Eating in Prague, Chillin' in Dresden, Surveying in Leipzig

Our intensive three week study of the German language was celebrated with a trip to Germany! A large portion of our program (I would say about 40, but don't quote me on that) said good bye to Vienna in the early morning of saturday February 4th and boarded a bus headed to Germany. Now our trip consisted of two parts, we stayed in Dresden for two days (a lunch stop in Prague) and then onto Leipzig for a quick afternoon tour and then back onto the bus for the final stay in Berlin!Accordingly, I have divided up the trip into two parts, here we go!

Day 1. this was spent on the bus, except for a wonderful lunch break in Prague (no big deal). We found a nice Czech restaurant and had a delicious meal of duck in a restaurant that looked like it had been around for a hundred years. After our stomachs were sufficiently full some of us decided to run up to this look out to snap some quick pictures of the city, thus making us slightly late to the bus (ah such was the theme for the week, not enough time to see everything and always running to make it back on time!) I will have to go back to Prague, it was absolutely stunning and the people were very friendly.

Travel Team Awesome!

Finally we made it to Dresden where we had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant after a long day of traveling. To re-cap my day by country, I had breakfast in Vienna, lunch in Prague and dinner in Dresden. My trip was off to a great start!












Day 2. Being a tourist means that no matter how late you were out the night before, the day starts early! We were off on a bus tour of Dresden where we occasionally would get out and check out the sights. The only hinderance was the extreme cold which prevented us getting a really good lay out of the city. the tour guide was very good (too bad I can't remember the cool information we learned, guess I will have to go back!) and ended the tour at "the most beautiful shop in the world". This was a cheese shop that was entirely covered in handmade tiles. It was gorgeous, but we were not allowed to take pictures in there, although we could take souvenir postcards!
 After the tour we had a break for lunch where we were all ushered into this basement restaurant that summed up every stereotype I had about German food. I can't describe how amazing it was, but these pictures say it all.

We toured our first museum, I believe it was the Dresden state art collection ( Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) which we couldn't see all the way through, but we got a good look at the Turkish section with our guide. our last day in Dresden was finished up with a warm cheap meal at a small local restaurant that reminded me of some chic places in Ballard (the mac n' cheese was only 4 euros and Patty and I had to admit defeat because it was soo cheesy!).
Dresden was a fun combination of living history and a vibrant, slightly underground modern life. Everything was a little grungy feeling, for example seeing a concert in an abandoned house, but the beer was excellent and the people were friendly despite the freezing weather. Would I go back to Dresden? Yes!

The new Leipzig

Day 3: Our trip was already off to a great start in Dresden and so we soldiered on to Leipzig. We only had a scant half a day in Leipzig but we made the most of it. As per usual we did a bus tour of the city (again, -10 degrees celcius is 14 degrees Farenheit so our planned walking tour would've left us as statues in Leipzig). We saw lots of monuments, important sites, opera houses etc.

We did have one stop on our tour for a "5 minute picture taking of this monument to soldiers (I think)" which, as you can see, is very large.

5 minutes...? No problem

Our tour guide told us that you can climb to the top of it and so we decided to run past the frozen over lake in front and up the monument. Naturally, we were late getting back to the bus, completely out of breath and I was coughing for the next hour from inhaling the sub-freezing air so quickly, extreme tourism!

A couple huffs and puffs later

Bach

We had lunch in a very up scale restaurant with a beautiful view of the city and afterwards us music nerds went to a music mecca; the church of Bach!!!

Love for Bach

After this we piled back into the bus and it was off to...(see next post to find out where!)