26 April 2014

Reconnecting

My train is leaving later than I thought, so I have time to go back into Old Town and do a couple of things.  One is to find a gift for Anna, and the other is to get some chocolate for the trip.  The first one takes some time, for the places that sell what I’m wanting to be seem to be a bit (shady is not the right word) perhaps not all that trust-worthy.  I do find a nice store, however, and then it’s on to chocolate – cherries with alcohol in dark chocolate.  I check out of the hotel, which I actually enjoyed, and then walk a short distance to the train station.

A newer station has been built in front of the older station.  What has replaced it has all the soul of a mall, and none of the majesty of size or wonder.  The older station, however, which you can glimpse from the new one running under it, has what you expect from Prague – a bit of exoticism, statuary, size, and surprise.  My attention is fixed, in spite of all this delight, on the departure board, for my train is 10 minutes late, and they will not post a platform.  Finally, 5 minutes before EC174 pulls into the station, they announce the platform and a swarm of mostly Germans heads, like lemmings to the escalator (only one) that leads to platform 3.  A pleasant but insistent man greets me at the door of my car, grabs my baggage and loads it on the car, and now I am obligated to pay him something.  I give him all my spare Kc coinage.  Our car is quiet.  A gay French couple, another Czech couple (straight), and I complete the retinue.  So it is a quiet ride, a reverse of what I experienced last Tuesday.    (The French couple do provide a bit of excitement when the police board the train right after the Czech border and demand their passports.) This time, however, the luminous mist, and the fresh green, and the rainbow are all gone.  It is now just a matter of getting from here to there.

The Dresden Train Station seems cleaner and more inviting than last I saw it.  Arthur isn’t there, and there are no text messages from him.  So I sit down at a Wiener Feinbacker and have a Himbeer Schnitt (delicious) and a water.  Finally a call, Arthur is at the Hotel.  Judging from the map it is a short walk – but there I would be wrong.  It is several blocks down a zentrum mall – so it is dodging slowly moving people who happen to be shopping.  I make navigational errors, and finally by Kreutzkirche, I resort to using a map on my phone, see my error and make it over to our Hotel.  And there is Arthur, patiently waiting in the lobby.

We check into our room, a little tiny, so Arthur negotiates a larger one.  We open the windows, and there is the Shauspielhause with the Zwinger right behind it.  Very convenient.

We unpack a bit, and then reconnoiter the city, seeing where all the places we wish to visit actually are.  There is a delightful building by Schinkel (der Schinkelwache) that has a little restaurant – so we have dinner and catch up.  We’re both tired, Arthur having had to make several connections between Schwäbischhall and here.  Time for bed.