We arrived at our hotel in Dresden, the Hotel Windsor, at 6 p.m., after running into street construction that blocked our planned route and left us wandering around for a short time before we found the correct way. The hotel was pleasant, comfortable and had “wireless LAN”—i.e., Wi-Fi. It was in the New Town, one block from Leipziger Strasse, one of the main streets. There we could catch a streetcar to the Old Town.
The way a Dresden streetcar works is that you get on one of the sleek, yellow cars at a stop (Haltstelle) and, if you don’t have a ticket, you can buy one from a machine on the car—unless, as happened to us, you don’t have coins. The machine doesn’t accept paper money or credit cards. We bought one ticket with the two euros in coins that we had, stamped it in another machine, and rode on into the Old Town, waiting for the ticket inspectors to pounce (the driver was sealed off in his own compartment in the front). But unlike on the vaporetto (water bus) in Venice, where we once had to pay a $90 fine because I had goofed up the stamping of our tickets, no one came around to check.
We got into the Old Town a little after seven, just as the tourist information office was closing. We went to the Frauenkirche (a very large, bell-shaped Lutheran church) to see what we could find out about the next day’s noon service (with music). Then we had dinner at the Pulvertum (Powder Tower) restaurant, in the basement of an old mansion just across from the Frauenkirche. It was good, hearty food—I had Saxon sauerbraten, Mary Joy had roast suckling pig with sauerkraut. Then we got streetcar tickets at the Postplatz machine (which accepted paper money) and went back to our hotel.
The next morning (Thursday, August 11th), we had the buffet breakfast (rolls, cheese, sliced meat, sliced sausage, cereal, fruit) at the hotel. Not great, not awful. We caught the streetcar downtown, bought tickets for 5 p.m. for the Gruenes Gewoelbe (Green Vault—the treasure chambers of the kings of Saxony). Then we walked back to the Frauenkirche for the service.
Dresden is a very lovely city. It had been even lovelier before February 13, 1945. That night, although Dresden had no military value and was known as “Florence on the Elbe,” British bombers dropped thousands of firebombs on the city, destroying 75% of it. Until German reunification in 1990, restoration of the city was slow. Early on, as we were told on our tour of the Semper Opera, one local Communist leader had said that the Allied raid had been a good thing, leaving room for the creation from scratch of a new Socialist city. But, eventually, the need for tourist dollars and deutschmarks trumped ideology, and the East German government began to restore the wonderful baroque buildings built in the reign of Elector Augustus II (“the Strong”) and his son, Augustus III, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The Frauenkirche was the last to be completed, in 2006.
The noon service, accompanied by organ, lasted about half an hour. There were prayers, hymns, readings and a sermon (which I couldn’t understand). Afterwards, a woman came forward to talk about the history of the church. I could understand very little of that, either. Mary Joy, on the other hand, does very well in German, and understood most of what was going on, though Marika had to explain a few things to her. It was a beautiful service, with beautiful music, in a magnificent space.
We went to lunch at La Osteria, where we had pizza and salad, then we went over
to the Semper Opera for the 3 p.m. English-language tour. Our guide, Cosima (she said that she was glad that her father, a Wagner fan, had decided to name her after Wagner’s wife, instead of Brunnhilde), was a funny, fifty-ish Dresdener, who said 
that Communism had wasted thirty years of her life. We went through the opera house while she explained its decoration and history. The original opera house had burned down in the 1870s, after seeing the premiers of a number of operas, including Wagner’s Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman and Tannhaeuser. The original architect, Herr Semper, had left Dresden for political reasons, at the same time as Wagner, and refused to return. However, his son took over the rebuilding, but completely under the thumb of the father, who sent him detailed plans and hundreds of letters. This correspondence was not in Dresden at the time of the firebombing, and so became an important reference for the postwar restoration. The most famous opera to premier at the “new” Semper was one of our very favorites, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.
After World War II, Cosima said, the Communist regime was going to tear down the ruins and build something else in its place, but the story is that one of the opponents of this idea got a bottle of vodka and, in one long night, met with two high Soviet officers, during which the bottle was consumed. As a result, the destruction order was countermanded. Cosima joked that this story had greatly angered a Russian on one of her tours. ‘That’s a lie,” he shouted. “They would have finished more than only one bottle!”
The way a Dresden streetcar works is that you get on one of the sleek, yellow cars at a stop (Haltstelle) and, if you don’t have a ticket, you can buy one from a machine on the car—unless, as happened to us, you don’t have coins. The machine doesn’t accept paper money or credit cards. We bought one ticket with the two euros in coins that we had, stamped it in another machine, and rode on into the Old Town, waiting for the ticket inspectors to pounce (the driver was sealed off in his own compartment in the front). But unlike on the vaporetto (water bus) in Venice, where we once had to pay a $90 fine because I had goofed up the stamping of our tickets, no one came around to check.
