hotel Kolbeck, etc. The stairs up to our room were a bit steep, but finely tiled and everything seemed nice and well appointed. Then we got into our room. That was a definite minus point.

Now, I’m not terribly picky about my hotel rooms, despite having worked in hotels for a number of years. Even though, I do know what things can be easily cleaned up/taken care of, and that means that having big streaks of something on the walls of our cupboard size hotel room was less than impressive. However, we got a single room that was relatively inexpensive and, given the brief nature of our stay in Vienna, we didn’t really intend on spending that much time there. Which worked out, as luck would have it!

Not long after we checked in, we headed off into the old part of town to find one of my former professors. I really liked old Vienna, since the streets were narrow and cobble-stoned but there were a lot of high-end shops. I am not really into shopping (gasp! Surprise!), but the atmosphere there was really what I think of when I consider Old World cities. We got to see the Church where the Hapsburgs were crowned from the 1830s onwards, one of Mozart’s houses, a sculpture that thanks the Lord for not killing the entire population back during a Black Plague outbreak in the 17th century, and a few other historically significant places as we were trying to find the café where we were to meet Dr. Jordan. Eventually, we rounded a corner and I saw my professor walking towards us. Even though we had never met (she had been on my master’s thesis committee and wrote a very important book that I used in my thesis, but she’d been in Austria the entire time), we somehow recognized each other and headed in.

A model of the Stephansdom, the church where the Hapsburgs were crowned.

The Stephansdom's front.

The beautifully tiled roof of the Stephansdom.

Detail of the Stephansdom. Note the Austrian eagle atop the tower!

A plaque adorning Mozart's house.

Mozart playing host.

Ruins that were recently unearthed in Vienna with the darker stones dating all the way back to the Romans.

We spent several hours in a small but crowded coffee house (where I had the best bread pudding I have had in my entire life… Mmmm…), discussing individual histories, academic goals, and really just getting to know one another. After that, we walked Dr. Jordan through much of the city as she headed home, then Nadine and I wandered about looking for a place to have dinner. Unlike most places here in Germany and also in the States, Austria does not have a smoking ban in restaurants, so most of them were simply too smoky for us to eat at. As luck would have it, though, that meant that we got to save a few Euros and pick up something extra special from an Imbiss: Horse-liver on a bun! Yummy! Now, I will admit that I was a little skeptical at first and that Nadine would have absolutely none of it, but it was really good! The horse liver was processed into a loaf, sliced into a thick slab, and put on a bun with some mustard. I know that it doesn’t sound that appetizing, but it was really not bad at all. The meat was moist, the spicy mustard complimented it really well, and the bun was warm and soft. Arguably one of the best things I ate the entire trip. At least, I remember it that way…

Downtown Vienna.

The (blurry) Lipizzaner Horses.

After finding a bit of dinner, we headed to a gelato place that the entire city was abuzz about. Let me say that it lived up to its hype! I know that I have mentioned gelato in previous posts, but this was easily the best frozen dessert that I have ever had! Finally we headed back to the hotel. It was still a bit early, and the town was getting a little bit loud because it was Halloween. Not that Europeans really celebrate Halloween, but it is getting more popular (thanks, globalization!) and we saw a bunch of people wandering around in costumes. So, we headed around the corner from our hotel and had a few beers and onion rings at a local pub before returning for the night. It turned out to be a really enjoyable date and was the best part of the day.

Vienna at Sunset.

We had a bit of breakfast the next morning, courtesy of Hotel Kolbeck, and then it was off to the train for our trip home. The train trip was essentially us sitting in a sardine can, and the guy across from me accidentally spilled a beer on me (he had set it on the tray belonging to a Mongolian woman sitting next to him, and when the train took a corner a little bit too fast, the can went flying), but other than that it was uneventful.

So, we’ve got one more trip to describe (Bruges, Belgium) and then we’re all caught up! Yay!