26 May 2018, Saturday
I woke up this morning to unfamiliar surroundings. I found myself in a dorm room occupying the lower bunk of a double-decker bed. The floor was strewn with bags and shoes that I did not recognise. I looked around for mum and dad but only saw some strangers still snoozing away in the other beds. Then I remembered that mum and dad were already back home in Singapore and I was alone now.
After the momentary pang of sadness, excitement took over and I leapt out of bed with a spring in my step. I had a whole day ahead of me to explore Dresden and I could do whatever I wanted. That’s the benefit of being a solo traveller! I checked the weather forecast and it appeared to be a beautiful day ahead with sunny skies and temperatures ranging from 17 to 27 degrees Celsius. Perfect!
After having my breakfast in the hostel, I walked to Bahnhof Dresden-Neustadt to mail out some postcards to my family and close friends. As it was going to be a long trip, it wasn’t feasible to buy souvenirs for every single person and carry them in my backpack for the next two months, so I decided the next best thing was to send them a postcard with an overseas postage stamp as a memento. Anyway, I feel that postcards are more meaningful because it takes more time for me to write them, buy postage stamps and then find a post office or mailbox to drop them into. There’s much more thought and effort behind it.
With the first task completed, I proceeded to Nordbad at Louisenstraße 48, very near where Blue Note Club & Bar is located. Nordbad (click here) is Dresden’s oldest swimming pool, built in 1894. It is hidden in a backyard and the entrance is quite inconspicuous. Look out for the word “NORDBAD” above the entranceway. I arrived at 9:50am, 10 minutes before it opened. There are different opening hours for different days of the week, so check their website for details.
Admission to the pool is priced at €3 (S$4.88) for a 1-hour ticket, €4 (S$6.50) for a 2-hour ticket and €5 (S$8.10) for a Day ticket. This is unlike the swimming pools in Singapore, where there are no time limits and you can practically spend the whole day at the pool if you wish to, all for just S$1 (€0.62) on a weekday and S$1.30 (€0.80) on weekends. Public swimming pools in Singapore are really, really affordable.
Besides the pool, there is also a sauna at Nordbad. Use of the swimming pool is included with the entrance ticket to the sauna. It costs €9 (S$14.63) for a 2-hour ticket, €10 (S$16.25) for a 3-hour ticket and €11 (S$17.88) for a Day ticket. I wanted to try the sauna so I bought the 2-hour ticket.
Nordbad is an indoor swimming pool but it is a tiny one, measuring only 16 by 8 metres. The pool is set within a building with a high ceiling, like a warehouse, and there is a gallery on the second floor with loungers and seats overlooking the pool. I imagine it would be quite relaxing to sit up there, have a coffee and chit chat with your family or friends. It was a nice pool but way too small than what I am accustomed to. I completed a few laps but there were six other mostly elderly locals in the pool so it was not so conducive for me to swim laps. I stopped after 15 minutes and went to explore the sauna.
The interesting thing about the sauna is that it is mixed gender and you have to be fully naked. Germans are not shy about nudity. There were two wooden dry sauna rooms, a wet steam room and a Jacuzzi with warm water. I was quite amazed when I saw a mother entering the sauna room while leaving her baby in a carry cot just outside, where she could keep an eye on him through the glass window. Going to the sauna is a way of life for the locals, and I was glad that everyone around me were locals. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb, being the only foreigner there, but no one paid me extra attention.
While I was inside the sauna, I observed an interesting ritual taking place. About once every hour, a member of the staff would go into the sauna to add water to the coals and use a towel to circulate the rising steam, directing it at the people seated inside. It was like a performance of sorts. I also noticed that the sauna room had a nice scent.
When he added the water, I could really feel the temperature rising. And when he used the towel to fan the air towards us, it felt like being hit with a blast of hot air. This went on for around 10 to 15 minutes and it was really burning hot inside. The rest of the folks seemed to be enjoying it a lot though. Just when I felt I couldn’t take it any longer, it ended. I had never experienced something like this and it was amazing.
I later found out that the ritual is called Aufguss, which means “infusion” in German. You can read more about it by clicking here. Aufguss is a wellness/purification/entertainment ritual performed in the sauna by a person called an aufgussmeister, or Steam Master. It involves pouring water mixed with essential oils on the hot stones of the sauna stove. The water vaporises and spreads throughout the sauna, aided by the aufgussmeister’s rhythmic movements of the towel to create an intense and enjoyable multi-sensory experience.
