| Germany: Part 2 - Surrealism and Sausage |
| Written by Brendon Green |
| Saturday, 03 April 2010 17:22 |
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Previously on GERMANY: A poorly planned overnight train trip from Berlin to Dresden has resulted in me falling asleep in a 24 hour McDonalds, thus ensuring that I have now done everything there is to do in a McDonalds. Eventually however, I arrived in Dresden. 6.30am, in a haze, with 15 hours of exploring ahead of me. This was probably the best way to get into Dresden, as it enhanced the surrealism of the city greatly. The first thing I noticed was that everything was closed, and didn’t open until 9.30 at the earliest. This left me to wander around an almost empty city trying to get my bearings with no map or tourist info. I didn’t know much about Dresden before arriving and it was quite a strange detour to take for such a short amount of time. The reason I did go was because it was linked to two of my personal cultural touchstones, the band The Dresden Dolls, and the book Slaughterhouse 5. It was kind of like going to see where your favourite movie was filmed, or visiting America because your childhood pet dog was called Lincoln. They might not be hefty reasons, but they are reason enough. I’m glad I did go to Dresden, because it gave me a large scale surrealistic experience that will be tough to forget. The entire city was destroyed in a massive firebombing assault during WWII, and it has since been brought back to life by 3 apparently wildly divergent groups. In the ‘old city’ (read Tourist area) there are huge buildings and churches restored faithfully and diligently to resemble what was there before. The churches are amazing to enter, and each one is different. My favourite being one that was restored cheaply and the inside looks like it’s been plastered with papier-mache. Then interspersed with these classical structures are modern buildings, mostly looking like office and apartment blocks, in cartoon style and coloured all sorts of pastel pinks and greens and yellows. The duality between the two styles couldn’t be more stark (and it helps when there are horse and carriages clomping around the streets along with Mercedes taxis), until you cross the river and enter ‘real’ Dresden. This is the East Germany you probably have in your mind. Cold, rundown, wall to wall graffiti and completely at odds with the clean and crisp world on the other side of the river. All in all, Dresden was a visceral experience, and I’m very happy I took the inconvenient detour. 15 hours of exploring was enough though, so I jumped on another overnight train (this time a decent trip) to head to Cologne, or Koln, or however you want to write it. Cologne was another CouchSurfing destination, and this is definitely the best way to do the city. There is some stuff to see, the most prominent being the awe-inspiring Gothic Dom Cathedral, which unfortunately had construction work going on inside of it (nothing soothes the soul like the sound of a jack hammer), but it is best experienced as a local. My brave and gallant host woke up to meet me at 7.30am, and after a quick chat, her boyfriend came through with a bag full of breakfast treats. Fresh rolls, cheese, meats, orange marmalade and coffee, a pretty good start. Over the course of my stay I not only go to look around the city (which is nice, although that may be damning it with faint praise), but I got to hang out with my host and her flatmates and her friends and even her family. They were all beautifully talented in music, so we stayed up late drinking beer, singing songs, visiting a cool local bar and generally just having fun. Let me state this as a fact: Germans are hilarious. I have no idea how the humourless German stereotype came about, because they are some of the funniest people in the world. It may be because they deal primarily in sarcasm, which I adore. It is also a great place to have language misunderstandings, for example my saying that I wanted to try some Currywurst, was understood as me wanting to eat Kanye West. So I give a big thumbs up to Germany. The history is potent and the people are top class. I loved it all, even the killer overnight train trips. But I had to leave and go to Amsterdam, which is known for some other things… |
