Sam's Eurotrip

Guten morgen, everyone!

Well, as you can guess, I made it safely to Deutschland! I was about an hour delayed getting out of Chicago on Wednesday night, but made it to Frankfurt shortly after noon on Thursday and made off quickly to catch the train to Dresden. Probably the first thing I noticed, both from the air and more so once on the ground, is that the Germans have incredible infrastructure. Train lines nearly outnumber highways, and the trains are on time to the minute. Entirely different from the most-of-the-time-unreliable Amtrak back home.

The train to Dresden was very pleasant, about 5 hours long. When we stopped in Leipzig, the second to last stop before Dresden, an English-speaking German woman joined us in our cabin. She lives in Dresden and commutes to Leipzig daily for work, about an hour each way. She told us about a market and restaurant to try and visit in the old part of the city, as well as some other scenic points of interest. She was a huge help, and even gave us a pocket-sized map of the city!

Once we arrived in Dresden we made way to our hostel, about a 20-minute walk from the train station. We got checked in (the owner has what looks to be a chocolate lab-weimaraner puppy that was a lot of fun to visit with) and had a brief rest before heading out to find some grub. Brats and beer were on our minds, and the woman from the train though we could find some at the restaurant she had mentioned.

We set out for the old town on foot because we had not yet converted any currency to euros with which to buy tram tickets. Dresden has an awesome network of electric streetcars - much like what the Raleigh light rail will be like one day I imagine - which we were thankfully able to use to get home later that night with only minor difficulties. Anyway, after probably an hour of walking, we finally found a bank ATM to withdraw some currency, and were content to go to a small restaurant serving curry-style bratwurst. The woman taking our order was friendly but spoke no english, though she helped us through figuring out what we wanted - brats with pommes (fries) and a beer! We got to choose the level of spiciness of the curry sauce served with the brats and chose an assumedly-mild "5" out of seven levels.

Boy were we surprised. We agreed that we'd never tasted anything quite so spicy - it felt like our tongues were on fire! With quite a few chuckles by the woman serving us, she eventually was kind enough to provide us with some cheese sandwiches to cool our palates and end our misery. We laughed it off, figuring we now know not to order any curry at all with bratwurst in the future.

We decided to take the tram back to the hostel and, after only 2 or 3 missed stops, managed to find our way to the stop just a block away from our hostel. After a long day with lots of traveling (and not much sleep for me, as I only got about 2 hours on the plane!) we crashed, glad to have a place to "get horizontal" and reflect on our still-tingling mouths.

Dresden is a beautiful city and I regret that I won't get to spend more time learning about its history. It straddles the Elbe River, and was a target of huge bombing raids by the Allies during the war. Most of the old city buildings are still to this day covered in soot from the bombs and fires, a haunting memory of the city's past. Nonetheless, it seems to be thriving, and was a great first stop for my European adventure.

For now, it's off to Prague (!!!), so I will relinquish typing on this awkward keyboard (the "z" and "y" keys are switched, so apologies if I messed up anywhere) and catch up later from the Czech Republic!

Cheers,
Sam













Wind turbines in the distance from the train to Dresden.













Dresden's old city as seen from the train bridge over the Elbe.













Dresden's main square.

More pictures to come later - the uploads are very slow!