Journey to Dresden; the view from the Rathaus

A bus took us to the Prague train station, which is a fairly dodgy place. Beware of pickpockets.  The station has a rundown, left-over-from-the-Soviet-era feel.  We all schlepped our luggage to the platform to wait for the train.

A gift from Europe for a skeptical child!

We're American tourists, so of course we have twice as much luggage as will fit.  Getting on (and off again in Dresden) was something of a panic.

Our hotel was across the street from the Dresden railway station; extremely convenient.  The first order of business was a walking tour of the city center led by Gabriel.

The German "Don't Walk" and "Walk" signs.  The East Germans used these cute images of people, a man or woman with arms outstretched to hold pedestrians back, and a man or woman striding across the street.  When the East and West were unified, the Westerners forced a lot of unwelcome changes on the East in the name of unification and standardization.  They tried to impose some boring international standard icons, but the Easterners balked and got to keep their "cute little traffic light men."  I noticed that the same icons are used in Berlin (both east and west), so perhaps they've become the German standard.

All the buildings around the station are very modern glass and steel structures, because most of central Dresden was destroyed by a single air raid in late 1945.  The air raid caused a firestorm and burned everything flammable, meaning all the medieval structures in the old city.  Gabriel showed us photos of Dresden before an after the raid, for comparison with what's around us now.  This part of the city is all new (and new style) buildings; much of the "old" city is new reconstructions of the ancient buildings that used to be there.

The air raid took place on the night of February 13, 1945.  There's a commemorative event each year; this poster is for a march this year, and it emphasizes that neo-Nazis are not welcome ("Kein Nazi" = "no Nazis").

We walked through an area of modern retail and office buildings, to the Rathaus (city hall).  In front of the building was this statue. The woman represents the legions of Dresden residents who went through the piles of rubble left after the air raid and salvaged the bricks for reuse.  All the salvage work was done by hand, with only a hammer to knock off the old mortar.  It was a huge effort, and necessary because no other building material was available.  Most of the workers were women, because the men had either been killed in the war or were in prisoner-of-war camps.

The Rathaus was damaged but not destroyed by the air raid.  This is its tower, with an observation deck at the level where the statues are visible.

Across the street was a building only a few years old, built to look like the building that had been lost in the firestorm.  The Smart car, parked outside, was one of the few we saw on this trip.

It took two elevators to get up to the observation deck of the Rathaus.  Once there, the view in all directions was spectacular. 

This statue represents Goodness.  Gabriel is showing a famous picture taken from the tower not long after the firestorm.

This is that photo, taken from above the observation deck.  All that can be seen of the central city is the partial shells of burned-out buildings, and the scene was like this in all directions.  Early estimates were of 150,000 or more people killed, but a more recent study says about 25,000.  See the Wikipedia entry for Dresden for details.  [Photo from Deutsche Fotothek via the Wikimedia Commons]

More views from the observation deck.

Comparing the photo of the 1945 ruins with the modern reconstruction.

There are people on the observation deck of the church tower.  There's also a fair in the square just beyond and to the right of the church.

We descended the tower and walked over to the fair.