Tuesday, 14 May 2024 Dresden and the Elbe Valley

Written 25 June 2024

That's the official title of the full-day excursion we did on Tuesday, "Desden and the Elbe Valley," but it's the longest shore excursion in the Viking inventory, and boy did it encompass a lot! I'm really glad we chose it, even though the alternatives included a two-hour tour of "The Working World of Volkswagen," which I was sorry to miss. Only one other couple signed up, so we did the whole day's tour is a 12-passenger van, just the four of us, a driver, and fabulous guide Gerold. The smaller vehicle let us go places the bigger buses couldn't on the regular "Panoramic" tour, and Gerold knew absolutely everying! We boarded the van at 8:45 am and didn't get back to the ship until 5:15 pm!

First on the agenda was a driving tour of Dresden city center that included, in addition to the usual route, trips through small back streets and alleyways where the big buses can't go. It started with a drive along a surviving segment of the old city wall (left) that brought us from the ship to the main square we had visited briefly on our way to Monday night's concert.

At the right, you can see the two towers of the church and the building behind it, both of which I misidentified in yesterday's entry! To the left of them is the Semperoper, the Opera House, called that because it was designed by a succession of three architects, all of the Semper family.

As I learned while trying to make sense, with Google's help, of my notes from that evening, the church across the square from the Opera is St. Trinity (not the Frauenkirche), the city's Catholic cathedral, more commonly called the "court church," and the building behind it, which I called town hall, is the old royal palace, also called Prague Castle. The latter is usually open to the public and is the site of the famous "green vault," where arguably the world's largest collection of treasure is kept (mainly jewelry and art), but it's our bad luck to be here on a Tuesday, when it's closed, so those on the regular panoramic tour, who would have visited it, will go to the Picture Gallery instead. Gerold mentioned that the old palace only reopened a couple of years ago, and restoration work is still going on.

We didn't stop at the square but continued our driving itinerary. As we passed the Opera, Gerold pointed out the old guard house behind it, which now functions as a ticket office. He also told us that the Zwinger is not just baroque but outright rococo and that it houses many collections other than the old masters picture gallery, like porcelain and automata. Here, at the left, once again we see blue pipes spidering across the landscape, on their way to dump water from construction sites (probably that muddy place in the middle of the Zwinger) into the river.

The imposing mosque-like structure in the right-hand photo is actually an old cigarette factory, the Yenidze. When it was built, 1907–1909, laws strictly prohibited building anything that would spoil the city's famous baroque skyline, so the builders constructed a barque "mosque," disguising its chimney as a minaret. It even has a stained glass dome. These days, it's an office building.

At the left here is the city's new glass and steel convention center. When plans were made for reconstruction of the city, 70% of residents wanted it all reconstructed in old style, to look just as it had; 30% wanted modern construction, so some modern stuff was included—the convention center is an example.

So far, we'd been driving east along the south bank of the river, but just past the convention center, we turned right across the river on the Marienbrücke bridge to look at the "Neustadt," the new town. From the bridge, I got this nice shot of the city center's skyline (marred by only one tower crane). At this point, the "mosque" was behind me, so it's not in this part of the skyline.

Once over the bridge, Gerold pointed out this little peach-colored building that, around 1850, was a police station but is now a private club and bar. Once a building is designated historic, he said, the outside is sacrosanct, but you can do anything you want with the interior.

At the right is the Japanese Palace. It's basically baroque, but the slightly swaybacked rooflines are supposed to evoke a Japanese pagoda. It was built in the 18th century (begun in 1714) to be a museum of far east porcelain, now it's the Ethnological Museum.

Working our way back west along the north bank of the river, Gerold showed us a couple of streets (e.g. Königstrasse) that weren't damaged during WWII, as well as many small streets with trompe-l'oeuil murals and back yards. He pointed out buildings constructed by Arturo Prisco, an Italian entrepreneur who moved here, married a local girl, and specialized in modernist architecture. He buildings are made in precast modules, then brough to the site, assembled, and clad in stones or tiles. Surprisingly, Gerold was a young civil engineer in the 1980's, and he worked on some of them.

As we drove, he also talked about the pronunciation of "Dresden." Elsewhere in Germany (and in English-speaking countries), the first "e" is pronounced "eh," but natives and other locals more often says "Draaaysden," with a drawn-out long "a." He also mentioned that when he's not guiding day tours, he works as a costumed "night watchman," guiding night-time walking tours of the city, equipped with a halberd and lantern. He is one of many, some of whom we saw as we walked through the square on our way to our concert. He even tries to speak in a historic German dialect, though who knows how that would come out on an English-speaking tour.

And here, back roughly opposite the Opera on the opposite bank, is the 1736 statue of the Golden Horseman, which Gerod described as the most important monument in Dresden. At the left, you can see the whole statue, though from a great distance. At the right, where I had the perfect shot framed as we drove by, this dratted smoked-fish truck leaped between us as I clicked the shutter.

