Dresden - Sunday

Mrs went down and brought back two large coffees from the hotel bistro . . . it was all I could do to dribble the coffee into my mouth and not all over my nightshirt . . . some sort of post prandial depression, I guess . . . after the Carousel Bistro . . . eventually tho', we did motivate out and took the tram over to Theatreplatc for coffee and pastry at Schinkelwacher. It was warm enough to sit outside, and the place is tiny inside anyway . . . Mrs said Dresden is much nicer in July than November . . . I guess you could say the same for Prague . . . if not for Scottsdale. . . I waited a long time for this picture without tours or buses in it, but that couple in front would just not leave . . . 8^D . . .

that would be the opera house in the background, for a sense of what the place was like before WWII.

We had cappucino grandes and our own tartes . . . I had the Herrentorte and Mrs had some sort of FruitTorte . . .

Just the thing to get ya off and running . .  .

but where to? Mrs said, I tho't we'd just follow a tour group around, or go on one of the walks in the guide book, but I said, dammitall, I'm in Dresden, I'm gonna see Schlachthauf Funf! I saw in the book where they were and how to get there, on the 75 bus from Posteplatz. We had a 20 minute wait so we walked around to no great effect. The shops were all closed and there were very few people around. When the bus came there were few people on it, and the further we got from town, the fewer there were. When we finally got to what is now known as Messe Halle (undoubtedly the root of the modern military term) it was fenced off and locked. It looks like where they have concert events now . . . there's nothing to commemorate Vonnegut at all, which I dont know whether is due to indifference or pain . . . we kept looking for some numeration system, but theres obviously a new one in place that doesn't match the old one. The only thing that shows we *might* have been in the right place was this bovine statuary . . .

when the bus dropped us off, the driver went over and parked for 10 minutes, and when he came back onto his route, there we were waiting for him, the only people on the bus all the way back to Posteplatz.

Getting back onto plan A, we strolled over to Raderbecker by the River to dine on sausage and drink unfiltered beer. It was quite warm by then, even sitting out on the terrace watching the boats on the river, with a nice breeze. The sausage, the potato salad, and the soup were all good.

From there we walked 200 meters down to the Albertinium Museum. It was a little perplexing to us to find where to buy tickets (in the basement) -- but it could just have been beer-and-sausage-in-the-sun-disorientation . . . if you know what I mean . . . the whole museum was great . . . in the first room I whipped out my camera and chased down a guard: "Ist photographie verboten?"

"No photo! No photo!" she said with a axe-chopping movement of her hand. Bummer. Even more so when we got to one room with 3 pictures we loved . . . A Degas of Two Ballerinas in filmy orange tutus; a Van Gogh landscape we'd never seen before that was awesome, and a Gaugan with two tahitian women seated on a beach blanket (standard stuff for him) but with the droll title "What's Going On?"

From there we ambled back to Wienerplatz, picked up our bags, printed off a few crosswords & sodukus for Mrs on the computer in the lobby, and grabbed the 3:10 back to Prague. I was so tired, and full, that I couldn't see hogging a table in the dining car all the way, so I made us sit back in 2nd class. We found a compartment. It was hot and stuffy. Mrs got out her crosswords. I went to sleep. I woke up at the border, Decin, when the hordes of weekenders and hikers returning to prague joined us. . . now there were 7 of us in this compartment with the gangway totally full too of backpacks and hikers. It just wasn't as pleasant a trip as the trip going. Need a new plan for next time.