Saturday, December 17, 2005

A Grand Tour Part 9 - Prague via Dresden

Our Eastern Europe Tour was about to enter its final stage as we left Berlin behind and headed for Prague. This is a city so many people have spoken about and we were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves with some anticipation. But first, we were treated for a few hours stopover in another much-talked about city, the city of Dresden which had suffered so severely at the end World War II. This is also, of course, the area of very fine china, and particularly figurines. We had a look at Dresden porcelain, but stopped at looking only. The prices were quite prohibitive for us.
It was interesting to observe the ongoing reconstruction of the old city of Dresden with much still to be done. At the time we didn't realise that the Frauenkirch was close to completing its massive and costly reconstruction. The cathedral was rededicated shortly after our return to Australia.
Let us leave you with a couple of pics of this city and, of course, our enjoyment of the company of fellows travellers:


Dresden goes back a long time, as this mural depicts:
The reconstructed Frauenkirch (The Church of Our Lady):
Our drive from Dresden to Prague was uneventful except for a long delay at the border. Our driver was told he was up for a considerable fine because the paperwork in one spot not state the number of passengers on board. The fact that it was a repeated statistic did not stop the bureaucrats wanting to make things very uncomfortable for him and delayed us for a long time. But, we finally we got back on the road and finally arrived in Prague.

No comments: