Dresden

From Warszawa I chose to begin my German visit in Dresden. The last time I was in Germany it wasn't possible to go cities in the east like Dresden without a visa. When the train crossed into Germany during the night -- this time, of course, from Poland -- the German official didn't bother opening my passport.

I arrived in Dresden at 6 a.m. I thought about getting a hotel and staying a day, but all the hotels in the area of the station wanted 150 DM and up for a room. Expensive for me -- but it has to be astronomical for residents of the very recently "former" DDR who have a long way to go to catch up with the Western standard of living. I decided to look around for a few hours and then go on into Berlin later in the morning.

Fortunately, a lot of the historic buildings were quite close to the station. Miss Rosenblatt, my German teacher from Midland College (Fremont, Nebraska) came from Dresden. She left Germany in 1933 and never returned to see her home town. I visited her about a year later and showed her my photo album of my Trans-Siberian trip. This Web presentation you are viewing now is an expansion of that photo album. There is so much more you can do with the Web than with a traditional photo album. Of course, someone needs a computer with a web browser to view it.

I bought a travel bag in the Karstadt department store. Ever since Moscow, the the availability of merchandise has been improving the farther west I go. And this morning I saw my first vending machine since leaving Japan. Cokes are 1,50 DM. A little bit more costly than in Japan, where they were 110¥. The exchange rate today was 1,40 DM to the dollar. When I left Japan, there were about 130¥ to the dollar.

A lot of construction is going on in this area. Palaces, opera houses, museums, etc. are being restored.