Time for a real wurst

Ho hum. It's been an age and really I wasn't sure if I'd be bothering to wriet more. However, I reckoned that unless I do this then I am bound to forget what I've been doing and worse than that - I'll probably merge things so that I become convinced that things that were done weren't and vice versa. You can tell I am rambling, can't you? Anyway, I'm doing a bit of work and not bothering to be too involved in anything - i.e. keep the stress levels low and enjoy.

As ever, the holidays loomed large in our planning. Because we came so late we missed out on the winter break. But not to worry! Easter gave us the chance to travel and we decided to go to Dresden. Reasoning was thus: need good wurst, want good beer and really hanging out for decent coffe, chocolate and leberkase. And on top of that we were in need of a commuication fix! By that I mean that we wanted to go somewhere we understood and could be understood. So Germany it was.

Dresden is a lovely city. We had a hotel by the river and the view was great. Walking distamce to the old town and so much to see. We went to the Frauenkirche, the Zwinger, the Semper Oper - just guided tours not performances unfortunately. The reconstruction has been so perfectly done and the centre is clean, attractive and of course has heaps of places for a beer and a coffee etc.

We managed a trip on the river in a steam paddle boat - excellent commentary in German but that was the day it decided to rain and be really cold. It took me about two hours to defrost afterwards and I admit all I wanted to do was sit and drink heisse schokolade!

We were pretty sure that nothing would be open on Easter Sunday - how wrong could we be??? We went walking out towards the VW factory - and wow! It was open. Brilliant. This place is something else. It really is a totally transparent factory. They make the VW Phaeton here - and there's a restaurant, guided tours, you can wander about. Well of course we had to go round didn't we? For those of you with a car mind try this link:

http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/gmd.jsp?dok=&lang=&docid=&ap=

In contrast to the beautiful old biuldings baroque by the way - there were still the ugly attempts from the socialist realism era. What is it about those people? The heroic workers struggling against capitalism yet no one ever looks happy in the pictures. Shouldn't they all have been so contented that there would never have been any desire for change? The usual palace of culture was there with the wonderful mural! Not sure if the detail is there but you get the idea!

And now we are thinking about the May holiday and planning what to do and where to go for that. Possibly somewhere to cycle and/or walk - we'll see. And again I make no apologies for the possibility of sparse blogs! In this, our second stay in Krakow, there is obviously less to say.