Dresden

I very much wanted to take the train to Prague, though the travel planner who was helping us recommended flying because good fares are available and it would use less of our time. But I found a site with better train fares, and once we had started to plan the train the travel planner suggested we stop off in Dresden, on the way.

I was nervous about getting out of the apartment and getting to the right train station but it worked out so smoothly we were there about an hour and a half early. There was a supermarket in the train station so we bought rye bread and cream cheese and smoked salmon to make a picnic on the train. We were even able to figure out how to get on the right train car for our reserved seats. The ride to Dresden was just over two hours. It ended up much easier than fighting an airport, and I will be more confident on our next leg.

We got to Dresden in plenty of time to walk around the town and see some museums. Our son said he was most interested in the armour musuem, but he and I were done when John and our daughter were only a quarter of the way through, so they suggested we go on. We tried to go to the old treasure collection, but there were no more tickets available this afternoon, so we walked through the two large churches and walked back to the hotel. Old city Dresden is very strange--quite a few historic buildings reconstructed and much more construction going on. One church has blackened stones where the originals could be put back into place and whiter stones where new ones have been used, but in most cases you are looking at a reconstructed historic city. It seems strange to me, particularly seeing it still being built, but then I have never been a believer that healing is going back to what the situation would be if the harm had never happened.