Why aufguss came about is because of the need to replace the air inside the sauna. With the sauna being an enclosed space where people sweat a lot, there is a need to introduce fresh air from outside to re-oxygenate and rebalance the internal environment. It used to be done by opening the doors and windows of the sauna, but people later started pouring water on the hot stones to generate vapour and circulate the air by using a towel. This developed into adding essential oils to enhance the experience and it has now become a form of aromatherapy with a performance and entertainment aspect. When I paid €9 to use the sauna and the pool, I certainly didn’t expect to experience aufguss and this alone was worth the price of admission. I highly recommend trying it if you get the chance!
I also discovered that there was a sun-tanning area on the rooftop. The area was fenced with wooden panels on two of the three sides, providing some privacy, but there were still gaps between the panels and a few of the houses nearby could still look through. The other side was not covered by wooden panels but there was a low wall, so if someone was determined to peep, I’m sure he/she would still be able to do so very easily. There were proper deck beds here and many men and women were suntanning in the buff with their bits hanging out, while reading a book or a magazine like it’s the most normal thing to do. Nothing to look at here, just a regular Saturday morning!
As my entrance ticket was valid only for two hours, I left Nordbad at 12pm. However, you can stay beyond the allocated time by paying the next tariff fee upon leaving. I walked around Louisenstraße and popped in to two record stores here – Drop Out Records and ZentralOHRgan. I was glad to see many music lovers here digging through the crates and actually buying stuff. I didn’t buy any because it’ll be quite a burden to carry 12-inch vinyl records in a backpack for the rest of the trip.
As I made my way from Neustadt (New Town) to Altstadt (Old Town), I walked through Hauptstraße (Main Street), one of the main pedestrian streets in Dresden. It was a lovely, tree-lined avenue with shops on both sides and a garden in the middle.
For lunch, I decided to try out Nordsee after seeing it so many times in the past week. Nordsee is a German fast food chain specialising in seafood. I ordered a grilled fish and potatoes set meal for €8.78 (S$14.27). It had been a while since I had eaten fish. The food was okay, nothing spectacular about it.
After lunch, I crossed Augustusbrücke (Augustus Bridge) over the Elbe river into Altstadt. Through my hostel, I found out that there is a free walking tour of historical Dresden (Altstadt) that takes place every Saturday at 2pm. It just so happened to be Saturday today, which worked out perfectly for me. The meeting point for the tour was at the Martin Luther statue on Neumarkt (New Market), so I made my way over there.
As soon as I stepped into Altstadt, I was captivated by the beautiful architecture of the buildings here. I had not done much research on Dresden beforehand so I didn’t expect much, but the grandiosity of the Old Town blew me away. And unlike the Old Towns of Prague and Český Krumlov, it was much more spacious here and much less crowded. It didn’t feel over-commercialised and it was refreshing.
As I approached the Martin Luther statue, I couldn’t help but be awed by the imposing Frauenkirche Dresden (Church of our Lady), which stood behind it. The 91m-tall church dwarfed all the other buildings in the surrounding area and it was simply beautiful against the backdrop of blue sky and puffy white clouds.
Sitting at the base of the Martin Luther statue were two ladies with large, bright red umbrellas bearing the words “Free Tours Dresden”. I then knew that I was at the right place. At 2pm, all the participants gathered and we were split into two groups – an English group and a German group.
The guide who led our English group was a 26-year-old lady named Maria. She had been conducting this tour for the past five years, so she was very well-acquainted with the city and very knowledgeable. There were 18 of us in the group. One of the first things I learned from Maria was that Dresden was pronounced as “Drays-den” rather than “Dress-den”.
For the tour, Maria first introduced us to Frauenkirche Dresden, or Church of our Lady (click here). On 13 February 1945, the city of Dresden was attacked by the Allied forces with incendiary bombs during World War II. Most of the buildings in the city centre were destroyed by the bombings but the church still stood. However, after two days, intense heat from the fires caused one of the eight sandstone pillars inside the church to collapse, which then led to the massive dome weighing 12,000 tonnes to collapse as well.
The ruins of the church lay in a pile of rubble for over 40 years as a reminder of Dresden’s destruction and the horrors of war. Neither the Church in the State of Saxony nor the city of Dresden had the funds or the technical expertise to rebuild the church on their own. In 1966, the heap of ruins was officially declared a war memorial but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the rebuilding project started to take shape.
