Dresden

My final stop on the Germany trip was Dresden. My mom and sister were supposed to travel with me before heading off to other places in Europe, but they had to change their plans because of my Grandma’s funeral, and the switch in flights left them heading home before the Dresden leg. That meant I was all alone in the city and could slow down my pace a bit. I’d also done no planning for this leg of the trip, so I wasn’t feeling anxiety to “hit everything I was supposed to see”, since I didn’t even know what I was supposed to see until after I dropped my baggage at the hotel.

I woke early and left the hostel in Munich, making my way to the airport and catching an early flight to Dresden. It was only an hour-long flight, so I picked up my bags, took the train to the city, navigated on a tram to a main plaza, and walked to drop off my bags at the hotel all before 10 AM. I waited a bit, looking up the top sights in Dresden and trying to recall my friend Mark and his family’s suggestions for the city. At 10, I bought a map from the tourist office that had just opened, then started my tour of the city.

I was only staying in Dresden for two days, and I had zero plans going in, but I was located in a very central location right next to one of the main plazas. It made it very easy to hit a lot of the highlights with very little effort. I stayed in the old town, or Alstadt, area of Dresden.

My mom and sister had visited Vienna earlier on the trip, and I’d chosen to forgo that part of the trip because of my feelings of disappointment around the last time I’d visited Vienna. But Dresden was everything I’d wished Vienna was the first time I visited, so I didn’t feel like I missed out by not touring Vienna with them. If anything, I felt super satisfied that I’d gotten what I wanted out of Vienna, the culture, the beauty, the history of the royal family, in this other city.

The first stop was the Furstenzug, the “Procession of Princes” in English, a porcelain wall depicting the rulers of Saxony, the German State in which Dresden is located. It is the largest porcelain piece of artwork in the world.

From there, I walked around the old town area, seeing the external architecture of the opera house, various churches, and public buildings. After getting my fill of aimless wandering, I entered the Royal Palace shortly before 11.

The Royal Palace is a former residence of the Renaissance kings of Saxony that has since been turned into a museum. I bought a comprehensive ticket that allowed me to see both the exhibitions within the museum and the treasury (called the Historic Green Vault), containing the largest collections of treasure in Europe. The bulk of the collection was purchased by Augustus the Strong, with his son Augustus III adding to the collection after his death.

I was allowed to enter the Historic Green Vault with a timed ticket for 11:15. Only a limited number of tickets are sold each day, and entrance to the vault is appropriately monitored for such a priceless collection, especially considering their history.

The Historic Green Vault was subject to a heist in 2019, and they still haven’t gotten some of their jewels back. Because of this recent historical development, they had information plaques detailing the heist and the lost jewels around the jewel rooms, which I thought was a great touch and a wonderful approach to addressing a historic loss.

There were no pictures of the jewels, but I did buy postcards displaying some of the collection so I could show you!

After the Historic Green Vault, it was lunch time, so at 1 PM I headed over into the palace’s cafe for lunch. I was excited that they were offering a tarte flambee, a flatbread-type meal that I was introduced to during my two-week trip to Strasbourg in high school. I grabbed a wine with the bacon, cheese, and onion flatbread and enjoyed a meal as I planned out what to do next.

The museum closed at 5, and I took almost the entire remainder of the opening hours to explore the rest of the museum. I saw the collection of royal clothing, the armory, the state apartments, the firearm gallery, and the New Green Vault (treasury with more recent jewels).

After seeing all I wanted to at the museum, I wandered through the giftshop/bookstore. I ended up buying Slaughterhouse Five as part of the new collection I’ve been cultivating of books written in or about the city I’m in bought on my trip to that city. I hadn’t realized Slaughterhouse Five was about Dresden until wandering through the bookstore, and it had been on my reading list for a long time, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

It being late afternoon, I continued with a small amount of wandering before dinner.

I visited the Frauenkirch, one of the most recognizable churches in Dresden, and a near-complete reconstruction since its destruction in the bombing of the city in 1945. After leaving the chruch, I took in some sights of the plaza on which the Fraunkirch was located.

My friend Mark and his family had just come from Dresden when we met up in Munich, and they’d told us about a nice fall market (in the vein of a Christkindlmarkt) in the old town of the city. I wandered over there, partaking in some glughwein and brats for dinner.

From there, I took a sunset walk back through the fantastic architecture, stumbling onto the Zwiger Palace. I realized that the Zwiger Palace also had multiple museums inside it, and since I’d had such a good time in the Royal Palace that I resolved to visit those museums the next day. I also spent a bit of time walking along the river. The Elbe runs through the middle of Dresden, and I enjoyed the various bridges I passed.

The next morning, I finally got a chance to sleep in. I grabbed some breakfast from a cafe as I wandered around farther into old town. I also stepped into a church off the plaza I’d visited the last night.

I hopped into the Chruch of the Cross after finishing my pastry before walking to the very edge of the old town. I also stepped into the Dresden Cathedral, the catholic cathedral of the city.

The second day was primarily dedicated to the museums of the Zwinger Palace, most of which opened at 11. After a bit of confusion trying to find the entrances to each of the museums, I visited first the picture gallery, then the Museum of Mathematics and Physics, and finally the Porcelain collection.