From there, we turned right across the river again, this time by the Carolabrücke (the Carola Bridge; Carola was the wife of King Albert). In this view of the skyline, you can see (left to right, above the old city wall) the tall dome (with dormer windows in it) of the actual Frauenkirche and (in front of it), the lower, modern dome of the Academy of Fine Arts; the Renaissance Brühl's Terrace, nicknamed "the balcony of Europe"; the two tall towers of the old royal palace and St. Trinity; a bit of the Picture Gallery; the green-roofed Opera; and all the way to the right, the dome and fake minaret of the "mosque."

Back on the south bank, we drove past the new synagogue, which is modernist in design. It's very tall, and we drove by right next to it, so my photo (not shown here) captured basically a section of blank wall.

Near where we left the van to do a more through walking tour of the city center, I got this better shot of the dome of the Academy of Fine Arts. The dome is modernist, but the rest of the building is not.

The Academy of Fine Arts is near New Market Square, where a statue of Luther stands in the middle. I got this shot from the back, but there was no time to run around to the other side, as we were on our way to the Royal Stables.

Here's another side of the square, where the buildings are modern but not modernist. These are only four years old.

Under the square is a parking garage with space for 500 cars. The entrance is well hidden, and in the center is just one one little glass elevator leading down to it.

The facade of the Transport Museum (also on the New Market Square) was covered with scaffolding, but its magnificent double staircase was fully visible. The museum is only 17 years old, but the building was among the first to be restored, 1946–1955; it's the only one Gerold does not remember seeing in ruins. The city's archives survived WWII, and they contained thousands of photos, which could be used to guide the reconstruction of the city.

I'm pretty sure Gerold told us that where we could see a row of parked bicycles by the staircase, there used to be a tiny synagogue. Dresden has always had a Jewish community, but it was never very large and was apparently always peaceful, though he didn't mention what might have happened during WWII.

Walking from the market square back toward St. Trinity, we were approaching the back of the old royal palace, where the king's stables were. Here at the right is the courtyard of the stable building. The "long gallery" closing it off on the right was a gallery of weapons, built in 1580 or 1583 by Italians, who made it reminiscent of Florence. The arcade along it sheltered spectators when jousting matches were held in this long narrow courtyard. As I understand it, they didn't go at each other with lances but rather played riding games like jousting at suspended targets or catching suspended rings on their lances. A bunch of small houses were torn down to make the space for the gallery, but the ruling family at least purchased them before tearing them down.

Above the animal heads are the coats of arms of various towns in Saxony. And above that is a band of what looks like scratch art—I finally got the name right; it's called "sgraffito"—but this is not it. That frieze was just painted on to look like sgraffito.

The two black pillars at the far end (left) were made of what Gerold called "highest quality metal" and are still perfect; they were evacuated during the war.

To our left as we looked down the long axis was a large ramp used to lead horses up to the second level, where the carriages were kept. Near the bottom of it was a deep pool with a fountain in it that was used to wash the horses. They had their own bathtub! The white house behind the ramp was reconstructed only about 8 years ago.

Gerold said a romantic Christmas market is always held here in the courtyard. As you can see, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

The mural was commissioned, as a painting by Wilhelm Walther, in 1871 and finished in 1876 to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the dynasty in 1889. Unfortunately, the painting began to fade, so beginning in 1904 it was copied in Meissen porcelain tiles. Each tile is a little more than eight inches square, and the mural (which is 10 m tall and 102 m long) is made up of 23,000 of them. The tiles were made in Meissen, numbered, and shipped to Dresden, where workers took a whole year to put it together on the wall. The tiles go all the way up to the roofline, where (although it's hard to see in this photo), the top ones are painted to resemble hooks from which the whole mural appears to hang like a tapestry on the wall. You can easily make out the fringe of tassels along the bottom.

The king who presided over production of the tile version could not know that he would be the last king of Saxony, ruling only until 1918. So only two members of the succession are missing: the first, Heinrich I von Eilenburg (c. 1089), and the last Frederick Augustus III, who ruled from 1904 to 1918. In addition to the rulers, 59 scientists, artisans, craftsmen, children, and farmers are portrayed, along with heralds and men at arms. The only female figure is a little girl near the far end of the mural (I got photos of that end later).

But the most amazing thing is that the whole mural survived the bombing of Dresden intact. No bomb happened to explode in the narrow street where it's located, so it suffered no damage from flying debris, and because those Meissen tiles were originally fired at 1400°C, they, like Sam McGee, sat smiling in the heart of the furnace roar through the 1000°C firestorm that wrecked the rest of the city. And in addition, they protected the wall behind them, which remained standing and held the whole thing together!

Written 26 June 2024

Gerold told us more about the Frauenkirche. "Frauen" is the plural of "Frau," but it's also the genitive, which is why "Frauenkirche" means not "the women's church" but "church of our lady." Originally Frau only meant the virgin Mary; "Weibe" meant woman or wife. When the church became Lutheran, it kept the old name.

