The following story appeared in the Jan. 11 edition of the Vernon Morning Star:
by Tyler Olsen
When one thinks of a skyline today, the mind inevitably turns to cities like New York, Chicago, Calgary and Toronto; places where giant steel and glass boxes rise out of the land to preside over their surrounding domain. But pass over the Elbe river on a clear October afternoon with the sun descending upon Dresden’s rival church towers and the Semper Opera dominating the foreground and you’ll start to question a lot of things.
Having seen Dresden (twice) during a European backpacking trip three years ago, the city had solidified its place in my heart before my girlfriend and I looked at a map while in Prague and decided to hop a train three hours north to Dresden.
“You have to see Dresden!” I proclaimed, repeating a phrase I had used many times since first stopping in the city once known as Florence-on-the-Elbe. And so we did, although, like many people on the well worn tourist trail between Berlin and Prague (between which Dresden sits about half-way) we characteristically underestimated the amount of time needed to truly enjoy the city.
With just two nights booked at a hostel in Dresden’s hip Neustadt district on the west bank of the Elbe, we arrived at Dresden’s train station with the sun-dipping behind us, making our way with much too much luggage in tow, towards our hostel. We didn’t have far to walk but our journey took us past enough youth about which one says “They listen to way too much Bob Dylan/Marilyn Manson/Nirvana/Bob Marley/Sex Pistols” that it quickly became clear that Dresden has blossomed into something of a larger version of Nelson, except here people say Gutentag and read Der Spiegel.
The next morning we rose early, bought a pair of tram tickets, lost my credit card and headed east across the Elbe River. For those without much knowledge of Dresden – or those under the impression the city was destroyed sixty years ago – the view from the river must be a shock. From the Semper Opera in the north down to the sandstone dome of the Frauenkirche in the south, Dresden’s skyline is a monumental achievement of baroque and neoclassical architecture and post-war and post-communist determination.
In one of the most controversial allied actions of the Second World War, British and American bombers laid Dresden’s core to waste, destroying nearly every building and killing tens of thousands. Among those in the city at the time of the bombing was Kurt Vonnegut, an American POW and future author who would go on to write about the attack in his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five. While historians debate whether the action was necessary or not, one thing is clear: the city has been masterfully reconstructed.
After hopping off our tram, we ducked into a tourist shop, bought a handy guide and started our mad rush to see everything in a day. Standing in the shadow of the Catholic Hofkirche, which was once the family church of the King of Saxony, we looked across theatre square, past the equestrian statue of King Johann of Saxony, towards the Semper Opera house, a Dresden jewel and one of the most famous opera houses in the world. Evaluating our options and the huge line leading into the Semper, we snapped a few photos, made the requisite reverent noises and headed into Dresden’s old town.
On our right we passed the Furstenzug Mosaic, a hundred-metre long mosaic of 35 Saxon kings and their rapper-sized entourage. The mosaic opens up to a square, at the centre of which sits the very new looking Frauenkirche, a stunning product of Protestant one-upmanship (it was built to top the older Hofkiche) – featuring a one-of-a-kind sandstone dome. The church was destroyed in the 1945 bombing and only recently completed. Dark black bricks, recovered from the original church, now contrast dramatically with the sheen of the new sandstone building materials. That’s not a bad thing, however, and the history behind the church and its reconstruction arguably makes the Frauenkirche even more interesting.
From the Frauenkirche we looped back towards Dresden Castle, which doesn’t look like much from the outside but which, inside, boasts a formidable array of museums, including the Grunes Gewolbe (in English, the Green Vault). Dresden’s museums may be gorgeous and boast an array of treasures, but they have a couple other things going for them. First, the price. At less than $20, one ticket covers 11 separate museums making it a joyous challenge to cram as much sightseeing as possible into one day. Which is where we get to the other handy circumstance; most of Dresden’s museums are crammed within two main buildings, the Zwinger and the Castle, which are, conveniently, a five minute walk from each other.
So with ticket in hand, we commenced dashing from museum to museum, quickly coming to the realization that one day is about three too few to appreciate everything Dresden has to offer. We started at the Green Vault, the most stunning of the museums, which contains a plethora of ivory, crystal, wooden, golden and silver treasures, all crafted in minute detail and mind-numbing in their extravagance. Dresden has to thank a 19th century King Albert for most of the treasures. We just called him “The Shopaholic.”
From the Green Vault we proceeded to the castle tower, which dramatically overlooks the theatre square and the statues that line the top of the Hofkirche. The Semper Opera commands the square below, where a few dozen tourists milled about, posing for photos. The tower also housed the coin collection itself, the importance of which, while being more than 500 years old, was lost on my loonie- and toonie- obsessed coin consciousness.
From the castle it is a couple minutes’ walk to the magnificent neo-classical Zwinger. We ducked into the porcelain collection, being housed in the Zwinger wing (Zwing?) closest to the castle. And while I couldn’t tell a Tschirnhaus from a Gottner, it quickly became obvious that the collection houses one of the more impressive porcelain collections in the world. That’s not surprising, given Dresden gave its name to an entire movement of porcelain design. Unfortunately given our time constraints and complete lack of knowledge, there was no way we could give it the attention it deserves, with this realization, we made sure to look at, if not appreciate, every piece and left the collection to more knowledgeable visitors.
It’s worth noting that somewhere we had lost that handy guide we bought at the start of the day.
Thankfully, we entered one museum that requires no special knowledge, background or learning to fully appreciate its collection: the Rustkammer, or armoury. With a collection of medieval weapons, armour and other instruments of self-plumage and enemy-destruction lavish and extravagant enough to send a nine-year-old into convulsive shocks, the museum is one of the most distinctive in Zwinger. From a fully-assembled mock jousting event (with stand-in, fully-armoured riders and horses) to 10-foot pikes and early guns, the museum offers an insight into how Europeans (or at least European nobles) went to war hundreds of years ago.
By the time we were done with the armoury and had moved on to the Old Master’s Picture Gallery, which boasts enough information to please English visitors, enough paintings to keep visitors dry on a rainy day and enough big names (Rubens, Raphael, Canaletto) to please those who may have recently visited Berlin or Paris our feet were numb.
After paying our respects to the masters, we mustered our remaining energy and dragged ourselves into the Zwinger’s massive and breathtaking courtyard, a work of concrete art worthy of the treasures housed inside the building’s museums.
Our day was hardly finished – we would later experience, but fail to understand, the Museum Fur Volkerkunde and would cap the day with a biere in a chic Neustadt lounge – but sitting on the edge of a fountain, the mist cooling my sheeks, the sun dancing a rainbow across a fountain and the Zwinger looking like it had never been destroyed, I was re-evaluating my advice.
“You have to see Dresden,” I will say when I return, “but please, please, please, give yourself more than a day.”
