Settling in in Dresden

Apologies for the somewhat sub-par blog which I produced last week. Since then I have got to see more of Dresden besides the tram-routes and am very impressed by it all. As I said, I am living out in east Dresden at the end of tram line 4. Our house is right by the river Elbe, and there is a cycle lane along the Elbe all the way to the city centre. Unfortunately I have a very small girl’s bicycle which it is impossible to go fast on and the weather is also somewhat strange; generally there’s hot, beautiful sunshine until about 4 or 5 in the afternoon, then a massive thunderstorm, and then the weather stays overcast and drizzly for the rest of the evening, so I am wary about riding to work in case I have to go back through driving rain and haven’t been for as many bike rides as I’d want. The bicycle lane gives one a much better idea of the city than anything else. One rides through medows all the way, across the river there is the massive DDR era Fernsehturm near our house and then after it these beautiful palaces which were presumably built in the 18th/19th century. On my side across the meadows you can see the strata of the city. First of all there are the outer suburbs, which are a mixture of old and new houses where I live, then the inner suburbs, which consist of long 4-5 storey blocks of flats knocked up quick by the Russians after the war, which all seem to look exactly the same and go on for ever. Then the black spires of central Dresden appear over the rooves and trees, and the flats become taller, more handsome buildings built after reunification, before finally one passes under a pair of bridges (one of which has a fake sand beach by it, complete with parasols and a bar, for no particular reason), and arrives in the city centre, with a steam-boat wharf by the river and the fortress wall of the old town on the landward side, which has the art gallery and the curch spires rising above it and horse-drawn tourist carts sometimes sallying out of the gates. It’s all made far more beautiful by the sunshine and by the numerous Biergartens along the route. My favourite is the Trollgarten about a mile in from our house which serves delicious beer, sausages, icecream and also soljanka soup, which I love and have never seen outside Russia before, so I rather like breaking up the journey to fit in a beer and a soup.

I spent the whole of the last weekend doing very little and generally taking in the amazing sunshine, amazing beer and amazing food. I seem to be smoking and drinking far too much but this is due to all of the beer gardens rather than any particular desire to clog up the National Health Service back in Britain. I had been planning on going to Salzburg with the other Rise students but mislaid my Deutschebahn pass and was told that the trip out alone would go through the whole night and cost €100 with no bed, so declined the offer. In the end I’m so happy I just stayed because I got to recharge my batteries and rest my brain, which after my week-long burn around Europe, followed by the end of term festivities at Cambridge, followed by Glastonbury festival (where at one point I had to persuade a bunch of people on acid not to burn down my tent!), were beginning to go to pieces.

So much for the place, but what about the people? East Germany and east Germans are wonderfully quirky. You can still by Vita Cola in shops (which was brewed as the socialist answer to Coca Cola back in the Cold War and tastes suprisingly good) likewise Sreewald Gurken, which disappeared off the map in “Goodbye Lenin” have made a comeback, and everyone smokes f6 cigarettes with short filters which are another hangover from former east Germany. The local people are friendly, but the säxisch (saxon) dialect is pretty incomprehensible, which isn’t helping my decent but not particularly correct German get any better. Instead of counting “eins, zwei, drei” they say “ääns, zwo, drää” then instead of “zwanzig, dreizig, vierzig” they say “zwantsch, dräätsch, viertsch”. On top of this “nu” means “yes”, while “nüür” can mean “no”, so someone will say “nunu” to you, which sounds pretty much the same as “no no”, but actually means “yes yes”. Apparently when Obama visited they printed out a load of “Yes we can!” T-shirts, which instead of saying “ja, wir können!” said “nu, mir gönn!” which is correct in säxisch! Also I’ve heard ‘Bort, as in Abort for Toilette and mashed potato here is Kartoffelmus, rather than Kartoffelpüree which it is in the rest of Germany.

Oh well, off to Heidelberg first thing Thursday morning, so I am hoping that I can meet my fellow Risebloggers, and also hear people speaking proper German (although I’m sure that Dresdeners will insist that they speak proper German and that the Wessies don’t have a clue!).

Bis später!