germany tourism

A trip to…Dresden

Such was my desire to visit Dresden that a seven-hour journey across Germany wasn’t enough to dissuade me. I can report that the journey is sorely lacking in grandeur and beauty without a mountain in sight. The journey on an InterCity train cost £20 each and we upgraded to first-class for under £10 each, which gets you a couple of free biscuits and table service where you have to pay for everything. That said, it’s a steal compared to the UK where first class comes with freebies galore at a price.

We were lucky to have a necrotic man sitting opposite us, who proceeded to eat breadsticks from a briefcase in a style I could only describe as “annoying” and when he wasn’t chewing on breadsticks he was hacking up some phlegm that had been brewing in his chest since the 1980s. He was such an awful person he even left the pinging sounds of emails on his laptop going. He thought he was so important, but he was the one covered in phlegmy breadcrumbs. We trundled and occasionally sprinted through Dortmund, Bielefeld and Hanover without incident or interest until Dessau, when I realised I was passing the home of Bauhaus and cursed myself for not stopping off here for a day or two. Thanks to my obsession with putting markers on Google maps, it’s stored for my next German adventure.

Eventually, after 15 mini naps, listening to almost all the recorded music ever made and numerous games of book versus phone, I caught my first sight of the many spires of Dresden and I knew I was going to like it. We checked into the very lovely Hotel Indigo where I congratulated myself on finding two excellent hotels in a row. The Indigo was not in a building as thrilling as the 25hours Hotel in Cologne, but it was stylish, comfortable and had a logo of a lion in a tuxedo playing a saxophone.

Zwinger

Hotel Indigo is located near the Zwinger Palace and the reconstructed centre so we headed out to the palace to explore the different levels where we were treated to the sun striking a demonic looking cherub or a dome in a gorgeous light. It is a photographer’s paradise, especially in the late afternoon. It was built in the 18th century during the reign of Augustus the Strong and held a wedding that apparently went on for 40 days. I read further to find the theme of the wedding was Baroque and Roll. Actually, that’s a lie but it sounds cool. Clearly, anyone who would countenance a 40 day wedding would have been absolutely unbearable but the complex that stands today is a real treat to walk through and more so as it was free. We walk to The Crown Gate which looks much like the most overwrought crown upon an entrance, delightfully decadent with four Polish eagles stuck on the top for added chintz. Tucked away is The Nymphs’ Bath, an elaborate water feature that reeks of absurd wealth.

Zwinger

The old city is a marvel of reconstruction that rivals old Warsaw for the effort that went into bringing the city back to life. Dresden, like Warsaw, saw over 90% of the city centre reduced to rubble in the war. Today, you know what happened in the 1940s but can’t really feel it as buildings look designed so as to look ancient but are smart and neat with straight rooves, giving away their real age. There is a mixture of buildings that were recreated to reflect their baroque history and more generic designs, yet there is a sense of scale and harmony to the centre. We walked through the city on the way to Yenidze, an old cigarette factory that looks like a mosque to reflect the factories use of Turkish tobacco. A strangely inappropriate building but one that stands out from a mile away. Service there was, at best, frosty. Perhaps Yenidze is secretly an east German icon that refuses to accept things have changed. It took two emails to get a reservation (first one they told me the kitchen was closed and didn’t make any attempt to suggest I come at another time) and when we arrived the place was deathly quiet; even a group of friends sounded scared to talk in case the waiting staff were listening in. As soon as we sat down, a dramatic storm raged over the centre of Dresden which we had a fantastic view of. The rain lashed down and the wind whipped the sides of their version of a minaret. It was quite something to behold and was more memorable than the food. The slightly strange Yenidze experience is worth it, though. Perhaps better as a place for evening drinks on their rooftop bar than for dinner.

The old town
Yenidze

We went to go for a post-prandial cocktail in the Neustadt. Around Louisenstraße, people were spilling onto the street from bars, graffiti adorned the walls and stickers covered everything that isn’t moving. The trendy district of Dresden announces itself without any subtlety. We were going to head to Pinta Cocktail bar but it was roasting hot and filled with cigarette smoke so we abandoned it for a nearby beer garden where a pint was €3.60 which just makes London seem like it’s having a laugh.

