Dresden, Prague, and Pierogis

Dear Family,

I just got back from a lovely trip to Dresden, Prague, and Krakow. I traveled to Dresden and Prague with my whole program, then met up with my friend, Savanna, from Davidson, who is studying abroad in Prague; we traveled to Krakow together.

This first photo is from Dresden, before our boat tour of the Elbe River (from L to R, if you're curious, Ari, Keith, Lucy, Nina, me, Anthony). We traveled there early on my birthday, and it turned out to be quite a fabulous day. First, at the hotel, we all changed into opera going clothes, as we wouldn't have another chance to change that day and we were going to see La Traviata at the famous Semper Oper(a) that night. We then attended a noon church service at the Dresdner Frauenkirche, a Protestant cathedral that was bombed heavily during the Dresden bombings. The people of the city, however, took it upon themselves to rebuilt it exactly as it was, down to replacing stones in the exact places they had occupied before the war by using a computer program to calculate the measurements. We did so much in Dresden that day and the next that I'd better summarize a bit: we got a bus tour, a boat tour, went to a fabulous dinner in an old Ratskeller before the opera, saw the Museum of the Old Masters and, perhaps best of all, the Elector of Saxony's treasure chamber with the famous "Amber Room." The treasure chamber held things of incredible quality in incredible quantities- jewels, silver, ivory, bronze coats of arms... It took all but one of us about 2 hours to go through everything. That one, Ari (far left-hand side of the picture), is a bit of a goofball from Davidson. He tends to live in his own world, and therefore (gladly) provides the rest of us with entertainment. Ari stayed in the treasure chamber for nearly three hours. When he finally emerged and was asked by his hungry program-mates where he'd been, Ari said half-defensively, half-embarassedly, "Guys, I was looking at the stuff!"

Prague was also incredible, but you'll have to refer to the other blogs or facebook for my photos from there. As Aunt Kathy rightly predicted, there are incredible glass stores in Prague and even the guys didn't mind being dragged into a few of them-- though, on one occasion, a shop attendant looked at me with horror as Lydia and I entered his tiny shop with five big American college boys in tow.

The best thing about both Prague and Krakow was really just wandering through the old town squares, admiring the architecture. As with the rest of Europe, I felt free to wander in and out of the churches, which wasn't a problem in Prague which is largely atheistic. It did become a problem in staunchly Catholic Poland. The first church that I decided to go into, we entered shortly after 4pm on Saturday. I anticipated that mass would start around 5pm, so I presumed that the people gathered in the pews were praying or waiting for mass. I was wrong. Savanna and I barely had time to whip around to the backside of a massive column next to the aisle before the bride and groom came marching back down the aisle to the recessional.... In the next church we went into, the person in white at the front of the church was thankfully a priest, not a bride, so we slid into the pews at the back of the church and sat through the 5 o'clock mass just as any good Polish Catholic might do. I rather liked the fact that the beautiful old churches of Poland were full and in use. There is a different feel in an old cathedral where people are still singing, praying, and believing than in one occupied more by tourists and natives. Even the church service we went to in Dresden felt like a reenactment rather than a meaningful faith practice. Krakow is particular is religious, possibly given Pope John Paul II's intimate connection with the city. We saw monks and nuns, particularly young ones, everywhere!

This next picture is from our first night in Krakow. We met up with several of Savanna's friends from her program in Prague and stayed in an incredibly safe, well-kept hostel together. In the photo, Savanna is to my right; the girl to my left is an Aussie named Jess that Savanna's friends met at our hostel; she accompanied us out that night and to Auschwitz the next day. Auschwitz really leaves one without words and more confused thoughts and emotions than can be easily sorted out and communicated, so I will pass over that without extended comment. You can imagine. This picture, though, was taken in a traditional, albeit 24-hour, hole-in-the-wall Pierogi restaurant. Pierogis are pasta stuffed with meat, cabbage, sweet cottage cheese, or potatoes and cheese and are quite good and quite cheap, as are most things in Poland. Money in the Czech Republic exchanges at 24:1 for the Euro, so we called it monopoly money. In Poland, the exchange rate is 3:1, but it doesn't look too different from the Czech crowns; Savanna's friends dubbed it "funny money."

While all these travels were wonderful, I was quite happy to return to Germany where I speak the language and where the country's democratic roots have had more time to deepen. In Prague and Krakow, we had to keep reminding ourselves that the rule of the Communists was over in Poland and the Czech Republic, but the countries themselves don't look recovered yet. On the nine hour train ride from Krakow back to Berlin, I read James Mitchener's Poland, which is a powerful story to read when one has just visited the places told of in the book. My trip was an appropriate epilogue, actually, as Mitchener published the book in 1983 and the Communists weren't overthrown till 1989. When I got back to Berlin, I was greeted by a deluge of birthday cards, packages, and emails to which many of you contributed, so thank you! I thoroughly enjoyed having my own 2nd? 3rd? 21st birthday party at midnight last night : )

Love to you all,

Kennedy