We got into the Old Town a little after seven, just as the tourist information office was closing. We went to the Frauenkirche (a very large, bell-shaped Lutheran church) to see what we could find out about the next day’s noon service (with music). Then we had dinner at the Pulvertum (Powder Tower) restaurant, in the basement of an old mansion just across from the Frauenkirche. It was good, hearty food—I had Saxon sauerbraten, Mary Joy had roast suckling pig with sauerkraut. Then we got streetcar tickets at the Postplatz machine (which accepted paper money) and went back to our hotel.
The next morning (Thursday, August 11th), we had the buffet breakfast (rolls, cheese, sliced meat, sliced sausage, cereal, fruit) at the hotel. Not great, not awful. We caught the streetcar downtown, bought tickets for 5 p.m. for the Gruenes Gewoelbe (Green Vault—the treasure chambers of the kings of Saxony). Then we walked back to the Frauenkirche for the service.
Dresden is a very lovely city. It had been even lovelier before February 13, 1945. That night, although Dresden had no military value and was known as “Florence on the Elbe,” British bombers dropped thousands of firebombs on the city, destroying 75% of it. Until German reunification in 1990, restoration of the city was slow. Early on, as we were told on our tour of the Semper Opera, one local Communist leader had said that the Allied raid had been a good thing, leaving room for the creation from scratch of a new Socialist city. But, eventually, the need for tourist dollars and deutschmarks trumped ideology, and the East German government began to restore the wonderful baroque buildings built in the reign of Elector Augustus II (“the Strong”) and his son, Augustus III, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The Frauenkirche was the last to be completed, in 2006.
The noon service, accompanied by organ, lasted about half an hour. There were prayers, hymns, readings and a sermon (which I couldn’t understand). Afterwards, a woman came forward to talk about the history of the church. I could understand very little of that, either. Mary Joy, on the other hand, does very well in German, and understood most of what was going on, though Marika had to explain a few things to her. It was a beautiful service, with beautiful music, in a magnificent space.
We went to lunch at La Osteria, where we had pizza and salad, then we went over
to the Semper Opera for the 3 p.m. English-language tour. Our guide, Cosima (she said that she was glad that her father, a Wagner fan, had decided to name her after Wagner’s wife, instead of Brunnhilde), was a funny, fifty-ish Dresdener, who said 
that Communism had wasted thirty years of her life. We went through the opera house while she explained its decoration and history. The original opera house had burned down in the 1870s, after seeing the premiers of a number of operas, including Wagner’s Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman and Tannhaeuser. The original architect, Herr Semper, had left Dresden for political reasons, at the same time as Wagner, and refused to return. However, his son took over the rebuilding, but completely under the thumb of the father, who sent him detailed plans and hundreds of letters. This correspondence was not in Dresden at the time of the firebombing, and so became an important reference for the postwar restoration. The most famous opera to premier at the “new” Semper was one of our very favorites, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.
After World War II, Cosima said, the Communist regime was going to tear down the ruins and build something else in its place, but the story is that one of the opponents of this idea got a bottle of vodka and, in one long night, met with two high Soviet officers, during which the bottle was consumed. As a result, the destruction order was countermanded. Cosima joked that this story had greatly angered a Russian on one of her tours. ‘That’s a lie,” he shouted. “They would have finished more than only one bottle!”
Afterwards, we had coffee and Kuchen (cakes) on the terrace of the nearby Schinkelwache Café, which is in a former guardhouse designed by the famous architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
Then we toured the Gruenes Gewoelbe, a collection of precious odds and ends accumulated by the Saxon rulers and displayed much as they would have been by Augustus the Strong himself. Visitors have to get a particular time reserved, and have a fifteen-minute window during which to enter the collection. You go in two-by-two—a pair of glass doors in front of you swing open, you step into a small compartment, the doors close behind you, and after a moment the glass doors in front of you open, to let you into the chamber containing objects made out of amber. By the way, I learned here for the first time that the German word for amber is Bernstein. I will no longer be able to think of “West Side Story” without thinking of amber.
Marika and Mary Joy enjoyed the Gruenes Gewoelbe, but I would have to say that I wasn’t much impressed, especially comparing it with the much more historically important things in the Hapsburgs’ treasure house in Vienna. I rushed through it in an hour, too fast, and was punished by having to wait another hour for the others.
So a little after 7 p.m. we went to dinner at a restaurant called Max, near the
Postplatz, where we ate lightly but well.
The next morning, after breakfast, we checked out of the Hotel Windsor and took the streetcar to the Old Town for the last time. We went to the Zwinger, a baroque palace that has one of the best collections of old master paintings in the world. The pride of the museum is a large Madonna and child by Raphael. The expression on Mary’s face is wonderful, both earthy and ethereal.
There are many mimes around the old town, dressed up and painted like statues. They would stand absolutely still until someone put some money in their cup, then they would do some little routine. Marika
gave some money to a silver butterfly and I took their picture together.
We looked into the Hofkirche, the Catholic cathedral, then went to lunch at another terrace restaurant near the Frauenkirche, the Kurfuerstenzecher (? The Elector’s Drinking Hall). Another good meal (they all begin to run together) spiced up by a short period of light rain. Then we took the streetcar back to the New Town and left wonderful Dresden.
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