After a massive fundraising effort involving not just Germany but even ex-foes Britain and the United States, €180 million was raised and reconstruction officially began in 1994. Among the guiding principles were to rebuild the church using as much of its original structure substance as possible and in accordance with the original construction plans. Finally, in 2005, the rebuilding was complete.
In the end, about 45% of the original stone material was used in the rebuilt church. You can identify the old stones by their darker colour, as they were charred during the war and weathered over time. I found the rebuilding of the church incredibly moving, especially about Britain and the United States helping to fund the reconstruction 45 years after destroying it.
Maria then took us to Brühl’s Terrace, which was once part of Dresden’s fortifications but later rebuilt as a terrace when the fort was no longer required to protect the city. Also known as the “Balcony of Europe”, the terrace offered a nice view of the Elbe river. We then walked past the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden and saw its striking glass dome, which has been nicknamed “Lemon Squeezer”. Not hard to see why.
Maria then brought us to see the Fürstenzug, a large mural depicting a procession of the rulers of Saxony. Saxony is the tenth largest of Germany’s 16 states, and Dresden is the capital of Saxony. The Fürstenzug was originally a painted mural but it was replaced with approximately 23,000 porcelain tiles to make it weatherproof. The mural is 102m long and it is the largest porcelain artwork in the world. The mural only suffered minimal damage during the WWII bombings in 1945.
Just around the corner was Katholische Hofkirche, or Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, or simply, Dresden Cathedral. Like Frauenkirche Dresden, the cathedral was also badly damaged during WWII but it was restored much earlier, by the year 1962.
Right next to Katholische Hofkirche was Residenzschloss, or Dresden Castle. It used to be the royal palace of the Saxony rulers and it is now home to five museums.
At the time of writing this blog post (18 December 2019), the latest update is that one of the museums – the Green Vault – was broken into on the morning of 25 November 2019. Apparently, the thieves disabled the alarm system by cutting off its power supply, and stole a collection of historic diamond-encrusted jewels of immeasurable value. The brazen theft shocked the world as the stolen items were some of the world’s most valuable crown jewels and the thieves had managed to break in to the vault so easily. It is likely that the jewels will never be recovered as they are so recognisable that the criminals are probably going to break them up before selling the gems. It’s a tragedy of epic proportions.
The last stop of the tour was at Zwinger Dresden. The German word Zwinger is a medieval term referring to the part of a fortification between the outer and inner defensive walls. The fortress was later torn down and only the outer wall was conserved. Under Augustus II the Strong, Zwinger then became an orangery, exhibition gallery and festival arena.
Maria pointed out a unique feature of the clock tower at Zwinger – the white bells on each side of the clock are made of porcelain, or china. It is special because at the time, Dresden was the only other place outside of China that knew how to produce porcelain, and this is something that Dresden is very proud of. The pair of crossing swords above the clock is a mark of porcelain made in Dresden.
Maria also told us that the crown at the top of Crown Gate is Polish in design, because Augustus II the Strong was also the King of Poland, so he liked to flaunt his achievements. The Zwinger was also where Augustus II the Strong held his son’s wedding banquet for four weeks, essentially a month of non-stop partying! Wouldn’t have known these trivia if I had not joined this tour.
The tour ended at 3:30pm. It was a short and compact 1.5-hour tour that allowed me to have a better understanding of the city’s history and better appreciation of the buildings. Even though it was a free tour, guests were encouraged to tip whatever amount they felt the tour was worth, and I gave Maria €10. I enjoyed the tour a lot and made it a point to join more of such tours in the upcoming European cities that I would be visiting.
The tour provided a good overview of the historic buildings in the Old Town but we didn’t have much time to enter and explore fully, so I spent the rest of the afternoon revisiting them.
As I walked around, I began to hear music and I saw many vehicles adorned with rainbow-coloured balloons and flags driving around town. It was the Christopher Street Day procession taking place. Christopher Street Day is celebrated in Germany as a response to the Stonewall Riots that happened at Christopher Street in New York on 28 June 1969, triggered by police assaults against LGBT people at Stonewall Inn. It later became an international tradition to hold a demonstration for the rights of the LGBT community during the summer, and various countries around the world celebrate it as Pride Parade or Pride Week.
