Dresden

We had to get up early on Friday morning to catch the train to Dresden. On the way to the bus stop Stean realized he had left his Dresden travel card in the previous days’ shirt. This resulted in him having to take a jog back to the flat and then to the bus stop. Fortunately he made it in time and we took the bus to the station where we caught a train through to Dresden.

First stop was the Royal Palace where we bought tickets to see the historic Green Room (Historisches Grunes Gewolbe). You need to book a time slot as they only allow a certain amount of people in at a time. While we waited for our slot we took a walk to the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) which was reconstructed after being destroyed in WWII.  We walked the surrounding square and  I found a small tourist trap shop where I bought a new Ampelmännchen T-Shirt as well as a mug.  Outside the shop I discovered that horse drawn carts stop there to pic up customers. The owner was kind enough to allow me touch them. They were really large work horses and looked well cared for.

We then found a coffee shop with Leon’s favorite pretzel. Made of half normal and half chocolate dough, covered in almond flakes and dusted in icing sugar. Pretty yum!

We then went back to the Palace and spent almost 2 hours wandering through the Green Room. It’s a really impressive collection of treasures. It’s sometimes hard to comprehend the skill and patience involved given then era in which these items were created.

After the Green Room we took a walk around the top level of the Zwinger which offers a nice view of the gardens below as well as the immediate surrounding buildings. After a “quick” walk through Saturn, we met up with Leon & Sylvia for lunch. From there we took a tram to the gardens where we wandered through the market before heading off to the Volkswagen Gläserne Manufaktur where we took a tour of the Phaeton production line.

The whole building is made of transparent glass so you can see the assembly process inside. Our tour was late afternoon, so we unfortunately did not get to see it in action, but the tour was still very interesting. The entire car is assembled by hand and takes 35 hours to build 15 of which is testing. In contrast a the fully automated assembly process of a Golf only takes 5 hours.

We took a bus to Brauhaus am Waldschlösschen where we enjoyed some local brew and traditional German food. The photographer from the wedding joined us for a drink and we had a great time. We caught a late bus back to Neustadt.

Lunch

Royal Palace

Volkswagen Gläserne Manufaktur gardens