The Weekend

Very short report today. I went to Dresden on Saturday. Three other teachers and I shared a special "Gutes Wochenende" ticket which got me the 3 hours to Dresden and back for around 10 dollars. Yippee. Dresden was a bit creepy. The Old part of town felt a bit like a Tim Burton set-- lots of heavy,dark buildings (from the fire storms and years of air pollution)packed with people-- mostly speaking German and Russian, it seemed, although our train on the way home was crammed with Americans. Anyway, it's hard to ignore the aweful history of Dresden and maybe that was why it seemed creepy to me. I went over the bridge to the so called "Neu Stadt" which didn't get as much bombing so oddly the new city looked somewhat older than the old city in parts. Here are some photos.
Then yesterday Erika, her sister Elke and I took a bike trip to nearby Woerlitz. We biked about 2 hours there, walked around the extremely extensive gardens with statues and follies-- temples of Venus and Goethe and gothic mini-houses and little bridges and rope ferries and so on, had lunch in a Gasthaus and then home 2 hours. I was really stretching my knowledge of grain on the way home. Which fields were barley? Which were wheat? Which were rapeseed? rye? Turnips? (OK-- not a grain) and then came the quiz, which I failed miserably and had to be re-educated. Now as I'm posting the pictures I can't remember. Must review my notes.