This year, since it's been unusually wet in central Europe, there is a bumper crop of mosquitoes. Many of them, especially in Poland, were so hospitable as to meet and greet their American visitors. Of course, we in Minnesota are especially proud of the size and ferocity of the mosquitoes produced by our ten thousand lakes, but Agnieska, who has extensive experience of both varieties, insists that Polish mosquitoes are much bigger.
Mary Joy and I came to the conclusion that she was probably right, but that the increase in size led to a decrease in speed, so that Polish mosquitoes were easier to swat. However, this lack of mobility was offset by stealth and numbers
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Warsaw and the Polish Woods
The next day, Sunday August 14th, we slept in (having gotten to bed at one or two a.m. for the second night in a row). We went to the church where Marika generally goes when she’s not playing. As the priests came down the aisle, I noticed that one of them wore a purplish-pink skullcap. "That's a bishop," I thought. "But he's not wearing a miter." Indeed, the pastor immediately told us, the guest presider at this mass would be the retired archbishop of Maracaibo, Venezuela, in Berlin for a conference. At the end of the mass, the pastor complimented him on his German.
Afterwards, as Marika generally does, we went to a nearby sidewalk café for lunch with her very pleasant friends Erika (whom we had met the week before) and Marie Louise. Later, Marie Louise’s daughter Jana arrived. Jana spoke very good English, having spent a year as an exchange student in Virginia. She was looking for employment and had a new interview lined up, but she had hoped to get an unpaid internship in Los Angeles. She had never received a reply to her inquiry.
Marika drove us to the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) and waved goodbye as our Berlin-Warszawa Express headed east. It was supposed to take five hours and twenty-four minutes, but it arrived in Warsaw around 11:30 p.m., twenty-five minutes late.
We were picked up by Agnieszka, the mother of our friend Ania, who is a Polish woman married to an American and living in the Twin Cities. We first met Agnieska in 2004. We were going to be in Cracow, and Ania insisted that we visit her mother in Warsaw. As it happened, getting from Cracow to Vienna by train would have been a lengthy and involved process, so, instead, we decided to take the fast train from Cracow to Warsaw, spend six hours with Agnieszka, and fly from Warsaw to Vienna. She picked us up at the station, took us home for lunch, then gave us a tour of the old town, in spite of the fact that her English was extremely limited. She made it clear that six hours was not enough time to see Warsaw, so we would have to come back. And now we have.
Even though she has now spent much time in the United States, since it is generally in the company of her daughters and, even more, her grandchildren, with all of whom she speaks Polish, Agnieszka still speaks little English. What little she speaks, however, she can communicate very well in. She says that she is too old to learn a new language, having had to learn Russian and German when she was young. Our conversations were a combination of simple English, (extremely) simple Polish and (not quite so) simple German.
Agnieszka lives in a three-bedroom apartment (very small rooms by American standards, but as she said, it was “luxurious” during Communist times) which she had shared with her late husband and her daughters Ania and Kasia, who are now both in America. She is a teacher at a technical high school, and during the school year has a very rigorous schedule, getting up at 5:30, taking the bus to the school, getting out at 5:00, then grading papers, etc. until 2 a.m., five days a week. This is offset somewhat by the fact that she gets two months off in the summer, as well as several holiday weeks during the school year.
The next morning, Monday, August 15th, was the feast of the Assumption, so, after a nice breakfast, Agnieszka drove us to the nearby Divine Providence Center, which is in the process of being built. I didn’t bring my camera along, so I have no pictures. When it is finished, the church will seat 4,000 people. On an upper level, with great views over Warsaw, will be a museum dedicated to Pope John Paul II and Stefan Cardinal Wyszinski, who led the Polish Catholic Church in its decades of confrontation with the Communist regime. At the moment, however, the church is just a huge concrete shell, and mass is held in the lower level, where there will be a Pantheon of Great Poles (currently seven of the three hundred grave spaces are filled). There are shrines with relics of Pope John Paul (I think it is a piece of bloody cloth that he was wearing during the assassination attempt) and the Solidarity martyr (murdered by the secret police), Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko (a piece of his arm).
Nine a.m. mass had two musicians playing an electonic keyboard and singing. Everyone took communion in the mouth instead of the hand. Afterwards, we took part in a Polish-English tour of the facility (we were the only English-speakers).