When the church was to be enlarged in the 18th century, George Bähr was chosen to be the architect. The citizens who raised the money for it wanted 1800 seats, but it could only be 60 m in diameter, and it had to be tall enough to compete with the Church of the Holy Cross and the Royal Palace. And they wanted it be all in sandstone.

Bähr designed an unconventionally tall tome, which came to be known as the "stone bell." Though critics had their doubts about its stability, it turned out to work just fine. But the stone church turned out to be heavier than the Eiffel Tower, 12,000 tons, and was too heavy for the existing substructure, so eight main pillars were added around the edges to support it.

Then, in 1945, everything burned. One of the pillars cracked and fell sideways, and the whole dome twisted and collapsed in spiral fashion. After the war, in East Germany, being Christian and attending services were not forbidden, but neither was the government interested in spend any money on religion, so nothing was restored.

After reunification, IBM provided the resources to model the collapse and reverse it, so they could put the same stones back in place. They even accounted for stones that had been removed for safety reasons. Once the money was raised (mainly through contributions, including a goodly amount from the British royal family), they were able to put it back together, using a high percentage of the original stones. Because some of the stones did have to be replaced, the building is now two-tone, but the new stone will darken with time to match old.

The church is on a high spot, because the original builders knew their stuff, so the 2002 floods only delayed reconstruction for about four days while clean water was pumped out from underneath.

More things we learned from Gerold while walking or riding between points of interest:

• Hand crafts: Dresden is known for are wood carving and wood turning. The nutcracker of the Nutcracker ballet came from here. Also lace making and Easter-egg decoration.
• Dresden is only 800 years old, and only a few tiny areas are left from those early times.
• The population is 170,000. Meissen used to be bigger than Dresden but is now much smaller.
• Dresden has become a world capital of semiconductor production, as well as production of small electronics in general.
• Meissen used to be a royal residence but lost that status in 1500, when Dresden replaced it. I think he said Meissen had no monastary, whereas Dresden has three and implied that that was part of the reason.
• Dresden's golden age was 1500 to 1800.
• Dresden the second-largest city in Saxony, after Leipzig. Figure skater Katarina Witt is from Chemnitz, the third largest.
• Viking runs cruises March through July; they skip August (water too low?), then they do a second season from September through December, including Christmas market cruises.
• The word Saxon or "Sachsen" derives from "seax" the name for a Viking short sword, which the fierce northern Germans carried adopted. We are in lower Saxony, because the name originated in the northern part. Before that this region was called Meissen.
• Saxony was originally a Margravate. A margrave was a boundary officer in charge of a little territory under a higher ranking person. The French version of the word is "marquis."
• As the slavs worked westward, they founded city states, but this far west, they were still only little groups, and they became part of the local population. A recognized minority of ca. 60,000 people still speak Wendish or Sorbian, Slavic languages.
• About 25 km² of the center of the city was pulverized by allied bombing in WWII, but much of the the outskirts escaped damage (the city is 32 km in longest dimension). The fires burned so hot that the actual number of victims will never be known, but estimates range up to 25,000. It wasn't a major strategic target, and some say the bombing was in revenge for bombing of Coventry, Liverpool, and London.
• The Dresden coat of arms shows a black lion rampant with vertical black stripes on the other side.
• In 1708, the secret of making porcelain was worked out here, but to keep it a secret, production was moved to nearby Meissen. Here, they speak of Meissen porcelain, but the official name in English is Dresden china.

And here we come to what most surprised me about Dresden: so much of it is black. And not even shiny black like obsidian or an even black like soot. It's blotchy black Now that may change with time as the new stone used in the reconstruction darkens, but I had always heard Dresden described as a "jewel" and "glittering," and I associated it with porcelain, so I expected more of it to be white, shiny, and reflective. To be covered with tiles. But it's not. So be warned. It's beautiful, but it's black.

Viking has an agreement with the Hilton hotel, which faces on the New Market square, so we were able to take a break in their lobby and use their restrooms before we piled into the van (shown here at the left, with our driver at the wheel and Gerold headed for the door) for the next leg of our tour.

We crossed the river again and turned right along the river bank (our next destination was north of the city). Very quickly we found ourselves in a vast greenspace, mostly meadows but with areas set aside for soccer fields and whatnot. It's called the Dresden Heath, and it's just 15–20 minutes from downtown by bicycle. Gerold pointed out the several "castles" that lined the ridge beyond it.

The left-hand photo is of Albrechtsberg Palace, built in 1854 for the younger brother of the king (presumably named Albrecht). I think Gerold said the brother had to leave the court because they didn't like his wife. It's now owned by the city and used as an event venue.

The two castles in the right-hand photo are Lingnerschloss (with the wine terraces in front) and Eckberg (with the crenelated towers). The former was built for the prince Albrecht's chamberlain, but after his death it was then purchased by a popular local inventory and philanthropist, Karl August Lingner. It's currently under restoration.

