We spent a day Dresden with an awesome colleague of Brian. The agenda was very four-year-old friendly; we spent the first part of the day touring Dresden largely via fountain, followed by lunch, ice cream, a train ride, and dinner that was delivered via rollercoaster.
(Okay, yeah, this is a lot of photos fountains with my kid in them! Just a couple more, I promise!)
Dresden was pretty much flattened in 1945. So, even the “old” buildings you are seeing in some of these photos were recently patched together from what could be salvaged and new materials.
(For example, notice the patchy colors of the stones in the picture below. These are old stones and new stones together.)
A good deal of the reconstruction in Dresden didn’t happen until after reunification in 1990, which is perhaps why it felt like such a “shiny” old city.
Lunch was super tasty, at AHA.
(Oops, I forgot to photograph the ice cream, some of which was spaghetti-shaped and exciting. Sorry. Instead, here is an East German statue that I don’t know much about specifically. However, if you want to learn more general things about East Germany prior to reunification, I recommend Stasiland, The Lives of Others, and Good Bye, Lenin.)
One of the things that we’ve loved about Berlin is the parks expansive parks, where people play, relax, and drink beer. Dresden didn’t disappoint in this area either. We hung out in a lovely shaded area by a playground and then peeked around the rest of the park via train, on a park railway operated mainly by kids in their free time.
As promised, dinner was indeed delivered by rollercoaster!
…and, then in was time to head home. About an hour into our two hour train ride back to Berlin, Theo, full of good food and happy memories of splashing, completely conked out. 