I also popped by Altmarkt-Galerie shopping mall for some window shopping. While at Rewe supermarket, I saw a machine after the checkout area that caught my eye. It looked like a recycling machine and I was curious to know how it worked, so I hung around and observed what the other people were doing.
How it works is that you insert a plastic or glass bottle into the slot, one bottle at a time. Or if you have multiple bottles, you can place them in a crate and insert the entire crate into a larger opening at the bottom of the machine. Once done, the machine will print out a voucher, which you can use to offset your next purchase at the supermarket. If you do not wish to buy anything, you can also choose to cash it out.
I was very amazed by it so I decided to recycle my Fanta orange bottle, and I received a voucher for €0.25 (S$0.41), which I cashed out immediately at the cashier. I paid €1.20 for the bottle of Fanta drink and I got €0.25 back, that’s a lot of money. Wow!
I later realised that the price of the bottle has actually been added to the retail price of the drink. So, by recycling the bottle at the machine, you are essentially getting back your deposit. If you choose not to do so, you are forgoing the deposit. In the short period of time I was there, I saw many people using the machine. I think it’s an excellent way to make people recycle!
At the time of writing this post (18 December 2019), the National Environment Agency (NEA) of Singapore and drink manufacturer F&N have recently rolled out the Recycle N Save programme (click here), which works on a similar premise. Currently, only 10 of these Reverse Vending Machines can be found at selected NTUC FairPrice supermarkets across Singapore. By March 2020, another 40 such machines will be introduced. However, instead of one voucher per bottle, for the Recycle N Save programme, you’ll need to recycle four plastic drink bottles or aluminium drink cans just to get a S$0.20 discount voucher. Compared to Dresden’s recycling programme, the financial incentive is much less.
I have tried using the Reverse Vending Machine in Singapore but most of the time, the machine is full and cannot accept any more bottles/cans. And because it requires four bottles/cans before I can redeem one voucher, I usually accumulate them (and make sure they’re in multiples of four) before making a trip down. That means my trip is wasted when the machine is full, and I have to carry them back.
Even in the miraculous event that the machine is not full, what makes it worse is that other people are carrying huge bags easily containing more than 50 bottles/cans. There is often a long line because users have to insert the bottles/cans one by one into the machine. By the time it reaches my turn, the machine is full. How frustrating! The demand simply cannot cope with the supply (or is it the other way around since it’s a reverse vending machine?).
Recycle N Save is a great initiative but it needs a lot of improvement. Perhaps Singapore can adopt the system used by Rewe, which allows users to insert a crate full of bottles at one go, helping to reduce the time needed. And most importantly, the Rewe machine is never full because it is not a standalone machine. It is directly connected to the processing centre at the supermarket, so all the bottles collected can be removed by a staff member immediately.
Anyway, back to Rewe supermarket at Dresden. I also noticed that not a single plastic bag was given out by the cashier, because 99% of the customers brought their own bags or haversacks. The remaining 1% just carried the purchased items in their hands, without requiring the use of bags. This shows that reducing plastic bag consumption at supermarkets CAN be done. As consumers, we just need to cultivate a habit of bringing our own bags when doing grocery shopping. Supermarkets should also stop giving out plastic bags unnecessarily. Charging for plastic bags will certainly help too. I really hope the day will come soon when Singapore can be as environmentally conscious as Dresden, in terms of recycling and reducing our usage of plastic bags.
For my last stop, I visited Centrum Galerie shopping mall, an even larger mall than Altmarkt-Galerie. It was very spacious and the shops here occupied large units. I saw a lot of people carrying Primark shopping bags so I decided to check it out. I have visited the store in London but not here in Germany. I found out that the plain T-shirts in Primark cost only €1.30 (S$2.11), which was ridiculously cheap! If Primark ever comes to Singapore, Topshop and Cotton On can prepare to close shop… Since everything was so cheap, I bought a cap for €2 (S$3.25).
For dinner, I had a McDonald’s double cheeseburger for €2.49 (S$4.05). I then went to the supermarket to buy a small pack of fresh milk and some price reduced pastries for tomorrow’s breakfast.
As I made my way across Augustusbrücke at about 8:45pm, the sun was just about to set. That’s the wonderful thing about summer in Europe. The days are long and the weather is so fine. I stood on the bridge to take in the beautiful moment before continuing my journey back to the hostel. It had been a very fulfilling day. I wasn’t expecting much but I enjoyed Dresden a lot!