The castle with the crenelations was built by Johann Daniel Souchay, from Manchester. He wanted to spent his last years in Dresden, but he wanted to live in a Scottish-style castle, so he built one and lived there for 10 years before he died. It's now a privately owned hotel and restaurant. "Eckberg" means "corner of the hill," as it's built at the end of the ridge.

All three of the castles are larger and more ornate than my photos reveal.

On the other side of the heath, we drove by some very nice houses, like the one shown here at the right.

Here's another nice house.

The steeple at the right is the best shot I got of the Garrison Church of St. Martin. It was built at the end of the 19th century to serve a nearby military garrison. Gerold told us that, now, it alternates weeks between being Roman Catholic and Lutheran.

As a young man, 1985 to 1990, Vladimir Putin lived near here. He worked as one of the KGB's liaison officers to the Stasi secret police, using a cover identity as a translator. Gerold said we drove right by his apartment.

We also passed the Hellerau furniture-production plant. It was founded in 1898 and has been in produciton ever since. When it wasn't producing furniture for local sale, it was producing it for export under grovernments that needed more Western money. Its archives have been declared a "valuable cultural asset."

Gerold mentioned about there that we were only about 100 km from the Polish border to the east and that southest of us the border of the Czech Republic was only about 20 km away. East Germans were allowed to travel to Czechslovakia, but you could only change 20 marks per day, not enough to do anything with.

We also passed a microelectronics plant, part of the local microchip/semiconductor industry, but Gerold mentioned that a third source of employment is tourism. Demand for guides is high. He went back to civil engineering during the pandemic, but when he could, he went back to guiding.

Between the towns, we passed fields of raspberries and asparagus. As a boy, Gerold worked a few days a year cutting green asparagus for export to France; in Germany, they prefer white asparagus.

Finally, about 16 km north of Dresden, we came to the town of Mortizburg and Moritzburg castle. Here are distant and closer views of it, the latter with the other couple in our party in the foreground. As you can see, we could hardly complain, anywhere we went, about crowds of tourists.

The town and castle are up on a plateau, where the royal hunting land was. The area was marshy and rich in game. It has since been drained but is will relatively rich in game, including wild boar. Besides the castle, the town is famous for horse breeding and fish culture. A horseback rider passed us in the parking lot, and the ponds that surround the castle are part of the fish culture operation. The horses bred here are "warmbloods," Queen Elizabeth of England especially loved them.

Gerold explained that, although in English the difference between a pond and a lake is mainly one of size, in German, a pond is a manmade body of water and a lake is a naturally occurring one. These are quite large, so he referred to them as "lake-sized ponds." The fish-production operation uses a chain of these large ponds, each lower in altitude that the last. (Digging those ponds was how they drained the marshy areas; they are filled only by rain water.) The fish, mostly carp and tench, are grown in the ponds until they are large enough to harvest. At that time, the lowest pond in the chain is drained until the fish are concentrated, thrashing, in the center, and the fish are netted out. Next (immediately or later, depending on demand and fish size) the next pond up the chain is drained into the lowest so its fish can be harvested. When all the ponds have been emptied, the cycle can restart, and only one pond's worth of water has been lost. Carp is called "pond pig" and is eaten when Catholics can't eat meat.

Then in 1723, August II (The Strong, remember him? the golden horseman?) enlarged it into a complete baroque castle. He loved Venice, and since they were forever digging ponds around here, it's now on a man-made island surrounded by ponds with causeway entrances front and back. Just Google it for the magnificent aerial view. The Wettins (the former royal family, remember them?) still pay a nominal rent for apartments in the building. They're not the rulers any more, but there are people who keep track of these things, and it's easy to Google just which of them would be king if the monarchy were restored.

The building can't be heated. It was only in use from Easter to October and was closed up for the rest of the year. Even now, the museum closes in winter.

In the lobby was the petrified white antler of an an extinct stag. I should have gotten a photo of it, but it was only the beginning, because, among more ordinary collections, the castle houses one of the world's largest collections of antlers. The heads they are mounted on are carved wood, but the antlers are real. Only a fraction of the collection is shown here.

One room, the "monstrosities hall," is filled with only deformed antlers. Apparently the collection, normal and deformed, is actually of some scientific value.

The castle also houses the world's largest collection of painted leather wall coverings; well preserved because the place was closed up for so long and wasn't heated or ventilated.

The leather is kid and calf, and it came from and was painted in Italy and Flanders. The elaborate painted images in the left-hand photo were reserved for the royal apartments. The other rooms, like that at the right, were clad in leather painted in wall-paper-like repeating patterns. The soft leather was pressed into carved templates and held there until it hardened. Then gold and other colors were added, and the square panels were put together on the walls like tiles.

The blue and white porcelain stoves visible in these photos were for decoration only. Most rooms had them, but they were never functional, and all the chimneys on the castle's roofline are just ornamental.

