Dresden and Meissen

I have a mental list of places which, despite and because of their proximity to Prague, I have never visited. Dresden was on the top of that list for a long time, as I had even spent an entire two months in Berlin without ever stopping by.

I finally visited Dresden this winter with my dad and my sister. Exaggerating only slightly, the journey was the best of times and the worst of times. It had recently snowed, turning the scenery into both a magical land straight from a Christmas film and a driver’s worst nightmare. We spent a whole hour trying to circumvent Prague and perennially getting stuck behind slow-moving trucks on single-lane country roads. Once we got to Germany, however, the clearing skies made for just recompense.

Instead of going directly to Dresden as we had originally planned, we drove a little further to Moritzburg. The town achieved fame thanks to the Czechoslovak-GDR film “Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella,” which was partly filmed at the local castle and has outlived both of the countries that made it. The iconic status of this classic, which is a Christmas staple in German-speaking countries, as well as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Norway, has led to the conversion of the entire town into a pilgrimage centre, with posters and signs all around dedicated to nothing but the film.

While my sister toured the castle’s interior, which of course hosts an expansive exhibition of film memorabilia and replicas, my dad and I walked around the half-frozen lake that surrounds the castle. The tracks in the snow indicated that some people managed to cross the lake onto a little island, but we did not want to try our luck replicating their success.

We spent the rest of the day touring Dresden. The city was all decked out in Christmas decorations and Christmas stalls filled the town squares. Contrary to my expectations, the centre is quite small and walkable; we managed to see everything I wanted to see, some things even twice. My favourite sight was the Frauenkirche, which has an unusually high dome and gives the city its distinctive skyline. Legend has it that it was his by a hundred cannon balls during the Seven Years’ War, but they simply bounced off. The church was not as lucky during World War II, when allied firebombing levelled the city. Nothing but rubble survived of the church for half a century, until the church was finally rebuilt in 2005.

The next day, we saw a little more of Dresden, including the famed Milk Shop on Bautzner Street, which is famed for its hand-painted tiles. Rather than returning home immediately, however, we made one last stop in Meissen, a town renowned across the continent for being the first and finest European producer of porcelain. Some of the credit for the discovery of this process goes to Johann Friedrich Böttger, who claimed he could make gold from rubbish and was imprisoned by the king until he could prove it. Unsuccessful, he was hired by the scientist Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus to work on the production of porcelain instead. In this endeavour, the duo met with success, finally replicating the “white gold” Europe had long tried to copy from China.

Unsurprisingly, an interesting place to visit Meissen is the porcelain manufactory. We did not have enough time to visit the museum, but just walking through the shop was worthwhile. There were various wares, both useable and ornamental, from teacups and plates to porcelain animals and painted tiles. The most expensive pieces cost several hundred thousand euros, or basically, as much as a house.