(Monday, Sept. 7, Dresden) Jet lag and pedal-to-the-metal touring over the past few days finally caught up with us in Dresden: We didn’t fall out of the sack on Monday until nearly 10 am and by the time we left the apartment it was questionable whether we could still get breakfast anywhere or would have to skip a meal and go directly to lunch.
The Frauenkirche platz is surrounded by buildings with 18th century facades, as well as some very modern structures. One of these newer buildings houses a fairly high-end, multi-level, shopping galleria. Lucky for us, a fine konditorei on the lower level was still well-stocked with pastries. As we greedily stuffed our faces, we walked a big guy wearing whose head was shaved into a close cropped “do” with a higher wedge down the middle patiently create master works of tasty art. Maybe he learned to be a pastry chef in a German prison while serving a sentence for going “GBH” (great bodily harm) to someone in a bar fight; his appearance certainly suggested that possibility.
After sating our appetites, we strolled through the arcade. At the Meissen china outlet, thirty-year porcelain painting artist Annette deftly added a rose to the inside of a teacup, a project she could finish in an hour. Then we browsed through Stracoland, named for a little elfin looking character named Straco, the logo for the company that makes little wooden figurines, and other wooden candelabra-type decorations, and other ornaments popular at Christmas, leaving a small fortune behind to pay for the goods we purchased here for shipment home.
After wolfing down “Hot Dogs” as we sped across this part of town, we arrived just in the nick of time to catch the once-a-day English language tour of the local opera house. Unfortunately for composer Richard Wagner and the buildings architect, Semper, they backed the wrong side in an 1849 and the king wanted to have their guts for garters, or their head on a pike. Wagner fled to Switzerland, and Semper made tracks for London where he was forced to work on much more menial projects.
Later in the afternoon, we went through the many rooms that make up “The Green Vault”, a storehouse of treasures assembled by King Augustus the Strong. Although many of the gold and silver pieces from the king’s original collection were melted down and used to finance other endeavors, and that Residenzschloss royal palace containing the vault was damaged during WWII, the jewels and expensive tableware that are left would easily tempt an enterprising thief to devise a scheme to bypass the vault’s security measure and make off with the loot.