The large bird in the right-hand photo, which I take to be a grouse of some sort, is made of silver. Silver mining made Saxony rich. The furniture in that room is 17th century.

Abruptly, as we walked along an upper corridor, we found ourselves on a balcony looking down into a church. The church was actually here, freestanding, before the castle was built and was incorporated into it. Augustus II was in line to be king of Poland, but he had to be Catholic to be eligible, so he converted. He risked a good deal, including revolution, to make this the Catholic court church, so far from the center of things. The porcelain in the church is 18th century and very valuable The painting behind the altar of the assumpton of the virgin is probably from the studio of Titian.The priest was addressing a group of people standing in the pews, but I don't think he was conducting a service—perhaps giving a tour or lecture.

The little balcony in the right-hand photo, opposite the pulpit (which is to the left of the priest), is the kettle-drum balcony, where Augustus's grandfather liked to play the tympani. A propos of what, I don't know.

Gerold told us the castle has 200 rooms. In each floor of each tower wer four suites of rooms, each consisting of a public room, a sleeping room, a room for servants, and a room for "necessary belongings."

The master suite was in the southeast corner, for more sunshine.

At the left here is the most beautiful chandelier in the building, presumed to be Murano glass.

At the right is Moritz himself, builder of the original hunting lodge.

Augustus the strong is supposed to have had many, many children (some say 365, but that's probably high), but he had only one legitimate son, who succeeded him as Augustus III the Weak. He couldn't have been all that weak, as he had 16 legitimate children. His wife was Maria Josepha of Hapsburg. She was in line to become empress of the Austro-Hungarian empire but, as a result of politicial jostling and maneuvering by their respective families, was displaced in that role by Maria Theresa. Maria Josepha could only marry Augustus III if she renounced the succession and converted to Catholicism. They were married in 1719, and she wasn't all that weak, either, since she's the one who bore those 16 children.

In her bedroom, one of the furnished rooms on the tour, are two Japanese porcelain vases, 350 years old, from Arita, which is now the sister city of Dresden.

One room was full of these Japanese lacquered chests. Gerold told us that the craftsmen who made then went to sea and worked on them there, far from shore, to be free of dust that could mar the layers of lacquer.

At the right, in the dining room (where the table was set with the famous Meissen "red dragon" pattern), was this pair of deer skulls. The two bucks fought, locked antlers, never managed to free themselves, and therefore died together.

In one of these furnished rooms, we finally discovered something that Gerold didn't know! He was talking about the European courts' fondness for exotic and tropical painting subjects and was showing me and the other lady in our group a painting of two monkeys (South American, I think) and an unmistakeble red bird. She and I said, more or less simultaneously, "That's a Northern Cardinal." Gerold's jaw dropped! "You know this bird?!" He swore that never, in all his years of showing people, including Americans, that painting had anyone ever professed to know what the bird was. I think he was a little disappointed to learn that it's not even tropical—we assured him that it's a common, year-round resident of both her temperate back yard and my warm-temperate one. He wrote the name down carefully, asked what the female looked like, whether they sang, etc., and promised to look it up.

The last thing we saw before leaving the castle was a room filled with truly bizarre "tapestries" embroidered with feathers. The feathers were not sewn on, as you might expect, but were used as the embroidery thread. Strange, and, to my eye, not that attractive.

On the way back to the van, he told us that a terribly sentimental but beloved movie called Three Gifts for Cinderella was shot at the castle and that many people came here to see the location. The IMDB doesn't turn up any hits on that title, but it does list Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973), about a Czech housemaid; probably just a translation glitch. I flipped through a bunch of the on-line stills from the latter and, yes, that's pretty clearly Moritzburg in the background of at least one of them.

And now for something completely different . . .

Back in the van, we were driven just a little over a kilometer back through the town to the local train station to catch an 8-km ride on a 29" narrow-gauge coal-powered steam train nicknamed "The Dachshund," shown here pulling into the station to pick us up. Actually, Gerold called it "the sausage-dog," but the German version of the name uses "dackel," dachshund.

The line was put into service in 1884 and has been running ever since (it will soon celebrate its 140th anniversary). Until a few years ago, it also served as the local school bus. Kids all along its 16-km route would catch it every morning for the ride to schools in towns larger than Moritzburg. It's northern terminus is Radeberg, known for its beer, the southern terminal is Radebeul, known as the home of Karl May, and Moritzburg is right at the midpoint. In Radebeul, it connects with "normal" trains to Dresden and beyond.

Since it stopped carrying school children (I didn't catch why), the schedule has been reduced. Now it runs just four times a day, mainly for tourists. We didn't have it entirely to ourselves—a group of young men chose to ride on the open car ahead of us. Our engineer was Kevin. Ordinarly, you have be to be 21 to be an engineer, but they've made an exception for him; he's only 20.

A few years ago, a movement started to close the line down because it burned coal, but the historically minded prevailed, pointing out that it was such a small operation that its contribution to air pollution was minuscule.

