Erasmus year reflections, Teil 1.5: Dresden!

I'm back in the UK at the minute, and I have been since the early hours of Thursday morning. It's been amazing being at home with my family and friends and definitely worth the hideous twelve hour journey and terrible flight with Easy Jet, but I feel like I've not had a minute to myself trying to squeeze in seeing everyone. I'm going back to Germany tomorrow morning (at 4am, boooo!) but only for one week (sob!) before I move back to the UK for good. I'm taking my brother with me though so that should be nice. We're hoping to visit Nuremberg, Bamberg, Munich and Legoland whilst we're there but I have so much to sort out that it might be a little difficult to squeeze everything in. One thing I'm very excited about is the prospect of flying with a swanky airline. Well, Lufthansa is certainly swanky by my standards. Very much looking forward to the free hot snack and drink! I'm not really sure where I'm going with this or what point I was trying to make, so I'll continue with a little bit about my favourite-city-ever, DRESDEN!

September 2010: Dresden

I say September, because that was the first time I visited the city but I actually went loads during my first semester at Bayreuth, because of where my boyfriend was living. I fell in love from the first time we went, and I didn't even fall out of love with it when we were wandering round the packed Christmas Markets in the -17 degree weather trying to eat chocolate covered fruit that had just frozen over. I think I'd like to live and work in the city someday but we'll see how things go. The photos were uploaded in a strange order so they're not chronological, but I can't be bothered to rearrange them at the moment!

My birthday is on St. David's Day and, being Welsh, I was delighted to find that it was being celebrated in my favourite cafe England, England. Sadly we didn't discover the cafe until quite late in the year so we only got to visit a few times, but the place was decorated like a nanna's house (this is 100% a good thing!) and had a selection of British newspapers and books which provided a very welcome relief to all the German that we'd been surrounded with. After a beautiful British cuppa and cheddar cheese on toast (almost impossible to come by in Germany) we spent almost an hour looking round the cafe's little shop full of British delights like sweeties and Marmite. I desperately regret not buying the English Rose handcream they were selling as it was gorgeous, but I didn't quite have enough pennies on me. I could write about the cafe for hours - it's my absolute favourite place to go in Dresden and I'd go back to the city just to visit again.

I'm not normally one to be too taken with architecture, but the architecture in Dresden blew me away. So stunning! It's strange to think that the city was completely flattened during the Second World War.

You can't visit Germany without trying Currywurst and Pommes. So good!

I took this on the day we left for good. Tom was moving to be with me in Bayreuth and we were about the catch our train when I snapped this from the S-Bahn. It's by no means a good picture but it's one of my favourites as it was so beautiful that that was the last thing my eyes saw of Dresden. Pretty fitting too, but now I'm just getting cheesy!

Tea and Welsh cakes at England, England! :D

I thought I had more photos of Dresden and it made me quite sad that these were the only decent(ish) few because we spent so much time there. Again the photos don't do the city's beauty, amazing shops or amazing nightlife any justice and I can only urge you to go and try it for yourself. Forget Berlin and Munich, Dresden is the place to be!

Wish me a safe flight, and I'll be back next week with a post about Berlin so keep an eye out! Bis bald :)