We Have FURNITURE!

26 August 2010

One of the greatest inventions ever is probably the air mattress.  Its cool because you can fold it up and store it in a closest or cabinet, and then in 5 minutes, with the help of electricity, you have a full sized, fairly comfortable bed.  HOWEVER, air mattress are great for a few days.  Maybe even a week.  But after a while, they're too squishy and rubbery.  And after 5 weeks, you kind of feel like you've been stranded in the ocean on a raft for too long.  SO, I was EXTREMELY happy when our shipment came.  We now have furniture.  Including an uninflatable bed.  And a computer.  And the internet.  And art supplies.

The worst part about receiving the shipment was the guys that brought it.  They were all over 50 and chain smoked, which concerned me because I didn't want anyone breaking anything or having a heart attack while carrying our sofas up the stairs.  Also, they didn't speak any English.  Which I thought would be ok because I speak a little German.  BUT, they didn't speak German either.  Well, at least the German I know... they had a ridiculous Saxon accent (picture you don't know much English, and then you have to have a conversation with someone in the deep South).  Good thing I have a German speaking friend...

I love art supplies and computers!

Late Night Jazz

22 August 2010

An amazing building (and tourist attraction) in Dresden is the Semperoper. 

Usually, there are ballets, operas and orchestras playing there.  During the day you can also visit and take a tour of the inside.  As part of Stadtfest, they had a special jazz performance.  I play the saxophone, and Bob plays the trumpet, so we were really excited to go.  The Roy Hargrove quartet played, which was kind of ironic since they are from Texas...

Stadtfest

19 August 2010

One of the highlights of summer in Dresden for everyone (except probably the people who live here) is Stadtfest (literally, city festival).  Its a giant street fair that runs all the way from our apartment in Altstadt (old city) to Neustadt (new city).  Most of the street festival consists of small houses that sell food and drinks. One "hut" was roasting a pig and another had a whole ox!

There are also lots of street performers, concerts, artists, and of course people to look at.  One of the best things about Stadtfest was riding the giant Ferris Wheel.  It was also very expensive!  It cost 5€ per person!

It lasted the whole weekend, so of course, we had to take advantage of it!  We walked around Friday night until it closed, then took our folding chairs out on Saturday to sit and listen to a concert and walked around and saw the fireworks display on Saturday night.  Sunday we were pretty tired, but we managed to walk around for a few hours just to make sure we saw everything.

Street Performers and Eating outside

13 August 2010

Spider.  Ick.  But good for bug eating.

One of the best things about Dresden, which is also a great thing about Austin, is that there aren't really any bugs.  Well... let me rephrase that.  There aren't a lot of bugs in the city that fly around and bite you.  Like mosquitoes.  This is probably because there are these ginormous spiders here.  They live on the lights at night, especially in "Spider Tunnel" (aptly named).

So, to the point.  Almost every restaurant here has outdoor seating in the summer, which is really awesome.  Especially if you happen to sit at a location where street performers are around.  As we were eating pretzels with sußsenf (the best honey mustard ever), we were lucky enough to be entertained by some fire throwers.  Here are some pretty cool pictures of what they were doing.

Rain, rain, rain

From the bridge that crosses from Neustadt to Altstadt

07 August 2010

After a few days of thundershowers and heavy rain, the river that runs through Dresden flooded.  Dresden is a very low city so I guess this is not uncommon.  In fact, along this bridge is a monument to a flood that actually COVERED the bridge in 2002. 


You can see in the second picture that an entire road (plus sidewalk and benches) are covered. 

We decided to adventure along the river and had to skirt many flooded areas.

We walked the "Elbradweg" which is a bike path that runs along the river for many miles.  There were lots of people checking out the flood.  Normally, people don't swim in the Elbe because its considered to be dirty as it flows from the Czech Republic.  I guess flood days are an exception.

After a 4 mile walk, we ended up at a biergarten.  They're only open in the summer, so we had to take advantage of it.  I think the biergartens here are great because they have fantastic pretzels and playgrounds.  I wish I had a beer keg playhouse...