Then we drove to the nearby Wilanow Palace, which we toured with the use of English-language audio guides (as at the Gruenes Gewoelbe in Dresden). It had been built in the late 17th century by the great Polish king Jan III Sobieski, as his summer palace. Perhaps the high point in Polish history, and a major turning point in the history of Eastern Europe, was in 1683, when a large Turkish army besieged Vienna. Sobieski led a relieving army that attacked and utterly destroyed the Turkish force, leading to, among other things, the decline of the Ottoman Empire as a Great Power, the freeing, within a few years, of Hungary and Croatia from the Turks, and the invention of the Viennese (and, later, any other European country's) cafe—for among the spoils of war found in the abandoned Turkish tents were large quantities of coffee beans. The Viennese tried them and developed a taste for them, later inventing the Sacher Torte and other pastries as powerful auxiliary devices for the better use of this Turkish secret weapon.
The Wilanow Palace was interesting and pleasant, and there were some connections with Dresden. Augustus the Strong of Saxony was also King of Poland and tenant of Wilanow. On one of the upper floors there is a Canaletto painting with no caption but clearly showing the Frauenkirche and the Elbe waterfront.
We had some Polish crepes (nalesniki) and coffee at a nearby outdoor restaurant terrace, then we went back to Agnieska’s apartment, where we had a more serious lunch.
Later in the afternoon we drove more than two hours out to Agnieszka’s dzialka (country house--pronounced "JOW-kah"), in the woods—sort of equivalent to a Minnesotan’s lake cabin, but with no lake. It is small and very simple, but comfortable, and something that she’s put a lot of work and love into. She said several times that it is her life. After less than an hour there, we headed back for the city.
Afterwards, as Marika generally does, we went to a nearby sidewalk café for lunch with her very pleasant friends Erika (whom we had met the week before) and Marie Louise. Later, Marie Louise’s daughter Jana arrived. Jana spoke very good English, having spent a year as an exchange student in Virginia. She was looking for employment and had a new interview lined up, but she had hoped to get an unpaid internship in Los Angeles. She had never received a reply to her inquiry.
Marika drove us to the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) and waved goodbye as our Berlin-Warszawa Express headed east. It was supposed to take five hours and twenty-four minutes, but it arrived in Warsaw around 11:30 p.m., twenty-five minutes late.
We were picked up by Agnieszka, the mother of our friend Ania, who is a Polish woman married to an American and living in the Twin Cities. We first met Agnieska in 2004. We were going to be in Cracow, and Ania insisted that we visit her mother in Warsaw. As it happened, getting from Cracow to Vienna by train would have been a lengthy and involved process, so, instead, we decided to take the fast train from Cracow to Warsaw, spend six hours with Agnieszka, and fly from Warsaw to Vienna. She picked us up at the station, took us home for lunch, then gave us a tour of the old town, in spite of the fact that her English was extremely limited. She made it clear that six hours was not enough time to see Warsaw, so we would have to come back. And now we have.
Even though she has now spent much time in the United States, since it is generally in the company of her daughters and, even more, her grandchildren, with all of whom she speaks Polish, Agnieszka still speaks little English. What little she speaks, however, she can communicate very well in. She says that she is too old to learn a new language, having had to learn Russian and German when she was young. Our conversations were a combination of simple English, (extremely) simple Polish and (not quite so) simple German.
Agnieszka lives in a three-bedroom apartment (very small rooms by American standards, but as she said, it was “luxurious” during Communist times) which she had shared with her late husband and her daughters Ania and Kasia, who are now both in America. She is a teacher at a technical high school, and during the school year has a very rigorous schedule, getting up at 5:30, taking the bus to the school, getting out at 5:00, then grading papers, etc. until 2 a.m., five days a week. This is offset somewhat by the fact that she gets two months off in the summer, as well as several holiday weeks during the school year.
The next morning, Monday, August 15th, was the feast of the Assumption, so, after a nice breakfast, Agnieszka drove us to the nearby Divine Providence Center, which is in the process of being built. I didn’t bring my camera along, so I have no pictures. When it is finished, the church will seat 4,000 people. On an upper level, with great views over Warsaw, will be a museum dedicated to Pope John Paul II and Stefan Cardinal Wyszinski, who led the Polish Catholic Church in its decades of confrontation with the Communist regime. At the moment, however, the church is just a huge concrete shell, and mass is held in the lower level, where there will be a Pantheon of Great Poles (currently seven of the three hundred grave spaces are filled). There are shrines with relics of Pope John Paul (I think it is a piece of bloody cloth that he was wearing during the assassination attempt) and the Solidarity martyr (murdered by the secret police), Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko (a piece of his arm).
Nine a.m. mass had two musicians playing an electonic keyboard and singing. Everyone took communion in the mouth instead of the hand. Afterwards, we took part in a Polish-English tour of the facility (we were the only English-speakers).
