Amy & Adam's European Highlights

It’s exhilarating to live in a city again. Happily, Dresden is a city in constant flux, full of building cranes, construction vehicles, photos of the glorious city pre-WWII, and happy, healthy-looking, relaxed Germans. There are many German and Russian tourists here visiting the city’s old town with the highlight being the recently rebuilt gigantic Fraunkirche (a protestant church built to rival St. Peters in Rome) and many fine museums. Other than a few American school groups, I think Dresden is yet to be discovered as a tourist destination for Americans. Perhaps this is because we still have the images of firebombed Dresden as described in Slaughterhouse Five or of city rebuilding efforts by Soviets where lifeless, concrete Boulevards and gray, boxy buildings were the norm. After German reunification, much money from the West has been steadily pumped into this once-again lovely city on the Elbe River. Many (perhaps most) of the city’s ornate buildings in the old town have been rebuilt. As for the wide concrete boulevards that I remembered from my trip here in 1999, well, they still exist. But it’s amazing how much brightly-colored capitalist signs, landscaping and new urban planning make these once rather dreary areas look vibrant, livable, and dare I say—desirable? I should mention that the part of the city we live, neustadt (new city) was mostly spared in WWII. That means that this area of town has many of its original 19th century buildings in tact and it’s quite charming. I’ve rediscovered a love of running as we found some fabulous routes from our apartment that follow the Elbe River. I haven’t loved running this much since we lived in Minneapolis and I religiously ran the Chain of Lakes with friends.

The month of March was packed with fabulous visitors from the US. We spent a week traveling around Germany and Austria with college friends Rich and Phoebe. I then spent a few days in Dresden prior to playing tourist with my friend Rose whom I met in Providence and now lives again in Northern California. My close friend Amanda from college arrived a day after Rose departed and she and I spent a week in Dresden, Praha and Berlin. Ironically, our visitors all chose to come during the month of March when we experienced the most harsh winter weather conditions to date. It has been extremely cold, snowy and windy. Sadly, today, the day after Amanda leaves, we are having a gorgeous sunny, spring, 60- degree day.

Adam is busy spending his days in the archives. He had been in the state of Saxony’s archive but is now traveling to other archives a bit South of us. I will have him give a brief update on his research soon as I know many of you are interested and an update would be far more compelling from him than me.

Tomorrow, I’m meeting with the head of the guidance department at the International School of Dresden. I hope that he will agree to let me volunteer and assist his students in any way that I can. From the amount of time that it took for me to be able to set up an appointment with him, I can tell that he is a bit overextended and could use some help!

We still do not have internet access in our apartment and we have given up the hope of acquiring it. I am able to be a bit better connected now, however, as Amanda kindly lugged a new laptop computer here for me. Thus, I now have a computer that I can use during the day to go to cafes and use free internet where it’s provided. While not ideal, we are making do.

I will add entries from my travels with Rich and Phoebe, Rose and Amanda shortly. I am not pleased that I haven't been doing a good job updating our blog as I really enjoy sharing my adventures. I've also found that it serves as a wonderful way for me to remain grounded. More soon!

With much love from windy Dresden,

Amy