Dresden and Radebeul

While my dad was in Berlin, in between being in Sweden and flying home, we decided to take a day trip to Dresden. Yet again we used the "Schones Wochenende" ticket, which got us both there and back for 35 euros on the regional trains. As we saw when we were on our way, most of the people going to Dresden were tourists taking a day trip from Berlin.


[Dad outside the Radebeul Ost train station, the adventure begins]

As we were reading the Lonely Planet guidebook entry about Dresden, they mentioned a suburb called "Radebeul" which was supposed to be know for its vineyards. Since we thought there wouldn't be that much to do in Dresden, we took a detour to see what Radebeul was like.


[Our rented bikes]

What first struck me about the town was how quiet it was. Not that I find Berlin particularly loud, but on a Saturday in Radebeul it was silent, not to mention the fact that all the stores closed at noon. We did manage to find a bike shop right by the train station where we rented two bikes for the day for 5 euros each. We planned to bike up to the vineyards and around Radebeul a bit.


[Vineyards]

We biked up the hill and went through a wonderful neighborhood with old houses and eventually got to a winery. Here they had a museum about the history of wine-making and the vineyard itself.


[Dad biking to the winery we found.]

The most interesting thing that I learned there was about how corks are made. They had a very interesting video about the whole process, which made it seem as if the cork should have been as valuable as the wine itself; a single cork could in the process of being made for 20 years or so. No wonder that so many corks these days are being made of synthetic material!


[The museum]

We were also tempted to sit at the cafe and have a bite to eat. But, they claimed they had no tables available inside (although there was no one there) and we did not want to sit outside when it started to rain. The prices also seemed higher than they needed to be at the vineyard, with a glass costing almost as much as a whole bottle in the museum shop. So we moved on.


[The staircase]

We walked up a very long staircase to the top of a ridge, which looked over the valley and Radebeul. We could see Dresden, and how the surrounding towns had melted together in the valley.


[Dad and I overlooking the valley]

Coming in on the train, we had also seen a very interesting building on the top of the ridge. Since we were there, we decided to check out exactly what it was. It turned out to be a restaurant and a wine/beer garden. We decided to take a little break with a great view of the valley. Dad had a wurst and a glass of wine to complete the vineyard experience.


[In the wine garden]

From there, we headed back down to the bike shop, turned in our bikes and decided it was time to move on to Dresden.


[Walking in to Dresden]

We got in to the main train station in Dresden and walked into the old part of town. But to get there, we had to walk through a new, developed walking street that had lots of stores and shops and contrasted sharply to quaint Radebeul. While in a bookstore, we saw a picture of what the street looked like about 10 years ago when it was still East Germany. Although it was by no means pretty today, it looked like a big improvement from the communist housing and concrete blocks.


[The Frauenkirche]

In the center of Dresden the atmosphere was very different, where they have tried to rebuild the old buildings as they were before World War II destruction.


[Mixture of old and new stones on the facade of the church]

There is no better example of this than the recently re-opened Frauenkirche. After WWII, it stood completely in ruins after the fire-bombing of Dresden. As the communists ruled East Germany, the church was somewhat rebuilt, but not completely. Since the fall of the wall, it has been completely re-done with a mix of original stones and new ones. Unfortunately, it was not open to the public when we passed by.


[Dad overlooking the Elbe]

From there we walked to the other side of the city, Neustadt, where we came across a wine festival. Apparently Rhineland-Westpfalz, the 'real' wine region of Germany, needed to show that it really had better, cheaper wine. The result was lots of local wineries setting up booths to promote their wines.


[The booths]

What Dad and I found particularly good was the free wine tasting that we came across. There was no limit to the amount of wine we could try, and we took advantage of that. We were even being served wine by the 'Wine Queen' of Rhineland-Westpfalz. We guessed that she won some sort of wine-related beauty pageant, but we weren't sure.


[Postcard of the Wine Queen and the Wine Queen herself]

After we finished our wine, it was time to head back to the train station to make sure that we caught the train going back to Berlin. It was very fun taking a day trip and getting out of the city. It is amazing how much you can see and how far you can go with a little weekend trip on a train.


[The train station in Neustadt Dresden; proof that Dad has been in Dresden... for 'research' on how Putin was in the KGB here during the DDR years]


[Dad and me, tasting wine. The obligatory self-portait of the blog]