Getting back to the hotel on the tram was far more confusing than it ought to have been, with the tram pivoting away from the centre towards some barely lit residential streets. We alighted to wait for another tram back, hoping for the best. The next tram takes us on an intensely circuitous route around Dresden, going north before suddenly realising it actually wanted to go back to the south. It was more of a drama than I required, but before collapsing into bed, I had to tune into the latest instalment of Germany’s anti-hero loaf of bread, Bernd das Brot on KI.KA. Bernd is a depressed loaf that gets into all sorts of scrapes. That night’s edition saw him hanging out with his band on a tour bus, before he fell over and broke a set of bagpipes. Luckily that night his gig was a huge success. It really is the most wonderfully crap show.

The next morning we visited the Albertinium by Bruhl’s terrace for cake and coffee. The Albertinium is the city’s modern art gallery and has an imposing main hall with an outstanding gift shop full of books about Dresden’s history but this is as far as we got as we had a busy day planned. Bruhl’s terrace is a wonderful section of the city, nicknamed “the balcony of Europe” when it was part of the ramparts of a palace. In 1814 a grand staircase connected Schlossplatz to the terrace, finally enabling the locals to enjoy the sweeping views of the Elbe that the elite had enjoyed for years.  

DDR designs

The walk through the old town, snaking past the painstakingly reconstructed Frauenkirche through the terrace and to Brühlschen Garten put me in a state of deep relaxation. The city was quiet, the heat of the day hadn’t turned oppressive, the sky was a deep blue and I was on holiday. It was at this moment that I fell in love with Dresden. We read in the garden, occasionally sighing contentedly before a walk to the DDR museum, which is fittingly above a shopping centre. Even in death, East Germany is mocked. I am obsessed with the DDR, though I know I wouldn’t have thrived in the political hellscape as I don’t want to be restricted in every aspect of my life and couldn’t be on board with spying on everyone and being spied upon. I would be first against the wall. Or am I scared that I’d be a superb spy, destroying lives to save my own comfort? The design of the era is simply as good as it gets and manages the trick of having you think that a new society was being constructed from the ground up. People were at the front and centre – a less muscular version of the socialist worker, one who might have been able to extract some joy from life. The reality of course, sounded pretty damn bleak but I have always been hypnotised by the images. After looking at the drawings of happy kids at school, using beautifully-designed textbooks and drooling at reconstructed living rooms with dreamy furnishings, I went to buy some postcards at the shop. My Mastercard wouldn’t work and the man behind the till said that their machines didn’t like foreign cards. I joked that this was like being back in the DDR. He looked blankly at me. Ah, now, that was like being in the DDR.

Communist mural

Dresden has an outstanding DDR-era mural on the side of the Kulturpalast and what is so surprising is that in 2019, a full-throated piece of socialist realist art remains fully intact. There are communist symbols everywhere and the people look as strong and delighted, not to mention determined, as you’d expect. In Berlin, there’s a feeling of all the history being renovated out of the city but here is a distinct piece of soviet propaganda that puts you in a different world entirely. It’s gorgeous and I took every opportunity to photograph and admire it. The Kulturpalast as a building is a standard 1960s squat block that is perfectly nice, and manages to fit into the cityscape more successfully than you might expect it to.

For lunch, we walked up to Soul Food Sisters back on Louisenstraße. All the hipsters were probably tapping away on a laptop in a coffee shop somewhere and the area felt very different. But the food was brilliant; I had a Weiner schnitzel which was a really generous portion at a surprisingly reasonable price. The atmosphere was unexpectedly friendly, to the point that Ryan offered to put our plates in the kitchen at the back and the owner didn’t stop him wandering off.