Then we drove to the nearby Wilanow Palace, which we toured with the use of English-language audio guides (as at the Gruenes Gewoelbe in Dresden). It had been built in the late 17th century by the great Polish king Jan III Sobieski, as his summer palace. Perhaps the high point in Polish history, and a major turning point in the history of Eastern Europe, was in 1683, when a large Turkish army besieged Vienna. Sobieski led a relieving army that attacked and utterly destroyed the Turkish force, leading to, among other things, the decline of the Ottoman Empire as a Great Power, the freeing, within a few years, of Hungary and Croatia from the Turks, and the invention of the Viennese (and, later, any other European country's) cafe—for among the spoils of war found in the abandoned Turkish tents were large quantities of coffee beans. The Viennese tried them and developed a taste for them, later inventing the Sacher Torte and other pastries as powerful auxiliary devices for the better use of this Turkish secret weapon.
The Wilanow Palace was interesting and pleasant, and there were some connections with Dresden. Augustus the Strong of Saxony was also King of Poland and tenant of Wilanow. On one of the upper floors there is a Canaletto painting with no caption but clearly showing the Frauenkirche and the Elbe waterfront.
We had some Polish crepes (nalesniki) and coffee at a nearby outdoor restaurant terrace, then we went back to Agnieska’s apartment, where we had a more serious lunch.
Later in the afternoon we drove more than two hours out to Agnieszka’s dzialka (country house--pronounced "JOW-kah"), in the woods—sort of equivalent to a Minnesotan’s lake cabin, but with no lake. It is small and very simple, but comfortable, and something that she’s put a lot of work and love into. She said several times that it is her life. After less than an hour there, we headed back for the city.
Wannsee Magic Flute
Saturday, August 13th, we got a late start, then went to Marika’s local farmers’ 
market, where Mary Joy and Marika did some shopping, while I went scouting for Wi-Fi. I found it at Starbucks, so we had some coffee and caught up with e-mails.
Late that afternoon, we caught an S-Bahn to the Wannsee, one of the places Berliners get away to on weekends. We took a ferry across to Kladow, walked around a little, had coffee and pastries at an outdoor restaurant, then took the
ferry back. I've never seen more sailboats on a lake at one time, even on Lake Minnetonka.
We caught the S-Bahn again, going back one stop to Nikolassee, where we got off and caught the bus to the gigantic Seebad Wannsee (Wannsee Lake Bathing) complex. The roads were filled with people driving, biking and walking to the opera.
The original idea had been that there would be a floating stage, out in the lake, with spectators viewing from the shore. We saw such a stage when we were overnighting at Bregenz, Austria, in 2000, so there is plenty of experience with ironing out the difficulties with such a production. There is a beautiful view of
the Wannsee Seebuehne (Lake Stage) on the covers of the production’s brochure and program. Unfortunately, this was as much a fantasy as the opera itself, The Magic Flute. Apparently, the obstacles to building such a stage were too great, so it was set up, instead, behind the bathing complex.
One good result was that they had to reconfigure the bleacher seating, so Marika, Mary Joy and I ended up in better seats than we would otherwise have had—high up, but nearly dead center.
The performance itself was wonderful, though opera fanatics might not agree. At the center of the stage was a large pyramid, hollowed out in a circle. There was a catwalk from one side to the other. In front were fake trees and rocks, to provide hiding places. There were a volcano for the trial by fire, rain for the trial by water and fireworks for the celebration at the end. For the first appearance of the Queen of the Night, she was suspended by a crane. It must have been difficult to sing her first aria while one of the stiff wings on her costume was accidentally banging into a light fixture.
She sang it very well. The singing was generally of a high caliber, especially by the South African tenor playing Tamino. Sarastro, noticeably, took a while to
get into voice. There were two unusual things about the voices. The star of the show, as is only fitting, but not usually recognized, was the Papageno, who rather than being an opera singer, was a TV actor. He handled the comic bits wonderfully well, but his voice was not at all comparable to the usual Papageno, such as Haakon Hagegaard in Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. On the other hand, the
tenor who sings Monostatos usually sings it with a creaky, comical voice. This Monostatos was a young Portuguese tenor who is more used to singing roles like the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, and he sounded wonderful. Although alternate Taminos trade off on alternate nights, I would not be surprised if this Monostatos were the understudy for Tamino. In addition, the three Spirits, roles for boy sopranos, were sung by adult women instead. This made for singing that was stronger but less ethereal.
market, where Mary Joy and Marika did some shopping, while I went scouting for Wi-Fi. I found it at Starbucks, so we had some coffee and caught up with e-mails.
