| From: "Bron Gondwana" <brong@brong.net> Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 08:29:13 +1000 (EST) |
Caught the train to Dresden, then found the tourist office in the rain. Got a map, but while I was trying to find the start of the walking tour in the Lonely Planet, I put down the umbrella (during a dry spell, and under cover) - we only realised we didn't have it a few hundred metres later. Of course it was gone when we got back, what with being a rainy day. Oops. Dresden is an amazing city - everything was so comprohensively destroyed, and yet they are rebuilding so closely to the originals. The "Jigsaw Puzzle" chirch is... well... closed undergoing reconstruction at the moment, but the donations have been so generous that they expect to finish early! There are also lots of cool fountains in Dresden (I like fountains), and the view over the river was great. We saw a paddle steamer, with not only real paddles, but real steam. There were also some youngsters on roller-blades with a video camera, doing all sorts of extreme things (high speed backwards down a giant staircase in blades for example, or hanging off the side of the bridge.) I'm very jealous, wish I had that level of control - but of course it takes practice, which takes time... and all those excuses. The Agatha Christie was a little bit too much for me (worked that out about the third paragraph, and since the first two were both the single word "England", that's not too impressive a start), so I grabbed a few little kids books as well. Still takes me about 5 minutes for anything beyond the most basic sentences, but I'm getting better. I'm told the German in them is about 40 years old, and nobody talks like that any more. Oh well, it will do for a start. Most of the words are still the same. Train to Leipzig, then lots of hastle working out where the trams went, only to discover it would have been quicker to walk. Still, a giant gin and tonic from the pub around the corner helped deal with that! |
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