Open Air Concert

06 August 2010

Dresden is a really cool town in the summer.  There are always festivals or concerts on the weekends, and most nights they show movies on a big screen outside on the river (which would be even cooler if they weren't all in German).  Here is a photo of an open air concert we went to in front of the Frauenkirche.  We could have paid to sit in fancy seats outside, but we propped ourselves up against a building instead.  The singer wasn't very good, but he danced a lot and made funny faces, so we enjoyed ourselves.  Until it started pouring rain.  Note to self- always carry an umbrella.

Cats on Planes

Me.  and two cats.  only 7 hours in... and already exhausted!

28 July 2010

The day of the trip. 

I love cats.  They're great.  They are fun to play with and they're really cute when they sleep on your lap.  Traveling with cats, however, is a whole different ball game.  20+ hours in airports and on planes isn't fun anyway, but it was much less fun with two cats that REALLY didn't want to be anywhere except under a couch someplace.

Stage 1:  Trip to airport.  One cat is so upset it tears off a claw and starts bleeding.  Both cats howl uncontrollably.

Stage 2:  Austin to Chicago.  Both cats continue to howl, have frantic attacks of trying to claw out of the carriers every 5 minutes.  I have nervous breakdown and think about getting on a plane BACK to Austin from Chicago. 

Stage 3:  3 hour layover in Chicago.  After a 30 minute walk through the ENTIRE airport, cats calm down a bit for the first hour or so.  UNTIL we have to give them more sedatives.  Of course, in order to take your pet out of a carrier, you must leave the airport and then stand in line to go through security again.  OR you can cheat and find one of those family bathrooms... I chose option 2.  And of course, because things weren't difficult enough already, the family bathroom was ALL THE WAY BACK WHERE WE JUST CAME FROM!!!

Stage 4:  Chicago to Frankfurt.  Cats are exhausted from trip so far.  Me too.  We all cram into the tiny seats on the overseas flight and shove the cats under the seat.  We're in the very back of the plane.  I guess they didn't want the cats to bother EVERYBODY.  I felt bad for the people around us though.  BUT, things got better.  The cats slept for a while, which meant I could sleep too.  Good thing... trucking cats through and airport is tiring.

Stages 5-8:  Frankfurt layover, Frankfurt to Dresden, the car ride home.  We were all so tired from traveling at this point (it had been about 17 hours) that we were all half asleep.  The cats finally realized they weren't going to get out and were good on the plane.  Of course, upon arriving in  Dresden, we had no rental car (even though they were supposed to make a reservation for us) but after begging for an hour or so, we finally got in the car and drove home to our empty apartment where we all slept until dinner time.

NOT looking forward to doing it again on the way home.

Gotta Love Internet!

Since we just got our internet all hooked up last weekend and all our stuff arrived Wednesday, I'm just going to post everything we've done so far with a date at the top of the post to let you know when it happened.  I'm sure there's a really fancy way to "post-date" the posts so it looks like you really posted them earlier, but it probably takes a really long time to figure out and surprisingly, there's actually lots to do here, so I'll figure it out... eventually.

We Made It!!

We made it to Dresden!  It was a long 20 hours with very upset cats in very small carriers, but we arrived here in Dresden last Thursday morning.  We are now staying in our awesome apartment, but are still waiting for all of our stuff to arrive from Austin, which means, no computers, and no internet :( (also, no furniture or pots and pans... or lights...)  so I won't be updating much until my computer gets here at the end of August.  Right now, I'm sitting at one of two Starbucks in Dresden (next to our apartment) stealing their free internet.

So far, its great, though unfortunately I was sick all last week.  Must be the shock of cold weather and rain!  Feeling better now and off to enjoy a weekend in Dresden.

I miss everyone already, but I'm excited to post lots of pictures and tales of our adventure here soon!  Check back in a few weeks -  hopefully I'll have everything up and running.