Life in Luanda: Dresden

We took a great 2.5 hour train trip to Dresden, which is the capital of Saxony in Germany. We had our own compartment, which was nice, and we got our passports checked by German police - that may be the first time in about a year! Our hotel was right next to the very modern train station. After we checked in we headed into the heart of the city to explore since we are only here for the night. We had a good stand up lunch in the town square that consisted of bratwurst, fries and an unidentified patty.

Dresden is famous for the fact that it was almost completely demolished by the Allies in 1945 - almost 100,000 people were killed. The pictures of the destruction are amazing and the town has done a great job rebuilding; mostly in the last 30 years since it was part of East Germany. The most beautiful building to be rebuilt was the Frauenkirche which reopened in 2005. We wandered for a while until we were caught in a huge hailstorm! We then checked out the “New Green Vault” which is a museum of beautiful yet strange artifacts and art collected by the Germany Empire. It includes lots of ivory and some other interesting things including a cherry pit with 185 faces carved into it! For dinner we had tapas and sangria then went to the local mall to get dessert, which ended up being very fancy and delicious! We walked back to the hotel through the shopping district- I saw a TK Maxx (same as TJ Maxx) and was very excited- same place but not the same type of clothes (sad!). The next morning we had a great breakfast in the train station and headed off to Berlin on a two hour train ride.