Free Weekend!

OK, so I am back.

I started working some more on my project that is due Friday for my class at speak+write. Most of the different classes have a different theme to center their projects around. Our theme is "the unconventional traveler," so most of the students in my class are writing about a topic from a particular city or site we have visited this May Term or are comparing something from different cities and explaining how they are different or alike. I know in one of the other classes they have the theme of castles and each student is writing and presenting about a particular castle in Germany that they like or found interesting in some respect. So this week should be "fun" because we have to finish up our projects in between visiting Heidelberg for half the day tomorrow and our day trip to Weimar and Eisenach on Thursday! ah! where has the time gone?!

Anyway, back to the main topic of this post. Our free weekend. So, the purpose of the weekend was to give us the opportunity to explore other cities and sights in Germany that we did not see with the group or wanted to take a closer look at. Since we all had extra days on our German Rail Passes, we could travel to practically anywhere in the country that we wanted to! Two others and myself decided to visit the city of Dresden for the weekend. After the lovely business of booking a hostel room, getting train reservations, and gaining posession of 2 maps of the city ( one from 1989 and another from a travel book), we were ready to head out after classes got out early Friday afternoon. We took a regional train to Frankfurt and then an intercity one from there to Dresden, which was rather long at about 4 hrs ( it´s actually kinda exciting traveling by ourselves, it makes it look like we knew what we were doing :) ) But we all made it in one piece to the city and found our hostel easily enough, thanks to the handy directions the hostel gave us. It also helped that it was only 10min. by foot from the train station. The hostel was pretty nice and I was impressed that we were able to make our plans work without any major hiccups.
The next morning we treated ourselves to sleeping in til the late hour of 8:30 ish and decided to take on the city. We found a pedestrian zone right on the other side of the train station and figured out by looking at the map that we could walk to everything we wanted to see throughout the weekend and would not need to buy any bus or S-Bahn tickets. Yay for not having to rely on public transportation!

As we walked through the plaza, we found out they were having some sort of celebration and came to find out that they were having a Dixieland festival! This amused my fellow student Sarah to no end, seeing as how she is from Texas, and of course she had to comment on their musical selections throughout the day and explain how they really weren´t dixie songs, but rather some other genre. . . but it was funny just the same. Our first stop was the Kreuzkirche, which seemed very plain and simple compared to others we had visited during the month, but was nice in its own right. We climbed to the top of the tower and had a great view of the city until we saw that the cuppola of the Frauenkirche was taller, so we knew we had to go climb that one next. . . but first we stopped for a brunch lunch at an Italian place and had some yummy pizza. I decided to be brave and try a spinach, onion, and egg one. It was really good! It is somewhat surprising how many Italian restaurants they have in Germany, but so far they have all been delicious!

Then we stopped to call Frau Losch to let her know that we had made it safe and sound to Dresden, as she had other plans for the free weekend and was busy pursuing those interests. After that we head to the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister or the Art gallery of the old masters. The gallery is part of a museum complex that is complete with a courtyard garden and waterfalls on the inner side of the buildings. The scene was gorgeous, but we decided to wait until after our visit to the gallery to sit outside and unfortunately it began to rain while we were inside so we did not get to check it out after all. :( The museum, however, was great! It had housed works by many of the same artists as did the Alte Pinakothek in München. We saw a whole room full of large Reubens paintings, a couple Dürers, many French and Dutch paintings, and the work of art that Dresden is famous for...Raphael´s Sistine Madonna. Now, you might be thinking, "I have never heard of this piece," but trust me you have seen it, or at least part of it. Follow this link (or copy and paste it, if I cannot get the URL to work)

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/IMC/tfa487~Sistine-Madonna-c-1513-1514-Posters.jpg

and you should see an image of it. Make sure you look for the two creatures at the bottom of the painting. You might be surprised!

After the gallery, we walked around the city some more and oggled at the old buildings that were restored after the 1945 bombings of the city. There is also a nice little area where we sat on a bench for a while that overlooked the Elbe river. We could see the 4 different bridges that cross it as well as many of the older buildings. It probably was one of my favorite places of this trip. Before it got too late, we headed to the Frauenkirche. Now, this church was destroyed in the bombings and had just recently been complete with restorations in 2005, as it stood in ruins for several decades. What I found interesting, was that we could not enter the main portion of the church, but could only take the stairs that led to the cuppola. On our way up, though, they had glass viewing areas where we could look down into the church from the sides and even from the sides of the dome once we were high enough. I think they may have had a concert that night at the church and that is why we could only go up it, but I could be wrong. It was totally worth seeing, though, as the view from the top was unbelievable. (and much better than that from the Kreuzkirche) We probably stayed up there for 20 min. or so making our way around the guard rail looking at the view of the city. It truly is a beautiful city that has tried hard to reshape itself after its near destruction in World War II and after unification in 1990 (its an eastern city). After a late supper and a little more wandering around the old portion of the city, we sort of got lost on our way back to the hostel, but eventually we found it by consulting our almost 20-year-old map and asking for directions. I believe the quote of the night was, "everything looks so different in the dark." :)

Sunday morning we slept in, checked out of the hostel and packed up our luggage in a locker at the train station, so we would not have to lug it around with us before we left. We did not have a lot of time left in the city so we went to the Stadt (city) Museum before our departure in the early afternoon. It was an interesting museum, but we only had time for 2 of its 4 floors of the history of Dresden. It was a nice alternative to all of the art galleries I had been visiting lately. Plus, it gave me a chance to try and read the German descriptions of the artifacts and exhibitions before I would give up and read the English translation. :)

We then took the long train ride back to Marburg and had a good night´s rest before class this morning. Now, you might be wondering what the rest of our class did. Well, since the Wartburg choir is on tour this May Term, one of their last stops was in Eisenach, Germany, so most of the rest of our class went to their concert Friday evening and came back late that night/early the next morning to Marburg. They then enjoyed a relaxing weekend in our "home" city, which I believe involved paddle-boats on the Lahn River, shopping excursions, and sleep-overs at each others host families from what I´m told. It sounded like they had a great weekend as well.

Now, I better go work some more on my project, otherwise I do not know when I will have time to!

I hope all is well in Waverly and that you are all ready for finals and graduation this weekend!

Ciao!
On Sunday,