Most of the way, woods came right up to the tracks on both sides, but we were able to see into a few yards, like the two shown here.

At one point we passed a corral enclosing emus, presumably being farmed. They seemed interested in the train and came running toward us as we passed.

At a couple of places, the view widened out to reveal pasture (with a few cows), hayfields, and ponds, like the one shown at the left.

As we neared Radebeul Ost (i.e., Radebeul East), I got this shot of the other locomotive. Gerold called the two sister locomotives, dating from 1925–26, the "old ladies."

The name Radebeul, Gerold explained, is formed from "rade," which means pretty or beautiful, and "beul" which means bump or knoll, so the name means "beautiful bumps" or "pretty hills." the place is exactly halfway between Dresden and Meissen and is larger than the latter.

In Germany, it is mainly known as the home of writer Karl May (1842–1912). As a young man, he did some time for theft and educated himself from the prison library. He was very taken with stories about American Indians and proceeded to write several travel and adventure novels that romanticized them and their lives in a way that he considered flattering but that is now considered politically incorrect. The books were extremely popular and have been adapted for film, radio, the stage, and even comics. (Not all of them were about North America; he also wrote about other parts of the world.) Radebeul has a small museum devoted to him. Gerold told us that, when some actual native Americans were interviewed about May's work, they admitted to sort of liking it—it was good to be protrayed, for once, as the heros and as winning all their battles.

At the Radebeul terminus, we found our faithful van and driver waiting for us—the steam train is not the fastest way to cover those 8 km. We climbed aboard and were next driven to the Adolph Diesterweg Public Observatory. Radebeul is down on the flat area between the hills and the river, but the observatory, which is also a planetarium, is back up on the hills behind it. We weren't there to visit the observatory but to admire the view from its grounds. It's overlook is called "The Balcony."

At the left you can see the dome as we approached. At the right, you can see it from a different side as we walked past it. The sculpture is of two bronze figures with their heads tilted back to study the heavens; it's appropriately titled "The Stargazers."

The view was indeed sweeping,taking in a vast area of the Elbe Valley, as well as views of the hills and promontories we had visited in the Czech Republic. Just as we stepped up to the railing, a pair of actual peregrine falcons flew right across in front of us! Alas, I wasn't quick enough with the binoculars, let alone the camera . . .

At the left, angled southeast, you can see a soccer field in Radebeul. At the right, angled northwest you can see a body of water that I think is the Stausee Niederwartha (the Niederwartha Reservoir). According to Google maps, it has a windsurfing business on its shores. In addition, Gerold told us, it generates electricity. The reservoir is in two basins, an upper and a lower. By day, with excess solar electricity, they pump water from a lower one into the upper one; then by night, they drain it down again to run generators to produce electricity for the night.

The Elbe is in both photos, but mostly hidden behind buildings and vegetation.

Back down the hill again, in the town of Radebeul, we had a late lunch at the Old Apothecary. At the left is the view of its façade from our outdoor table.

At the right is its cellar, where the restrooms were located. The restrooms were entirely satisfactory, but I'm betting that cellar and the rest of the building weren't built yesterday.

The menu was prearranged, so we all at the same things. We started with salad. Gerold warned us that the current trend was not to salt salads or salad dressings, since some people try to avoid too much sodium. He was right—the salad definitely needed salt, which was provided in large shakers.

The salad was accompanied by bread, and each of us was served a bread plate bearing a slab of butter and a small ice-cream scoop of smaltz, pork again, which I have cut in half for the photo to reveal the pork cracklings stirred into it. It also needed salt.

The main course was sauerbraten (6 to 9 o'clock on my plate), accompanied by stewed red cabbage (3 to 6 o'clock), and kartoffleklösse (potato dumplings) (2 o'clock). The beef and cabbage were excellent, and the potato dumplings good. The inside of the dumplings was better than the surface, which was translucent and gummily glutinous from being boiled or steamed. The inside retained more of the texture of the cooked mashed potato and raw grated potato that are combined in such dumplings.

Dessert was a wonderful sort of cross between egg custard and lemon cheesecake. I would love to duplicate that at home; it most resembled a baked lemon pudding from Fanny Farmer. I looked up the restaurant's menu, and of the choices listed there, it can only be the "home-baked cake with whipped cream"—pretty darned vague.

After lunch, on the ride back to Dresden, Gerold talked about he local wines. (He had warned us to take advantage of the wine included with the lunch, since it's hard to find elsewhere.) Wine making was brought here from Burgundy 900 years ago by a bishop named Benno. According to Gerold, he was a good Christian and a good man, and he troubled to learn the local languages. Today, vineyards are state (not nationally) owned. A professor Müller crossed Madeleine Royal with Riesling to produce Müller-Thurgau, the vine mainly grown here now. It traditionally ripens on Mary Magdalen's day in July. Because of climate change, Gamay is now being introduced.

