Day 3 Part Two – Germany, the land of the brown roof.

Ok, so it’s official. My sleep schedule is royally messed up. It’s currently 12:15 AM and I just woke up. When I rose from my slumber I was completely disoriented. Didn’t know where I was, what time it was, or what to do. There isn’t even a clock in my hotel room. I think it has just kicked in as being reality to me. I’m here, and I will be for a while.

So I don’t even know where to start explaining about how it is over here. Everything is completely different…

So I get back to my hotel and I run into my first dilemma. I have no clue how to open my hotel room door! The key is this tiny little card and there is no door handle. So I stood there for like 5 minutes looking like an idiot trying to get in. Mission accomplished.

I quickly got settled in and hit the town. Only problem is…I don’t know where anything is! So I jump on mapquest and take a look at a map of Dresden and locate where my hotel is. I sort of set my bearings and decided to just hoof it around town. This worked out quite nicely. I walked around in total awe looking at all the amazing architecture and history. There are buildings still bombed out from WWII, huge churches, and other things I have no clue about.

I walked to the city centre which appears to be the older part of the town. I guess the best way to explain is through imagery. Actual imagery. So here are a few pics with commentary to the best of my ability.

This is a view from my hotel window. This church is amazing and hard to capture on camera. Actually, this looks like one of the newer buildings in town.

This is in the city centre. I know nothing about this building except for it looks really cool.

This is some art that is on the side of one of the buildings downtown. It stretches for a good city block. Very amazing. It shows a lot of the ancient rulers in German history with their names and the time they ruled.

This is one of the sculptures on one of the buildings. There are about 20 of these, all different, on this building. Really cool stuff.

Here’s a view of the building with all the sculptures on it with some other stuff in the background. I promise I’ll learn what these are!

And another shot with a café on the left hand side serving overpriced food to tourists. But hey, it looked really good! There was also this band playing jazz music to a bunch of people. I heard a killer keyboard solo.

So I walked around the centre of town for a while and scoped out the conference hall. Pretty freaking nice!

So you’re probably reading this wondering when the sketchy situation of the day happened. Well, here goes…

Being the type of person I am, I like to find places that locals frequent when I travel. I was starving and decided to walk into a part of town that looked a little less appealing to tourists. 1-2 miles later in the heat I start to feel a little dazed from dehydration. It took forever to find a place that sold water. I found a local market and bought some (sparkling, GAH!). Then I hear a bunch of people around the corner. So I go to check it out and find myself in the middle of this huge street festival. This place was CRAZY!

There were thousands of people in the middle of these one way streets just hanging out, eating food from various booths cooking up brats and other assorted goods. There was a DJ every 30 or so feet competing with each other in volume all spinning European electronica. It was pretty awesome.

I was starving at this point and tried to find a place to eat. The problem is I couldn’t read any of the menus because they’re all in German. This sounds kind of like a trivial problem, but it’s hard to tell if a place actually serves up food or just beverages. Anyways, I find this little tent selling Indian food and decide to pick up some grub. I know what you’re thinking: “You’re in Germany and you’re eating Indian food? You idiot! Go for the MEAT!” Well, I’ll have all week for that so I will indulge in the goods starting tomorrow.

I go up to order and spout the usual, “Do you speak English?” Of course they did and asked me if I was from England. I told them where I was from and they said something to the effect of, “ohhh, the US…very powerful.” Then they said something that caught me off-guard: “So you must be living in fear right now.” I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, what do you say? “Actually I hate Bush. Like 70% of our country. He’s an idiot that didn’t even win his way into office with a majority vote.” When there’s a considerable language barrier, it’s hard to come across with an I’m-on-your-team attitude. So it was kind of an awkward silence then we parted ways. I consumed my rice with yogurt sauce and continued walking.

This place was unreal. It’s weird to walk down the road and see 16 year olds drinking a higher quality of beer I’ve ever had in my life. I wasn’t in the mood to have a round, so I decided to make my way back to my hotel.

Now we’re caught up. There’s really a lot more that happened but it’s hard to convey what it’s like without this turning into a book. Mainly because I’m not really sure what’s going on around here at any given time. But there is one thing I know: I need to find a place that sells the awesome Germany wristbands that everyone has here!

Anyways, that was my day. I’m planning on posting some stuff about bombed out buildings in the future and other stuff about the people here. The scene here is awesome. More on that to come!

I think I’m going to stay up until tomorrow evening to get my sleep schedule on track. It’s 4 AM right now. No, it didn’t take me 4 hours to write this. I actually took a little break to watch some world cup and walk around the area…

Until tomorrow, stay safe!

<3, br