sachsen - saxony

these tiny details make meissen porcelain so famous, and so expensive

the frauenkirche in dresden, being rebuilt one salvaged stone at a time

yesterday dan and i continued our tourism by going to the town of meissen and dresden, just 2 hours south of berlin.

meissen is famous for its porcelain. interesting fact: august the strong, king of poland (and the saxony region of modern germany) at the dawn of the 18th century, locked an alchemist in a castle until he came up with a way to make gold from cheaper metals. the alchemist had some time on his hands, so he started to experiment with a way to make porcelain. when he succeeded he informed the king of his discovery. vain king that he was, august realized that by being the first european maker of porcelain (until this time it was only ever made in asia), he would be famous. fame was as good as gold to the king, and porcelain proved to be almost as profitable so he let the alchemist out of jail and gave him a castle to start a porcelain factory.

the factory is no longer in the castle where it began, and it is no longer a heavily guarded secret. yesterday, in fact, we happened to stumble upon the "tag der öffnen tür" - day of the open door - an open house in which visitors can stand right next to the individuals painting painstakingly intricate details, kids can make their own meissen creation, and you can wander into the kiln room for a talk on why 1400 degrees celsius is perfect for porcelain.

we wandered the campus, i spoke my "baby deutsch" with some of the workers, we tried some local elbewine, and went to the museum. i loved it, dan was bored silly. let's face it, dan around priceless porcelain is an especially bad idea, but we managed to leave without breaking anything. we also managed to leave without buying anything. even though there were sales we still couldn't afford anything.

by then it was 4pm. we were tired and hungry. not anxious to try our luck at the meissen restaurant, where everything is served on the famous porcelain, we headed to dresden. the museums would all be closing, but at least we'd find somewhere less stressful to eat. i wouldn't say the walk through the neustadt area of dresden was any less stressful for me. by "cool bohemian part of town" our guidebook clearly meant "dirty and scary." but the restaurant we found was awesome. we felt renewed so we decided to go for a walk down to the altstadt area. unfortunately, just as we got going it started pouring.

we soldiered on through the rain. while much of dresden was leveled in the air raids of 1945, many important buildings in the altstadt area managed to survive. we saw the semperoper, where strauss, von weber, and local boy richard wagner debuted many of their operas. we walked past the schloss, the rain stopped, and i endured a new torrent of schloss jokes from dan. and we saw the frauenkirche - a church which was destroyed by bombs but is being lovingly reconstructed, placing the salvageable stones into their original spots on the facade.

as we drove away from dresden, the stormy weather cleared and we were treated to an amazing sunset and vibrant full rainbow. bopping to the middle class rock of fountains of wayne, we smiled all the way back to berlin.