Mini sex show

Less friendly were the people of Molkerei Gebrüder Pfund, a famous milk bar that has a glorious interior of Villeroy & Boch tiles and remains true to its roots of serving fresh milk and dairy products to the people of Saxony. The only problem was that nobody was buying the milk and the staff operate on high alert for anyone daring to flash a camera near the tiles. At one point I was being trailed round the shop by two members of staff who seemed to take real joy in being utter jobsworths. I kept going for my camera, just to keep them on the edge of despair and ecstasy. While the shop is undeniably beautiful, this obsession about cameras is counter-productive and I’d have happily given them a few euros to have been able to snap away. Leaving the shop empty-handed – it was over 30c so the idea of fresh milk was frankly disgusting – we headed to Großer Garten on a tram which took us the right way to the city’s enormous park. Dresden is a very green city and despite spending some hours in the park, we saw but a sliver of it. For day trips, the area around Dresden is rich in places to explore. There’s nearby Leipzig for starters, with Saxon Switzerland, Prague and Berlin a bit further afield. All are ripe for exploration in this wonderful patch of Europe.

A trip to…Cologne

This summer, inspired by Greta Thunberg and the dread of a busy airport full of over-tired people, also known as torture, my beloved and I took a train from London through to Prague. We stopped off in Cologne, Dresden and Saxon Switzerland before ending in Czech Republic, Czechia or whatever they’re calling it today. With this holiday’s relaxed travel ethos and saving-the-world vibe, I feel like I’ve finally nailed how to do it right.

Eurostar is just a wonder, isn’t it? Despite their byzantine queueing system where a ticket purchased on Bahn.de requires you to the “just go there, just wait there” line for an eternity while everyone seeing said Bahn.de ticket looks scared, it’s still streets ahead of flying. That is, until we’re settled in, the train is pulling out of London and a tour guide starts talking to her group in a very piercing voice for what seems like forever. They are going to Antwerp I gather, and she is guiding them through escalators of Europe, and telling them about the chances of being robbed whilst in Brussels for twenty minutes. Once she’s word-bombed one lot of people, off she goes to another group. The peace and quiet of Eurostar is shattered so I put in my headphones and listen to Slipknot to calm me down. At Brussels, we are robbed twice and can’t work the escalators.

On the ICE train to Cologne, I realise with some horror that I’d not reserved tickets from Brussels and every compartment is rammed with people apart from first class which is, as ever, almost entirely empty. It’s quiet save for the sounds of champagne corks popping, aimed at the eyes of the poor. I cleverly use my un-corked eyes to spot one compartment fully booked, but from Cologne so we grab seats and realise everyone in there is British, American or Australian. We’re drawn to the compartment, I reckon, for the romance of it and the memory of when trains were like Harry Potter. The American impresses us all with his grasp of English when asked a question in German, he barks “English”.

I recall my first trip to Cologne, when I hated the city. I had been in Brussels with a friend, which we loved and Cologne seemed dreary in comparison. At the time that Germany were holding the World Cup, there was more energy in Belgium. Imagine! This time, Cologne presented itself as a thoroughly cool place, even if it isn’t much to look at. There are shops which resemble those in London, with the same succulents in tiny holders, postcards along the lines of Happy birthday, you old motherfucker and images of Cologne cathedral in neon pink. I also feel that Cologne was far better this time thanks to the brilliant 25hours hotel which I had been interested in staying in for a while. I already knew I loved the look of the building; it’s an old insurance company headquarters and 25hours have kept a number of the original features which gives it, in their own words, a retro-futuristic vibe. Attention to detail is everywhere, from the lobby which features a stunning ceiling, beneath which is the original reception desk where old typewriters are placed. The lobby is full of deep chairs, all within reach of a giant Taschen book on topics such as architecture, art, graphic design, the Bauhaus movement and cities. The lobby also has a store where you can buy Cologne gin, excellent garish socks with parrots on, books, notepads and so on. There’s a vinyl store with turntables for playing music and even a couple of Daleks hanging out.

Design doesn’t stop at the reception, the lifts are covered in mirrors, which is ideal for selfies and the ‘gram (ugh). The rooms have plenty of little touches that mark this out as a great hotel; every room has a UE Boom bluetooth speaker which is a simple idea that I haven’t seen replicated elsewhere and made me very pleased – clearly better than trying to belt out tunes on a mobile phone. There are books, comics and magazines on the bedside table for light reading and an old phone if you need to call anyone from the past. On the roof is a popular cocktail bar which does lots of fruity drinks at a reasonable price, offering far reaching views of Cologne. The downside is that I now only want to stay at their hotels.