The picture gallery hosts paintings from the 15th-18th centuries, including German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Flemish works. It also hosts Egyptian pieces, including mummies. This collection, like the one in the Royal Palace, was primarily built by Augustus the Strong and his son. There were paintings by van Eyck, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and the most famous painting of Dresden by Bernardo Bellotto.

After that museum, it was lunch time, and I headed back to one of the more populated squares to grab a quick bite to eat before returning to the complex.

I visited the Museum of Mathematics and Physics first, seeing rooms of globes, clocks, astrolobes, and other early scientific instruments.

Last was the museum of Porcelain, also part of Augustus’s collection. It was originally housed in the Dutch/Japanese Palace on the other side of the river. It hosted multiple porcelain pieces, many of which are from East Asia, as well as pieces of Meissen porcelain, which was a German attempt to copy Far East Porcelain and financed by Augustus the Strong.

Although the Japanese Palace was closed on that day, after a walk around the rooftops of the galleries, I decided to cross the river and see the external architecture of the other side of the Elbe.

I walked along the river, getting to see one of the most famous views of the city. I made way to the Japanese Palace and walked around the exterior. I then walked toward Albertplatz before turning back. I walked down the center sidewalk of the pedestrian boulevard, wandered into a church, and turned back down the street to walk along a bit more of the river before crossing back over the bridge.

I walked around the Brühlscher Garten, a garden terrace overlooking the Elbe.

I walked back through the old town before heading to my hotel. I packed a bit, since I was heading out early the next morning. I then headed out to dinner. I went to a bar and got one last beer, sausage, and pretzel. I caught the sunset on the walk back and then finished packing before writing the rest of my first blog post and heading to bed.

The next morning, I woke around 3:50 for a 6 am flight from Dresden to Munich, where I would catch my 11 AM flight back to the U.S. I hadn’t booked the flights together, so I would have to grab my checked luggage, recheck it, and then go back through security in Munich.

I grabbed my luggage, dropped my key at the front desk because there was no one there, and called a cab. The cab arrived and I headed out.

I was about 10 minutes into the 30 minute cab ride, counting to make sure I had enough euros left in case he would only take cash, when I suddenly realized I had left my passport locked in the hotel room’s safe. Traditionally, I’ve just worn my passport on my moneybelt for the entire time I’m traveling abroad. However, as my international flights have shifted from weekend travel from my European home base into week-plus long trips, I’ve had to get more comfortable with the fact that sometimes it’s better and more realistic to have my documents locked safely away than my moneybelt getting sweaty and being uncomfortable for 10 days straight. So, on this solo part of the trip, I’d decided to lock the passport away, as I’ve recently been doing (in all countries where that is legal). But in the packing of the last night, the opening every drawer before heading out, the double and triple checking of the bathroom and bedsheets and piles of towels, I’d forgotten the passport I’d need for both legs of the flight.

This has NEVER happened to me before, so a 4:10 AM realization in a taxi with a man who primarily spoke German was not the best mental health space I’d ever been in. I asked him to turn back, explaining that I had forgotten the passport. He understood and drove me back to the hotel. I tried to pay him when I was getting out of the taxi, but he insisted on waiting for me. I then had to buzz myself into the hotel, since it was still early enough that the doors were locked. I managed to be buzzed in, but the hotel staff was not at the desk when I got in, so I had to ring the bell to summon her. I explained I’d left the passport in the room and had already turned in the key. She returned the key to me and remarked that it had confused her. Then, I quite literally RAN down the hallway to the room. I got the passport and secured it back where it belonged, safely around my neck. I checked to see if I had any more Euros, but I didn’t. I asked a different staff member who was cleaning if there was an ATM around and open in the hotel (since Google Maps said in the car that there was), but she told me it wasn’t open. So I had to go check with the taxi driver, who had waited at this point over 10 minutes for me, if he accepted credit cards. He did, so I was set. I hopped back into the taxi and started the drive, arriving shortly after 5 AM. I paid the driver the cost of the ride (far less than I anticipated, considering the wait) and gave him all my remaining cash as a tip. Then I headed into the airport. I checked my bag, went through security. I had the chance to go to the bathroom before the plane loaded. After we took off, I caught the sunrise on the hour-long flight back to Munich.

We arrived in Munich just after 7AM, and I had deplaned, grabbed my luggage, and rechecked it by 8 AM. I went through security and grabbed some food, eating it before I had to go through the first of two security lanes for international flights. In the international flights section of the airport, I grabbed some souvenirs, some more drinks, and used the bathroom. Right around 9, I went through the second of the two gate checks. I spent the remaining two hours before boarding, charging my various devices for the roughly 10-hour flight. I did some homework, continued to work on my blog posts, and went to the bathroom once, and the time flew by. Before I knew it, I had boarded the plane and was on the way back to Chicago, arriving shortly after 2 PM and having my mom pick me up and drive me home, but not before grabbing dinner. We caught up on the parts of the trip she missed that she’d have to go back to, and we also talked about the plans for my grandma’s funeral, which she’d had to change her plans for.

Overall, I had a great time, especially since this was the first time I’d travelled with this additional group of people. I checked one of those “you have to do it once in your lifetime” events. AND I made it home in time to attend my grandma’s funeral.

The rest of 2025 contains a lot of travel for me, but it’s primarily conference and school travel. Still, I’m thinking about where I want to head next and anticipating next year’s locations already. Stay tuned!