Late that afternoon, we caught an S-Bahn to the Wannsee, one of the places Berliners get away to on weekends. We took a ferry across to Kladow, walked around a little, had coffee and pastries at an outdoor restaurant, then took the
ferry back. I've never seen more sailboats on a lake at one time, even on Lake Minnetonka.
We caught the S-Bahn again, going back one stop to Nikolassee, where we got off and caught the bus to the gigantic Seebad Wannsee (Wannsee Lake Bathing) complex. The roads were filled with people driving, biking and walking to the opera.
The original idea had been that there would be a floating stage, out in the lake, with spectators viewing from the shore. We saw such a stage when we were overnighting at Bregenz, Austria, in 2000, so there is plenty of experience with ironing out the difficulties with such a production. There is a beautiful view of
the Wannsee Seebuehne (Lake Stage) on the covers of the production’s brochure and program. Unfortunately, this was as much a fantasy as the opera itself, The Magic Flute. Apparently, the obstacles to building such a stage were too great, so it was set up, instead, behind the bathing complex.
One good result was that they had to reconfigure the bleacher seating, so Marika, Mary Joy and I ended up in better seats than we would otherwise have had—high up, but nearly dead center.
The performance itself was wonderful, though opera fanatics might not agree. At the center of the stage was a large pyramid, hollowed out in a circle. There was a catwalk from one side to the other. In front were fake trees and rocks, to provide hiding places. There were a volcano for the trial by fire, rain for the trial by water and fireworks for the celebration at the end. For the first appearance of the Queen of the Night, she was suspended by a crane. It must have been difficult to sing her first aria while one of the stiff wings on her costume was accidentally banging into a light fixture.
She sang it very well. The singing was generally of a high caliber, especially by the South African tenor playing Tamino. Sarastro, noticeably, took a while to
get into voice. There were two unusual things about the voices. The star of the show, as is only fitting, but not usually recognized, was the Papageno, who rather than being an opera singer, was a TV actor. He handled the comic bits wonderfully well, but his voice was not at all comparable to the usual Papageno, such as Haakon Hagegaard in Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. On the other hand, the
tenor who sings Monostatos usually sings it with a creaky, comical voice. This Monostatos was a young Portuguese tenor who is more used to singing roles like the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, and he sounded wonderful. Although alternate Taminos trade off on alternate nights, I would not be surprised if this Monostatos were the understudy for Tamino. In addition, the three Spirits, roles for boy sopranos, were sung by adult women instead. This made for singing that was stronger but less ethereal.Saxon Switzerland
From Dresden, we headed southeast, along the Elbe River, to what is known as die saechsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland). Two years ago, driving through Normandy, we came close to la Suisse normande (Norman Switzerland). There are, of course, no Saxon or Norman Alps. These appellations are a result of 19th-century pride in some spectacular and wild local scenery. If they were to be named today, maybe we would have a “Saxon Grand Canyon” or “Norman Grand Canyon.” Saxon Switzerland (which the Michelin Green Guide, perhaps as a matter of French pride, mistranslates into English as “Swiss Saxony”) is a part of the Elbe valley filled with towering, eroded rocks and deep, dark forests.
Our specific destination was the Bastei, or Bastion, a high point overlooking the Elbe where it bends at the town of Rathen. After driving along the autobahn to the town of Pirna, we took back roads north of the river, got onto a side road that was being repaired, with traffic lights switching single lanes of traffic. We parked in a lot surrounded by woods and walked for about fifteen minutes, past the hotel and Panorama Restaurant, then up some steps cut into the stone, to the Bastei. It is a sort of small mesa of rock, capable of holding maybe forty people, if they were crammed tightly together. When we were there, there were no more than eight or ten, in total.
In order to walk down to Rathen, if one is so inclined, one must take the path down a little way from the Bastei and across the Bastei Bridge, a stone footbridge, finished in 1851, crossing a deep gap between monoliths.
We finished our visit to Saxon Switzerland with coffee and pastries at the Panorama Restaurant. The waiter was a little snooty, but the views southeast and southwest along the river as sunset approached were spectacular, and the goodies were delicious.. The three-hour-or-so drive back to Berlin was uneventful, except for some rain.
A remark on the weather: generally cool and damp, unusually so for this time of year, though the rain never lasted long enough to cause us serious problems, and when we needed perfect weather, such as the very next day after our return to Berlin, we got it.
