Around the World in 33 Days: Dresden

Squeezed in between a lovely time with Lenka and an adventure in Asia was Dresden.

This was pretty much a last minute addition to my trip. When I booked my tickets to Bangkok I’d added time onto Prague and it would have been okay to spend it all with Lenka. But she suggested Dresden or Berlin.

I decided on Dresden for one simple fact… CHRISTMAS MARKETS!!!!

There were 11 in the city!!

And holy shit was it worth the detour. It put me out barely $50 with transportation and my hostel. But I got to see the city, the markets, and I did all my Christmas shopping at Primemark.

So In case you all didn’t know. Dresden was bombed in World War II on 13-15 February 1945.

Like decimated. 90% of the city centre was destroyed.

(This picture from Wikipedia is the view from the city hall (Rathaus) over the destroyed city)

(Another Wikipedia picture.)

So it was mind boggling to walk around the city and know that it had been essentially burned to the ground and left as a shell and everything thing that is there today was a rebuild.

The Frauenkirche wasn't officially concreted till October of 2005! 

(It was still in ruins in 1991)

Today it's a distinct part of the city skyline and knowing the history behind it makes it an even more attractive building.

It’s such a gorgeous city!

Taking busses across boarders is always kind of fun. 

This time it was slightly nerve racking. Because essentially the bus gets pulled over by the boarder police and everyone has to present their passports or ID cards. I was one of the first to get mine checked. And the officer flips open to my first page and I had a totally oh shit over thinking moment. Because the last time I was documented in Germany was when I was denied entry to the UK in 2011 and Frankfurt also canceled my stamp. And not knowing too much about all that legal stuff I started to freak out because I hadn’t been back where they stamp me and the officer was taking ages on that page. Then he legitimately flipped through EVERY page (and having 50 pages added there are a lot) in my passport and stopped at the first pages of my supplements. He ended up just handing it back 0 issues but I still sweat my way through it. My supplement passport pages turned into a common boarder control added time thing. Totally worth it though. Because if I hadn’t gotten my pages before this trip my passport would have been full! And supplement pages are no longer added to US passports! I got mine right before the 01 January 2016 deadline!!

But the markets!! I saw 9. One was too far to walk too in the rain and the other wasn’t open till the weekend.

Now you all know how much I love Christmas Markets. And I had been living a dull lie thinking I’d seen some of the most amazing markets so far. And then I saw Dresden!

The Dresden Striezelmarkt is 582 years old!! How cool is that? There’s been a Christmas market in that square for 582 years!

Seriously these stalls were elaborate as fuck! They had moving parts and it was just all so pretty!

I also saw the Medieval Christmas in the Stallhof courtyard. It was like a mini Renaissance faire. The servers and vendors were all dressed up and it was pretty badass.

Dresden Hüttenzauber on Postplatz

Augustus Market…

This market was right by my hostel so I got to walk through it every time I wanted to head in to the city centre. And also on the night that it snowed I just HAD to go get a drink at the Christmas market!

Traditional Christmas Market at the Frauenkirche. This one was cool because it was all crammed into an alley. And it was so busy and I loved it!

Romantic Christmas market at the Royal Palace. This one seemed less romantic and more carnival…. But it was still cute!

Neustädter Gelichter was rather small and it was up in the section of the city where the University is. And it was only about 4 minutes from my hostel! It wasn’t as pretty as the other markets so I only took one photo but it came out bad.

Advent on Neumarkt.

(Yes those are real animals there) 

Christmas Market on Prager Strasse. This was the first and last market I saw in Dresden as it was right by Dresden Hauptbhnhof (aka the main rail station).

My hostel I stayed in was the coolest! It was actually just an old house, but like a cool old Victorian house. My bed was probably the coziest hostel bed ever!! Plus it’s called The Kangaroo Stop! And I dropped off my clothes to be washed and when I went to pick them up I ended up chatting with the woman at the front desk for ages. She was super chill. We ended up talking about how kids these day use their phones too much and how it’s sad that you’ll see kids out at coffee shops or something and they’re all on their phones and not talking to each other.

So Dresden in itself is a gorgeous city! It was freezing cold but lovely all the same!

My bus back to Prague was an hour and a half late so I was frozen solid by the time it came. But I got the front seat on the second floor again so life was good. And it was only just starting to sink in that I was going to be in Asia in two days time. The terror was just beginning to sink in. I was thankful for the fact that I was going to be spending the night with Lenka and her friend.

When I arrived in Prague I had only 10 hours before my flight took off in the morning!

Cheers,