We stroll out to Brusseller Platz where many ping pong tables are used by the youth to play badly. One man plays with a broken arm, and he’s one of the better ones. Mature trees offer some welcome relief from the blazing sun and the Belgian quarter has a series of genuinely old buildings to admire as it wasn’t badly damaged in the war. Later in the walk, it was chilling to note some information inlaid into the street of former inhabitants, saying where they were deported to in the war.

We ate lunch at Noa, and the salad I ordered came as a giant plate bursting with fresh leaves and herbs, quinoa, balsamic dressing and I added prawns in a chili sauce on the side. To say I was happy would be to downplay the concept of happiness. We head on to Aachener Weiher for a sit down overlooking a park and we sample one of the delights of the city, a Kolsch. It’s a 200ml beer that’s deeply refreshing and a reminder of how good the Germans are at this stuff. For dinner, we went to Café Feynsinn, which didn’t live up to Noa’s taste attack, but it’s a good restaurant playing many 80’s hits which is always a tick from me. My dinner was a pasta dish that was far nicer than Ryan’s veggie burger. As ever, our simple rule of no burgers or pizzas outside London was not applied and we paid the price. To round the evening off, we had cocktails at an outside bar, watching the world go by and being shocked at just how many songs Rihanna has done and how similar they are. Even the videos could be swapped over for one another.

Our second day was another beautiful one and we headed to Café Hommage for breakfast. It’s a typical hipster place, and instead of getting a number for your table, you choose a toy animal of your liking. We chose Bambi. While the breakfast was good, Nutella pancakes being an appropriate start to the day, the coffee was the real star of the show. Fortified with caffeine, we headed through the city and across the enormous bridge to Rheinpark to read and watch the world go by. There’s honestly little better than to sit in the shade reading a book. It’s relaxation of the purest kind.

Dragging ourselves off the grass, we got a train to Brühl, named after nobody’s favourite German actor, Daniel Brühl and to Augustsburg Castle which is a beautiful example of rococo architecture and is set within meticulously manicured grounds open to the public. Built in 1725, it has a staircase so grand that you’ll leave wondering if you can pull it off in your semi. Once a seat of power when Bonn was the capital of West Germany, dignitaries would gather on the staircase for a photo op. It has the ostentatious look that a certain president would admire greatly. Ready to take endless photos, we were told this was strictly forbidden and you could only go through the building in a guided tour, in German.

Headset on, and catching the odd bit of German, I learned some nuggets of information about the castle. In a state room is a beautiful stove in the corner of the room, which has no opening to feed it fuel. Behind the stove is a corridor where workers would shovel coal in lest the poshos have to witness how heat works. Other stories we were told marked the inhabitants to be real pieces of work. Sometimes the leader had a banquet all to himself, with the locals watching from a gallery upstairs, observing and smelling the feast below. He was on record as saying they loved this.

While we didn’t have the funds to antagonise people in the manner of the obnoxiously wealthy, we did manage to feast later in the evening at WALLCZKA, where we somehow bagged a table with a reserved sign on. I guess my German is that good. WALLCZKA is in the Neuehrenfeld district, a 15 minute journey from the centre of Cologne but it was worth it as the food was a total triumph. The burrata with chimichurri was bright and zesty, the duck salad was equally fresh but for me, the courgette kofta in a tomato and coconut sauce was a knock-out. To finish the night off, we head to Little Link cocktail bar and expect good things as the website proclaims “we are excellent” and I can’t disagree. The staff are friendly, they know their stuff and they understand their demographic when a cocktail with a film theme comes in a bag stuffed with popcorn.

After a great two days, it’s time to leave Cologne, but not before a quick reminder of what happened in WW2. The city was devastated with 37,000 tonnes of explosives dropped by the RAF, in 262 air raids. One particular raid struck me; over 1000 bombers attacked the city so that Bomber Command could get a propaganda win. They bombed the city for 90 minutes with the aim to cause so much damage that the fire brigade would be overwhelmed. Sometimes war just feels like statistics that are so overwhelming it’s pointless to really think about what these numbers mean. I thought it easier to think about this; in total the Luftwaffe dropped 40,000 tonnes of bombs on the UK in the war. Cologne was essentially dismantled from the air.