Our specific destination was the Bastei, or Bastion, a high point overlooking the Elbe where it bends at the town of Rathen. After driving along the autobahn to the town of Pirna, we took back roads north of the river, got onto a side road that was being repaired, with traffic lights switching single lanes of traffic. We parked in a lot surrounded by woods and walked for about fifteen minutes, past the hotel and Panorama Restaurant, then up some steps cut into the stone, to the Bastei. It is a sort of small mesa of rock, capable of holding maybe forty people, if they were crammed tightly together. When we were there, there were no more than eight or ten, in total.
In order to walk down to Rathen, if one is so inclined, one must take the path down a little way from the Bastei and across the Bastei Bridge, a stone footbridge, finished in 1851, crossing a deep gap between monoliths.
We finished our visit to Saxon Switzerland with coffee and pastries at the Panorama Restaurant. The waiter was a little snooty, but the views southeast and southwest along the river as sunset approached were spectacular, and the goodies were delicious.. The three-hour-or-so drive back to Berlin was uneventful, except for some rain.
A remark on the weather: generally cool and damp, unusually so for this time of year, though the rain never lasted long enough to cause us serious problems, and when we needed perfect weather, such as the very next day after our return to Berlin, we got it.
Dresden
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.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Internet Access
I've written a lot about Dresden, but while we have internet access here in Warsaw, it's not Wi-Fi, and our friend's computer is rejecting my thumb drive, so I won't be able to post for a few days. That will give me a chance to write some more on the way back to Berlin.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Spreewald
After breakfast on Wednesday, August 9th, we loaded up Marika’s little Mazda 2 and headed south on the autobahn toward Dresden. On the way, we got off at Luebbenau, to visit the Spreewald.
The Spreewald is a place where the Spree River splits into many branches, dividing numberless wooded islands. This area is still inhabited by a Slavic people, the Sorbs, with their own language and culture. The normal mode of transportation is the Kahn, a flat-bottomed skiff or barge, poled like a gondola. We went to the main Hafen or harbor at Luebbenau and got into one of these boats for a three-hour round trip to the little village of Lehde, in the heart of the Spreewald.
The Spreewald is a place where the Spree River splits into many branches, dividing numberless wooded islands. This area is still inhabited by a Slavic people, the Sorbs, with their own language and culture. The normal mode of transportation is the Kahn, a flat-bottomed skiff or barge, poled like a gondola. We went to the main Hafen or harbor at Luebbenau and got into one of these boats for a three-hour round trip to the little village of Lehde, in the heart of the Spreewald.
The three of us boarded the boat, lined across, facing, over a table, a young German family of father, mother, 9-year-old daughter and two-year-old son Moritz. Moritz did very well, though he did get a little tired and cranky toward the end of the trip. He spoke slowly and deliberately, like an elder statesman. As a duck flew off, for instance, he might say: “En-te geht nach Hau-se.” (“Duck goes home.”).
When the captain had gathered enough passengers (10 or 12?) to fill the boat, we set out. As he poled along through the waterways, he kept up a running commentary in accented (Brandenburger? Saxon?) German, of which I understood barely a word. Mary Joy had some trouble understanding it, but Marika said that we weren’t missing much—it was jokey, wordy, but not providing much useful or interesting information.
When we got to Lehde, we were let off there for an hour on our own. We opted for lunch on the waterside terrace at the Gasthaus Oppott, where we had a very good lunch of fresh fish in a cream sauce, boiled potatoes and a wonderful pickle salad. The Spreewald is famous for its Gurken or pickles. But these hadn’t been sitting around in jars. They were fresh cucumber slices, newly pickled.
After our return to Luebbenau, we visited the town center and its church, then stopped for a coffee and goodies, before continuing to Dresden.
When the captain had gathered enough passengers (10 or 12?) to fill the boat, we set out. As he poled along through the waterways, he kept up a running commentary in accented (Brandenburger? Saxon?) German, of which I understood barely a word. Mary Joy had some trouble understanding it, but Marika said that we weren’t missing much—it was jokey, wordy, but not providing much useful or interesting information.
When we got to Lehde, we were let off there for an hour on our own. We opted for lunch on the waterside terrace at the Gasthaus Oppott, where we had a very good lunch of fresh fish in a cream sauce, boiled potatoes and a wonderful pickle salad. The Spreewald is famous for its Gurken or pickles. But these hadn’t been sitting around in jars. They were fresh cucumber slices, newly pickled.
After our return to Luebbenau, we visited the town center and its church, then stopped for a coffee and goodies, before continuing to Dresden.
It may be a few days before we can post our adventures in that wonderful city.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)