Going Back

Day 148

I didn´t sleep well. I don´t know why, maybe excitement. In the summer of 2002, between my junior and senior years of college, I lived in Dresden and worked at the Deutsches Hygiene museum. I had a fabulous time, possibly the best time ever. I haven´t been back since I left.

My train was murder. It was the most uncomfortable train ride that I have had on this trip. It also was about 4 hours long. I couldn´t even fall asleep.

When I left Dresden 6 years ago the city had just been hit by the worst flood in a very long time. The Elbe was over its banks, and even my museum was flooded. The main train station had been underwater. This was my first stop. The whole thing had been completely redone, heck, there was even a Burger King and a Subway now.

I had no problems finding my hostel, it was only two blocks away from where I used to live. As soon as I had dropped off my stuff I headed right to the Hygiene Museum. I wasn´t planning on visiting today though. I just wanted to see it. I wasn´t sure if I would remember the way there, so I had grabbed a map just in case. Letting my feet lead the way I had no problems finding the museum. It looked a bit different, the name was no longer on the top and the door I had used to go to work was no longer there.

When I had passed the museum by a couple of blocks two women asked me in German if I knew where the museum was. I answered them in in English, I don´t know if they really believed me.

At this point I decided to head to the alt stadt. The first place I found was the Frauenkirche. During WWII Dresden was very heavily bombed, the Frauenkirche was destroyed. There wasn´t any money to restore it and it sat as a pile of ruble for years. After the wall came down the bits and pieces of the church were sorted through and rebuilding began. Whenever possible the old pieces were worked into the new structure. When I left the building was surrounded by scaffolding, now it is finished and amazing. I was just in awe of it. Not only was the church finished, but the entire square looked completely different. It was amazing.

As I wandered I was shocked at how many tourists there were. Since I left I have been telling people to visit Dresden, it seemed like they all listened and told all of their friends. I heard more English than German.

To get away from the tourists I decided to head to the new town. There were definitely less tourists here and people were speaking German again. As I was walking down the main shopping street I decided to get my haircut. I had been feeling very much the raggity backpacker recently and needed to do something to fix that. Just an hour later I was no longer scraggly backpacker, but attractive travel diva.

I walked back to my hostel on Pragerstr., the main shopping street. When I lived here the street was almost empty pretty much all the time. New stores had moved in and people were outside enjoying them. The place was really alive.

Before I got back I took a quick detour to check out my old apartment building. I had no problem finding the building, but I couldn´t remember which entrance had been mine.

Back at the hostel I met a kiwi guy and we went to the roof top bar at the hostel for some drinks and to take in the view. It had been a long day though, and I didn´t stay up there for too long.

Happy Days

Day 147
When I woke up I was determined to not spend another day doing nothing or just wandering around pissed off. I was also up qutie early for really inexplicable reasons.

None of the museums opened until 10 am and I decided that I needed a really long walk anyway. I decided to head out to the former Nazi parade grounds. This was a really long freaking walk. There were different paths to follow and I seemed to jump from one to the other with no real idea of where I was going. Eventually I had enough of this and I knew that it was time to get back and check out the museums.

On my walk back I found an internet café and decided to look into my credit card stuff so that when I called later I could have everything written out, I wanted to be prepared. Much to my surprize I had been credited back the money, both the fraudulent charge and the accidental addtion of it. I guess tears do work sometimes.

When I got back to the city center I headed straight to the German History Museum. This was a really fab museum, my only complaint would be that the paintings section was closed for refurbisment. I loved the section on religious statues. One was of a rather devilish looking Moses holding the ten commandments. Another was of an angel staring kindly down at everyone. One of the few paintings on display was a very odd version of the last supper. I also liked the sections on clothing and toys. Too bad I couldn´t play dress up!

There was also a huge amount of decorative arts and clocks. I thought that these bits were a little boring and didn´t stay long.

After the museum I popped into the small but nice Church of our Lady. Eventually I wandered up to the castle. I had thought that I would be able to go inside, but that wasn´t the case. Instead I wandered around the grounds and checked out the building from different angles. There were a lot of couples making out in the shade. I kinda felt like I was intruding.

I was still behind with blog (the again, when am I not), and headed to the cheapie internet café I had found earlier. After a few hours I was caught up and ready for bed.

Trials

Day 146
I woke up happy after my first good nights sleep in quite a while. The breakfast at my hotel was amazing and I left stuffed.

It took only 1.5 hours, but three trains to get to Nuemburg. It was also raining like crazy.

I was a bit shocked at how attractive I found the city. It had been heavily bombed, but there was a nice flow between the new and old buildings. I liked the city right away.

Still, it was raining and it was a Monday. This meant that there was not a whole lot to do.

For the last month I have been dealing with some credit card issues. Two of my cards have been stolen and have been used in the States. It has been really crappy to try and deal with this while abroad. Just when I thought that everything had been fixed I checked my account and realized that instead of subtracting one of the fraudulent charges it had been added. I decided that today was the day that I would figure it all out. I called my credit card company and was told that I had to do all sorts of paperwork and that they didn´t see the error and that it could be weeks before this was fixed. To make matters worse I was unable to get into my online account or my email account. I think both sites were down. As I had already told about 50 over the past month what had happened and they had been so slow in responding and difficult to deal with that the idea of this going on any longer was exceedingly upsetting. I pretty much broke down in frustration on the phone. Tears don´t help anything, but I couldn´t help them. The guy at the internet café even asked me if I was alright.

The rainy day was really matching my mood. I wandered for hours getting wet and in a half rage. I think I managed to get some pictures though. When I had gotten sick of this I bought myself a massive candy bar and headed back to the hostel for a nap.

I woke up feeling a bit better and decided to make myself some dinner. Afterwards I found a beer hall to have a drink at while updating my journal. I was very happy when I saw Andrew, the Aussie who I had met in Koln. He joined me and we ended up chatting for the rest of the night. It was good to see a familiar face.

As it turned out we were at the same hostel again, so we walked back together before it was late.