Wine making declined in the 19th century when Pylloxera swept Europe. By the time it was licked, the flat lands that had been vinyards had been developed, but on the slopes, vines could be replanted. Saxony now has fewer than 1400 acres of vinyards, and they are labor-intensive to work. The wine is good, but it isn't exported because the locals drink all of it or give it as gifts.

He also mentioned that nobody has bothered to dam the Elbe in the past, but that some dams have been built in response to the flooding of 2022.

On the way back into town, we passed this astonishing structure. I never got a chance to ask what it was, but from fragments of lettering on the buildings behind it, visible when the photo is blown up, I'm pretty sure it and the buildings behind it are the Sarrasani Circus (I love Google). It was world famous before WWII and was resident in Dresden. It moved to Argentina when Germany was divided, but it's apparently back now. (According to a small sign to the left of the conical tent, it offers dinner shows.)

Then we were back in the middle of Dresden, where King Johann bestrides his bronze horse, and where we resumed our walking tour. According to Gerold, Johann was a younger brother and never expected to be king—that's why he felt free to devote his time to scholarship (he was called "The Poet on the Throne" and translated Dante's Divine Comedy into German. He only became king because his older brother was killed in an accident. He's the king who decreed that everyone on trial, rich or poor, was entitled to a lawyer. He died in 1873. The statue was undamaged during WWII—it was protected in place. Gerold says you can stll read letters on one of the pillars around it that say "checked for mines; no mines present."

On the walk, we encountered another stumble stone, this one reading "Here worked Kaplan (curate or chaplain) Alojs Andritzki, born 1914, arrested 1941, died at Dachau 3 February 1943." He was a Sorbian Roman Catholic priest who was vocal critic of the Nazi regime and was executed by lethal injection at Dachau. He was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2011.

The right-hand photo shows the tile mural viewed from the other end. The little girl is leading two younger children by the hand just to the right of where Gerold is pointing. He's indicating the group of dignitaries marching behind the large flag. The very last guy in line, the only one looking out at the viewer, is a self portrait of the painter.

From this point, the other couple, not interested in the picture gallery, decided to walk directly back to the ship, so we pushed on alone with Gerold.

And here, to my annoyance, I had to stop taking so many photos because my camera started warning me that its battery was low. I always carry a spare, but I hadn't had time the night before to recharge the spare, which I had used some of. So I ran through my fully charged battery and the partially depleted one as well! (I also recorded over 400 notes on my pocket recorder; it was a busy day.) But as we walked, Gerold continued to provide information:

• Dresden shelters 8000 Ukranians.
• On the occasion of the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany, by reunification of the American, British, and French sectors, the politicians of each state got to choose the designation for their state. Bavaria, Saxony, and Thuringia chose to be called "free states" (others chose other designations, like "city state" or "area state"). Then I think he said states are being replaced with "bezirks," counties.
• Meissen is 1100 years old; Dresden only about 800.
• The romans were never here; that's why the towns are younger.
• The square I've been calling the "main square" (the one with the Catholic cathedral, opera, and picture gallery) was actually outside old Dresden.
• I think he said the cathedral has 78 10-foot figures of Italian saints. Its architect was Gaetano Chiaveri, the same guy who designed the Kunstkammer, now the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, in St. Petersburg.
• The rough, bumpy finish given to the stone on the opera building is called "rifling" (though I can't find any confirmation of that; perhaps he meant "riffling"?).
• An ordinary monthly salary around here, say for a teacher or a nurse, is 2300 or 2400 euros. Income tax is 25%, and you pay another 10–15% for insurance, health, and retirement. You pay up to 500 euros/mo for insurance.

If we had been there on any day but Tuesday, our tour might have included the Green Vault, but we were just as glad to have a chance to visit the Old Masters Picture Gallery. On our way there we passed the monument to Friedrich August the Righteous, in front of the building we heard referred to variously as the Dresden Castle, the Royal Palace, and the Residence Castle.

We also walked past the Georgentor whose three impressive doors (and two Atlases) formed the old main gate at least the the palace and maybe to the city wall as well.

The portrait by Holbein at the left here is not of Henry VIII but of Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette.

The three self-portraits portraits at the right are by Swiss painter Anton Graff. He's the one who, while traveling through the area, coined the term "Saxon Switzerland" for of the area we cruised through on our way to Dresden.

I was astonished to find the lady at the left in a picture frame! She's the chocolate maid we last encountered, in three-dimensional life size, made of solid marzipan, in a chocolate shop two years ago in Budapest! Who knew she was a famous painting before she branched out into almond paste?! Check her out in my 29 September 2022 diary entry. She was painted (in pastels) in 1745 by Jean-Étienne Liotard, who became the court painter for Maria Theresa.

Rosalba Carriera was a contemporary and competitor of Liotard's who also worked in pastels, but she's now almost forgotten. The Picture Gallery has one of the world's best collections of her work.

