Finally, in the afternoon, we headed out of old town. By this time I was feeling quite fed up with the city and wondered whether it was just as dull everywhere. As Leonard Nimoy puts it on the Simpsons: “The answer is: No.” We jumped on a tram heading east and reached the Elbe Valley. My goodness, my opinion on Dresden changed immediately. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. It actually reminded me quite a lot of Heidelberg, with which I am completely in love.
Elbe Valley
Castles!
The bridge Blaues Wunder (“Blue Wonder”), or officially Loschwitzer Brücke. A blue wonder means an unpleasant surprise in German, but I’ve no clue why this poor bridge carries such a nickname.
There were lots of cute birds on the bank. These swans weren’t even scary or vicious.
Also note the funicular! Guess how much I would like to ride it? A lot.
We took a break at Schillergarten, a biergarten by the Blaues Wunder before crossing Elbe. Lucky I wasn’t especially hungry, for the only vegetarian alternative the whole place had to offer were french fries... After that, we headed towards Weißer Hirsch (“white red deer”, heh), a posher villa area in East Dresden, higher up the valley. It was very bourgeois, but in a very pleasant way.
A very sympathetic sign at the Schillergarten, warning about falling chestnuts.
Weißer Hirsch, near the bridge.
Time for some climbing!
Come on guys, we haven’t got all day. It’s just a little steep.
A villa in Weißer Hirsch. A bit modest for my taste, but I could maybe show the mercy of living in a place like that, if I was asked very nicely (and if I were, say, 20 years older).
Another villa.
Street view.
After climbing up, we took the tram back down, to Äußere Neustadt (“outer new town”). There we wandered around in shops and eventually found a very nice flea market! I saw a cute Kiwi bird that just had to come with me. I named it Kiwa das Kiwi; “kiva” means nice in Finnish (but as the bird is German, its name would be pronounced “Kifa” if it would keep the original spelling, hence the w) and actually, the grammatically correct genus would be masculine. However, we had sarcastically been making jokes about postmodern feminism and its postmodern jargon, so I decided to take a critical stand towards the heteronormativity penetrating (!) our society, and went for the neuter instead. Very gender neutral, jawohl?
Kiwa! He... I mean, "it" was a bit nervous about being photographed, so I couldn’t get it to smile, but it’s really a very relaxed and easy-going fellow.
It actually also features in a previous picture, sitting on my bed.
There was also a baby at the flea market, but the sign explicitly reads that it is not for sale (“Baby = unverkäuflich”). Bummer.
Then it was time to head home. We had huge plans of going out for some partying, but everyone passed out in the train (just of exhaustion and fresh air) around nine, so the somewhat anticlimactic result was that everyone just crawled home to get some sleep. Maybe just as well, all in all it was a day well spent!
