Dresden

We first went to Dresden, Germany on our first trip together to the Czech Republic. Both Andy and I are huge Kurt Vonnegut fans and we were interested in Dresden because it had been bombed by the allies on February 13, 1945, while Vonnegut was a POW being held in an underground prison camp, which he wrote about in Slaughterhouse Five.

Another interesting piece of history about this event was that while the allies were aiming at Dresden, they nearly leveled Prague in error. Prague and Dresden are quite close to each other, especially when you are up in a plane looking down. There was supposedly a navigational error, and actually some bombs were dropped on Prague (affecting some areas of the city, such as Zizkov and Vinohrady, I believe, that are not the main old historical center of Prague) but ultimately I seem to remember that Prague is considered "untouched" by war.

When we visited the city the first time we saw old wreckage from the bombs. This time, though, we didn't. I could swear we were in some of the same spots, but there's a massive amount of construction going on there, and Andy heard that Dresden is expected to be finally built back up by 2010. This is kind of sad, because although the wreckage is sad and destructive and all that, it's a big piece of history that is quite fascinating. I'm glad we saw it the first time (of course, my pictures from then are not digital, otherwise I'd post them here).

But, this time, our trip wasn't so much about history. It was about shopping. Andy's brother Lukas and his girlfriend Katka went to Dresden last week and brought back all kinds of German goodies for us, so Andy's parents decided they wanted to take the trip. It's only about a two hour drive, so we went this past Saturday. It was a nice day trip. We bought a few things, mainly liquor or interesting German food. Here's the pictures. Dresden Pictures

Here's a video, too. My videos are not exciting, they are mainly just a glance around, but I like seeing them since they include the sounds and feel of the place and time, a little bit more than a simple picture.
Oh, yeah, and sorry for the weird guy who pops his head in toward the end... he follows me everywhere and is quite a nuisance! :-)