Visitors

In the last week I have been really lucky and happy to have some visitors come to stay with me in Dresden. It makes such a difference to have familiar faces around and to be able to just sit and chat with people – it certainly breaks up what can be a fairly solitary lifestyle.

First, Macca came from Prague for a couple of nights. We wandered through all of the major sights in the altstadt (old town) including the Zwinger, the Hofkriche and the Frauenkirche and visited the Gallery of Old Masters including the Rustkammer (a display of medieval armour and weapons – very cool!)

The next visitors were tall Paul and lovely Anna – friends from choirs in Melbourne. Last time I saw them was in Dublin last year and I was so pleased that they were able to take a small detour from their backpacking in Eastern Europe to come and visit Dresden for a couple of days. They arrived on the last day of the Dresden Stadtfest which gave us plenty of things to see and do. After a fairly lazy day of relaxing and a little bit of sightseeing, we headed out to the Brauhaus (a beer hall in an old castle on the Elbe) for what we dubbed half-a-pig night (more info in another post). Another lazy morning to recover and we then checked out the German Hygiene Museum (surely, only in Germany!!) which turned out to be quite an interesting interactive exhibition about the human body. The final sightseeing stop was the Glass Factory which is a huge glass building containing VW’s production line.

As well as having some really great times, it was fantastic to be able to explore more of Dresden with friends. It gives me a bit more motivation to see some of the sights that I haven’t gotten to yet.

Paul and Anna left on Wednesday morning and my next visitor, Jen Ryan, arrives on Friday (tomorrow!).