Days 13, 14, and 15: Tourism in Saxony

This weekend I took advantage of the opportunity to do some tourism around Saxony. On Friday I signed up for a trip organized by my German academy to Saxon Switzerland, a natural park that is 30 minutes by train from the center of Dresden. The trip was organized in groups, and each group would take a different path to meet up at the end in a small town (All roads lead to that town).

I, not knowing any German, chose the group by the method of "This one," and as Murphy's Law would have it, I got the one with the most difficult path. We had to climb up a bit of a mountain, then down, then up another mountain and then down... It was a very tiring walk, we had to walk through a forest and on very narrow paths carved into the rock and, to top it all off, it was very hot, although all the effort was worth it,

because from the top of these mountains you had views of the entire natural park and the Elbe Valley, incredible views...

The trip was made enjoyable because I was accompanied the whole time by a group of Chileans, with whom I joked the whole way. What I didn't like about the trip were the guides: they are students from the University of Dresden, our same age, whom the institute of advanced studies (where I study German) hires to accompany us on all activities. The guys, faced with a group of foreigners lost in a forest, reach an unimaginable power and act like know-it-alls, being proud that they know the way, and we have no idea (I'd like to see them in Gredos), and they treat us like children, saying things like: "don't climb on those rocks", "come on, don't fall behind", "don't sit on the train tracks"... But dimwits! Don't treat us like we're subnormal! Even if we don't know German, we know that a train can do a lot of "damage".

The next day, taking advantage of the fact that Juan's parents were in Dresden for tourism, I joined them and we went to see the city again. The good thing was that they visited the things I still had to see, like abandoned castles, and very beautiful houses that you have to walk half the city to see. We even went into the grounds of a five-star hotel-castle to see the views and the fancy cars there.

On Sunday we went to a nearby town called Meiβen, which has a beautiful cathedral, and many typical Saxon houses, what happened was that when we arrived by train, the whole street of the town was full of people, all this was due to the fact that they were at the wine festival [note Michelin guide: all of Dresden and its surroundings are in a valley especially protected from the wind, which makes it a good wine-growing area, especially for white wines], so there was a parade (which reminded me a little of the carnivals of Cebreros) in which all the wine growers' cooperatives paraded giving wine to those who watched the parade and among them were all the guilds of the city (bakers, butchers...), bands, cultural associations, skating clubs, gymnasts... come on! everyone in the town!.

The parade lasted three hours, but it went by quickly. We didn't bring a glass and couldn't drink wine, but a very strange lady (the typical social outcast, she reminded me of the boxer's mother in the movie "Million dollar baby") lent us her glass from time to time. After the parade we went to see the city and after eating the typical local products and tasting a good local beer, we went to Moritzburg, where there is a beautiful castle, which the kings of Saxony used as a hunting residence. There was a huge tent where there was a wedding fair and there were fashion shows of wedding dresses, many stands and limousines. After that we went home.

Oh! I had already said I would sneak into the works of the Hauptbahnhof station to take some pictures for you to see how destroyed it is. Yesterday I did it and here is the result of my incursion:

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