The painting at the right is a view of Dresden, by the "other" Canaletto, Bernardo Belloto, nephew of the more famous Canaletto. He did a whole series of beautiful cityscapes of Dresden, but unfortunately, this was the last shot I could get before the camera's battery died. I think Gerold said that he used a camera obscura to get the almost photographic detail of his paintings.

The contents of the museum were evacuated during WWII and taken in secrecy to different places around Dresden. Some were stored at Königstein. Another lot was loaded into a train, which was then driven into an almost forgotten railway tunnel before the tunnel was blocked at both ends.

But then Stalin confiscated the whole collection as reparations, so it spent some time in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Only in 1958 did Krushchev give it all back—not not a single precious stone got lost.

I think the picture gallery reopened in 1959. Most of the Zwinger Palace was still a ruin in 1991, but it's almost done now.

We were shown many works by Lucas Cranach, the older and the younger, dating from the beginning of the renaissance. (Cranach was born Müller but changed his name.) His paintings of Henry IV (the Pious) of Saxony and Katarina of Mecklenberg are considered the first full-length husband-and-wife portraits. They're about life size. Katarina followed Luther's teachings and taught them to her husband. They brought Lutheranism here, and it became the established religion.

Just the small portion of the collection we were able to see included major works by Rubens, like "The Champion of Virtue Being Crowned by the Goddess of Victory" and "Drunken Herbules Supported by Nymph and Satyr" among many others. In a huge painting of Neptune with three water nymphs, all three have the face of Rubens's first wife, Isabella Brant. In "Diana Returning from the Hunt," all four woman in the painting have her face.

The collection of Van Dyke protraits includes one of Charles I, his three children, and his Medici wife and several others, including those of an an unknown man and lady wearing ruffled collars.

Carravagio, in addition to using a lot of contrasting light and dark, apparently introduced paintings of common people or the underworld, a practice that came to be known as carravagism. Rubens painted an old woman with a basket in that style, as did Gerard von Honthorst when he painted a dentist at work.

The Vermeer painting of a girl standing at a window with a letter and the one titled "The Procuress," which we saw at the special Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam last year, are now back here. Gerold said that one of the figures in "The Procuress" is supposed to be a a portrait of Vermeer.

In the Rembrandt section, Gerold told us that when they cleaned "The Abduction of Ganymede," they discovered what might be his mother in the lower left corner, trying to catch him. He pointed out that in the painting of Saskia with a red flower, Saskia (his beloved wife) was pregnant with Titus (their only son), and that it's the last portrait of her. She died at 36 after only eight years of marriage.

Then there were the Velasquez portraits, St. Sebastian by Nicolas Régnier, some by Veronese . . . The collection went on and on; I wish we'd had more time to spend there.

Written 29 June 2024

And finally, Raphael's "Sistine Madonna," which at least by Gerold is considered the jewel of the collection. It has nothing to do with the Sistine Chapel except that it was commissioned by Pope Julius II for a different church in Piacenza that was also named for someone called Sixtus (a 4th century saint; "sistine" means "of Sixtus"). It was moved to Dresden in 1754, has been there ever since (except for that decade in Russia when the whole collection was moved there), and has apparently been hugely influential in German and Russian art.

It shows Mary standing on a cloud holding Jesus and flanked by Saint Sixtus and Saint Barbara. Unusually, Mary looks out at the viewer. Raphael used the face of Julius II for the face of Sixtus, and his robe is patterned with oak leaves, the symbol of Julius's family. At the bottom of the painting, two little cherubs, who have become iconic the world over, lean their elbows on the frame. Just Google "raphael sistine madonna" for an image; you will surely recognize them.

We got back to the ship about 5:15 pm, when the evenings informal gathering with music was already underway, but with a little time to freshen up before the Viking Explorers' Society cocktail party. To be a member of the society, you only have to have sailed with Viking before, and since only a handful of the passengers aboard hadn't, they just invited everybody. Cocktails and munchies were circulated for half an hour before the evening's briefing on the following day's excursions, followed by dinner.

By that time, one of my camera batteries had gained enough juice for the dinner photos.

Nice brown bread with lots of seeds in it. Trying to salt my butter, I of course grabbed the wrong shaker and got pepper all over it . . .

I chose the Lombardy salad, featuring pears, gorgonzola cheese, and walnuts.

David had the other starter, sausage and pea soup—very much like split pea soup with little hot dogs sliced up in it.

His main course was ahi tuna steak with potatoes, wilted spinach (under the tuna), and sherry shallot vinaigrette (which apparently also contained a good deal of diced bell pepper). It was advertised as medium rare, but David said is was cooked a little harder than that.

I chose, from the regional menu, "classic German Tafelspitz," described as "tender prime beef cut, root vegetables in broth, horseradish cream." According to Wikipedia, "Tafelspitz" is the name for the cut that, in the US, is called "standing rump" or "top round." It was braised and quite tender.

I also had the regional specialty dessert, Scheiterhaufen," described as "apple bread pudding, red currant compote." It had meringue on top and was also very good.