Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

☰

Germany — 9

2008-01-18

Nuremberg and Dresden

We arrived in Nuremberg late and stayed in a funny hotel. I call the hotel funny for several reasons:

1) Inside, it was papered with ancient Soviet wallpaper, its lockers were falling apart, and the TV only showed a quarter of the picture — the rest glowed purple. Maybe this wasn't actually in this hotel, but in the previous one, but in stories like this it's not the authenticity that matters, but the entertainment value, right?

2) It was located right in the old town, meaning literally in a building about ten times older than me.

3) But on the bright side, as soon as you step outside the hotel, you land right on a street full of sex shops. I won't show you the sex shops because there's nothing particularly interesting about them from the outside, and we didn't go inside. The guide said that this used to be the red-light district, but later the authorities moved it a bit further away from the old town.

Shot on a super point-and-shoot IXUS 40, it's actually surprising that something came out, considering there's no manual shutter speed adjustment there.

Night view of an old stone bridge-building with a half-timbered tower, built over a river on two arches. The glowing windows of the building and the illuminated trees reflect in the dark water.

Interestingly, the guide asked us if we wanted to take a walk around Nuremberg at night, since we wouldn't have time in the morning. The folks showed their enthusiasm rather sluggishly, but when the guide stepped out, more than half the bus was waiting for him. The guide's name, by the way, was Artis, which sounds symbolic to those who know bourgeois languages. In the vocative case of the Latvian language, it would be "Arti", which sounds even funnier.

In the old town at night all the buildings are illuminated, but already by eleven o'clock there was hardly anyone on the street. And we observed this in almost every city. The burghers must have a boring life.

A tall, richly decorated Gothic fountain with gilding and numerous statues is brightly illuminated at night against a dark background. Its lower part is partially hidden by a dark wrought-iron fence. 

Here you need to rub the little ring for good luck. By the way, on the right in the picture is a guy with three higher education degrees, and apparently, he studied not on a whim, but out of necessity. Actually, his name is Reynard and he is Latvian, but he probably speaks Russian better than tongue-tied me :-) His grandfather, by the way, made it all the way to Berlin in the ranks of the Red Army. All the haters of sprats should sometimes think about how life is much more complex than their pathetic fantasies.

A man in a denim jacket and a woman in a pink cardigan stand at night in front of a patterned metal grating, reaching their hands out to its upper part.

Overall, night-time Nuremberg is beautiful, you can climb up to the fortress, there's a very real-looking Grim Reaper standing on the bridge,  and it even managed to scare me, although in general I've never been particularly afraid of it.

I don't know if I should show this incomprehensible photo, but I gotta break up the text somehow, especially since it was taken from the castle wall. Few lights — the burghers are sleeping.

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By the way, I remembered that back in the first hotel Sasha talked me into asking if they had a billiards table. Like a naive provincial, I used the word Pool, to which the cute girl playing the role of the receptionist reacted with dilated pupils and a confused: "This is a 3-star hotel, we don't have a Pool."  It was only five minutes later that it dawned on me she meant a swimming pool.

A rat unhurriedly dining on what's left of the tourists. More precisely, of the tourists' meal.

A small rodent with eyes glowing from the flash sits on a stone parapet in the dark, behind a plastic table and chairs.

After Nuremberg we ended up in Dresden. Located there is an extremely serious in scale art gallery, situated in a wing of the Zwinger palace, called the Old Masters Picture Gallery. Its collection features originals by Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, and other greats. I don't understand the first thing about this and have no interest in it, but when you see before you something that epitomizes greatness and beauty for the whole world, you can't help but be moved by it.

 

This is not a palace,  but the Catholic Hofkirche cathedral, which King Augustus built in strictly Protestant Dresden. He built it because he wanted to become the Polish king, and the path to the throne was barred to a Protestant. The cathedral is one of the most famous in Europe.

Panorama of a European city square with a majestic Baroque cathedral topped with a tall spire, and another clock tower against a cloudy sky. Cars and a red tour bus are parked on the cobbled street, pedestrians are visible.

In the museum, I liked only a few paintings, and if I don't forget, I'll try to find them in the virtuality of Second Life, where there is an exact representation of the museum with all the artworks. At the same time, I'll evaluate how far virtuality has progressed in copying reality. Interestingly, there are as many as 11 art museums in Dresden, and they hold a gigantically scaled cultural heritage.

You don't look a gift Kristina in the mouth.

A smiling young woman in a camouflage tank top is looking to the right, next to her is a partial view of a man in a light-colored shirt. In the background — a cobbled street, old stone buildings with a statue, and other people.

And here is a Lutheran church more fitting for Dresden, where we even went inside. It was destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt in 2005. When you think about such things, thoughts about the ugliness of our civilization quiet down a bit. No matter how you slice it, if people are capable of recreating what was lost with diligence and love, and even using bricks from the old building, all is not yet lost. In a way, this building is a fake imitation of antiquity, but in another way, it's a renewal at a new stage of development. All this is deeply symbolic.

The majestic Baroque Frauenkirche church in Dresden with a large light dome and dark stone fragments towers over a bustling city square surrounded by buildings. Above everything — a blue sky with white clouds. 

Here's another building for you to compare. You're going to laugh, but this is not a mosque, even though it would have harmonized with the already existing Catholic and Protestant cathedrals.

The building of the former Yenidze tobacco factory in Dresden, built in an oriental style with a large glass dome and a minaret-like chimney against a cloudy sky. The large inscription 'YENIDZE' is visible on the building's dome.

This is even funnier. The building in the picture above is a cigarette factory. Sometimes architects really let loose, and they aren't hindered by boring "classicists," who in our terms are called stupid bores.

 

Excuse the angle. Here I'll confess a secret to you - I like skinny girls. Probably because I'm fat myself.

A young woman in a red t-shirt leads a dog on a leash across a cobbled square in Dresden, against a backdrop of historical buildings, including a pink house, a blue house, and the Baroque facade of the Frauenkirche.

Another palace. I have no strength left to check who lives or lived in the little house.

The majestic historical building of the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden with a ribbed glass dome topped with a golden angel figure, against a blue sky with white clouds. On the left in the background, the dome of the Frauenkirche is visible.

This is already a new build, methinks.

The courtyard of a historical castle with a colonnade on the right, buildings with red tiled roofs, and towering dark towers with spires against a blue sky with clouds.

Interestingly, in Dresden the weather improved and we walked around in t-shirts instead of thick jackets.

A group of people strolls across a sunny square in front of an old building with a 'Verkehrs Museum' sign. Several adult men and women in summer clothes are walking across the square, casting long shadows.

In conclusion, I'll say that every day on the trip we saw at least one miracle. A miracle in a strictly mundane sense, not a mystical one. So overall  everything turned out great. But the necessity of spending half the time in a bus kills me, because even though I don't get carsick, I come out of it exhausted. Next time I'll try to use more civilized transport in the form of the discount airlines Ryanair or EasyJet.

In any case, on the questionnaire for the Impro Ceļojumi company that organized everything, I gave 8/10, 9/10 on different points. For this, my mom and aunt, who haven't been spoiled by such beauties in their lives, snapped at me.  But I've been to Norway, and it will be a long time before I see beauty that can surpass the incredible majesty of Norwegian nature.

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