you will have a boy tonight on the last bus out of town

okay, so i sort of fail at keeping this blog. but, as compensation, today you guys get excerpts from my day-book (not a diary, thank you very much!). It's going to be kind of short, just filled with pictures (taking a break from my regular shoddy photography for the even better tourist-photography), since I'm cooking my host family thanksgiving today. (more on that later).

last week/this week sort of, i went to dresden with my host mum and sister. dresden is a beautiful city located way in the east of germany that was heavily bombed in february of 1945 or thereabouts. i got to see a lot of the historic old city which is gorgeous and quite well restored.

I'll try and put the pictures in some sort of order, but I can almost promise that it will fail.

Anyways, there was a lot of hot air balloons.







This is the Fuerstenzug (Princely Procession). It's an 800 year history of the House of Wettin. It's 102 meters long, natch! Was originally created in sgraffito by Wilhem Walter (creation years 1870-6) and transferred to tiles in 1905.


The Frauenkirche was almost entirely destroyed in the air raids. It has today been rebuilt, using as much of the original material as possible: the portions of black stone are all that remains of the original exterior.



Altar (we saw two concerts here-- one with organ, the other a classical-baroque group).



Here's the view from the top



"honor and fuss over the fatherland"

This is the interior to the SS. Trinitatis Cathedral.


One day we rode the train out to the 'country' and saw the Bastei.




Then we took a boat tour back to Dresden on the Elbe River. The weather was miserable, but the tour was amazing.


The Elbe


Also, some of the pedestrian traffic lights are amazing. Here's one with a girl.


Monday:
i wake early to ashtray gray morning light, the chilly rank n' file facade of DDR apartments staring grimly over the whir-ding of street cars... there's staging up, workers working, and I'm shocked to discover that I understand very little of the German they speak...

we climb deep through the belly of the Frauenkirche to stand and gawk for our allotted fifteen minutes at the skyline... we wander about for a bit and have dinner in a beer garden. i ask for stamps in wobbly german, study a bit, drink more tea and eat schnitzel with mushroom cheese, fall asleep on the couch during a movie...

this is the first time i've ever been held back by my own ignorance, my inability to learn faster... i'm starting to become flustered by my sheer inability to understand, although i am also frustrated when people clarify things i already know. i want to say-- i'm not stupid! but then i realize that, for all intensive purposes, i am.

tuesday:
we rode the strassbahn to the train station and took an s-bahn to the bastei. i think part of the allure of dresden for me is seeing all of the beautiful restorations living in tandem with the wreckage of old buildings and the grim builds of the ddr. we climbed about a million km... to see the remains of a fortress. when we got to the top of the trail, there was a beer garden. oh, germany. so we hike down and drink coffee in the rain (milchkaffee, how i love thee!) and we took a huge boat tour back to dresden. there are so many castles here, it's ridiculous. wonderful, but ridiculous.

more later!

love
katie