This past weekend, my friends Ilana, Cici, Mattie, Becca, Kelsey and I decided to get out of Prague for a bit and head over to Dresden, Germany. Eurolines, a cheap bus company that leaves from Prague, was running a special of buy one get one free tickets, so we all made it to Dresden for about $20 each, round trip! We got to Dresden around 11am on Friday, and thanks to Cici's awesome German language skills, figured out the tram system without too much trouble and headed to our hostel. We got a little turned around, but made it there without too much trouble, only to find out that we couldn't check in until 3pm. It wasn't all bad though, because they let us leave our bags there and we headed back into the city to do some sight seeing.
We had a packed day, seeing everything from the castle complex to the Frauenkirche, to the new synagogue (which was closed... lame!) We even stopped at the old town market to get some delicious crepes, and ended up making friends with the vendors there (props to Ilana for that one!) Luckily Dresden is a pretty small city, but we still definitely got our workout in walking around it. My favorite part was definitely the chruch, which had one of the most spectacular interiors that I had ever seen. We couldn't take pictures inside, but here is a picture of it that I stole from google:
After a slightly longer than anticipated cat nap at the hostel, we once again headed back to the city, this time to grab some dinner at a vegetarian restaurant that we had found via the internet on Cici's phone. The food there was amazing! We had a cream of corn soup with pomegranite pips in it, which sounds really strange but was actually the best thing I have ever tasted. We also had some gnocci with pears and gorgonzola cheese, which was also very good. My favorite part might have been the apfelbier, which was essentially hard cider crossed with beer. Yum! Here is a picture of me with my apfelbier (ps. sorry for totally butchering that word Cici!)
The next morning, we woke up bright and early to take a train out to Bad Schandau, a National Park that spans the border of Germany and the Czech Republic for some fresh air and hill walking, as they call it here. The park was only about 45 minutes away by train, and absolutely gorgeous! It was snowing all morning, but by the time we made it out there the snow had stopped and everything was all pretty and snow covered. On our way out of Dresden, we had stopped at a grocery store and picked up bread and cheese and chocolate, all of the essentials for a picnic. Here are some pictures from the hike:
After our hike, we hopped on the train back to Dresden in order to catch our bus back to Prague that night. As we pulled up to the station, we could see smoke coming from different areas of the city, and large crowds of people dressed all in black crowding around the station. Looks like the rumored neo-Nazi rally was taking place in Dresden after all (check out BBC's coverage of it here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14854947,00.html). Luckily, the protest itself was pretty peaceful, if not slightly unnerving having that many people yelling in a language you can't understand.
The issues started when we tried to get back into the train station to retrieve our luggage, which we had locked in a locker prior to heading out for our hike that morning. By this time, the police had barracaded the entereance to the station, which seemed to be a part of the dividing line between the neo-Nazis and the anarchists (thankfully, we ended up being on the anarchist side and were therefore very safe and removed from the majority of the action described in the BBC article). They were still letting some people enter however, so we decided to try our luck. After being yelled at in German, some young woman took pity on us and explained that the guards though that we looked like 'the left' and were not going to let us into the station. They had assumed that we were part of the protest, despite our lack of knowledge of German and our clearly very commercial and westernized clothes (North Face jackets anyone?).
Not sure what to do, we moved to the side to regroup. At this exact point, two very interesting things happened simultaneously. First the bus company called to tell us that the train station was barricaded (yep, we got that part) and that they could not get the bus into the city so they were now picking up at a location on the outskirts, all the way accross town. Did I mention that this was 30 minutes before the bus was to leave and all public transportation in the city had been shut down? awesome. Second, the neo-Nazi and anarchist factions met at the barricade and the yelling began to intensify. We quickly decided that it was time for us to vamoose, but we still had the issue of our luggage locked in the train station.
Luckily, our fearless leader Cici was able to use her awesome German skills and finagle her way into the station and carry all 6 of our stuff back out to us. We promptly grabbed the duffles and took off, map in hand, for what was to be a 20 minute sprint on foot accross the whole city of Dresden. After running our little hearts out and finding a street that was off of our map, we made it to the bus just as its doors were closing. Luckily, the super nice driver opened them for us and let us on. Despite the adrenaline rush, I managed to sleep the entire way back to Prauge. Overall, it was quite the weekend and it will always make a good story to tell that I hiked in a German National park and got caught in a neo-Nazi rally...
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