European Vacation

Unfortunately I don't have too much to write on Leipzig and Dresden, not because they weren't beautiful cities, but because I only spent one night each in both of them. After my lively time in Berlin I took the train to Leipzig which is only a couple of hours south.

Leipzig is one of the larger cities in the old East Germany and is often remembered fondly as the city of heroes. The reason for this is that the demonstrations which ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin Wall began in this city in the summer of 1989 and spread throughout the GDR. The old town of the city is quite beautiful but currently cluttered with one construction site after the other (as seems to be the story for most of the monuments in Europe!) For this reason I didn't take too many photos as I can report, scaffolding looks the same the world over!

I did however find a couple of interesting buildings which have been decorated with a lot of love and care- not necessarily the most artistic of pictures, but they certainly stand out in the otherwise concrete jungle that is Leipzig...

Again, my time in Dresden was very limited but certainly enjoyable. Dresden was almost destroyed at the end of WWII by the allied bombings. The carpet bombing which flattened most of the city has often been critised because of the fact that much of the destruction occured when Germany was almost defeated. Regardless of which side of the argument you agree, it is amazing to walk through the old town and see the entire area beautifully restored.

In fact, some of the restoration is actually quite recent. For example, the Church of Our Lady (pictured below) was only completed in 2004. The original church was left in complete ruins at the end of WWII. After the war, the Russians and the GDR Government left the ruins as a memory to the war. It was only after reunification that the decision was made to rebuild the church to how it was before the war.

As the photo might show, there are areas of the church which are darker than the rest. These darker blocks are from the original building, the rest of the blocks are new.

I would have liked to spend a little more time in Dresden as there is quite a lot I didn't get to see, or what I did see I saw in darkness (the problem with European Autum/Winter, it starts to get dark at about 3.30pm!). Then again, there's always next time! :-)