As an overall itinerary, I left on Friday the 21st from Poznan and took the train to Berlin and then on to Dresden. I spent Friday evening and Saturday in Dresden wandering around and enjoying the oldest Christmas Market in Germany. Sunday morning I headed to the city of Braunschweig, which I sort of picked at random to spend a day in before heading back to Poland on Monday, Christmas Eve. I spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day in Poznan before returning to work on Thursday.
My co-worker Marva Kington travelled to Dresden with me, where she combined both the tourist thing with the Christmas thing; while I went off in a different direction and did a mix of the shopping thing, the tourist thing, and the Christmas Market thing. :)
This was the 578th Dresden Striezelmarkt, although this year there were actually 11 different markets of differing sizes spread throughout the city. The Winterlichter market was being held on Pragerstrasse, just out outside the hotel we stayed in. You can see the view from my hotel window below, taken Friday night, not long after we arrived in Dresden.
You can see the "tree" of lights in the middle of the market in the picture above. Here is a picture from a bit closer.
There were even some musicians playing at one point Friday night.
Saturday, however, the weather took a turn for the worse. This was the view outside my hotel window around 9am.
A short time later, it was looking like this.
And by 11am it had started clearing up and looked like this.
However, by around Noon or a bit after, the snow had passed and Dresden just had a near-constant light drizzle of rain.
So I headed up to the actual Striezelmarkt which is held in the Altmarkt square. It was enormously crowded, and with the rain I didn't get many chances to pull out my camera. But I did grab this picture during a brief period where both the crowd and the rain lightened up a bit.
From there I headed over the river and into a part of Dresden I hadn't visited during my trip this summer. As you can see from the image below, the weather hadn't improved much. This is taken from the middle of the bridge looking south.
Once over the bridge I headed to the Augustusmarkt on Hauptstrasse. I guess it's called the Augustusmarkt because of this statue of Augustus the Strong which stands at the end of Haupstrasse closest to the river. Augustus II (the Strong) was the Elector of Saxony (of which Dresden is the capital), as well as eventually King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
This market was about the same size as the Winterlichter market, but was spread out more over a distance due to the narrower street. I managed to grab this picture of a tree of lights, ironically while standing under a real tree to get some shelter from the rain. :)
I then headed back south to the Altmarkt area to do some shopping in the malls and get some lunch. On the way back I grabbed this picture looking west back over the bridge. It's nothing special for a view, but it gives some idea of the trip.
Of course, I did do a bit of touristy sight-seeing. I wanted to try out the new pocket camera I bought when I was in the U.S. and grabbed this picture of the Frauenkirche at night (on Friday night, when it was still not raining).
On Saturday I also stopped in the Kreuzkirche to escape the rain a bit and see how my new camera would do. When I was here in July, the pictures turned out quite dark because hardly no lights were on inside the church. I think it turned out better this time.
Sunday's visit to Braunschweig (aka Brunswick) unfortunately didn't go as well. First, it rained a LOT more. So much so that I hardly pulled my camera out and that after about 4 hours of walking around I was so thoroughly soaked that I couldn't even get my gloves on because both the gloves and my hands were so wet. It didn't help that early on I took a right when I should have taken a left and ended up lost in the residential area of town for about an hour.
I eventually got my bearings again and found the Christmas Market. It was clustered in a few small areas around the Brunswick Cathedral. I didn't take any pictures of the market itself due to the heavy rain, and honestly, it wasn't different from the Dresden markets. Even the figures and things offered in the booths were nearly identical (except for the food, but even there was a lot of similarity.)
But there were a couple of things I really liked and that I managed to grab pictures of. One was this picture of one of the crying cherubs that adorn one of the two tombs in the cathedral (I think it's of Duke Henry the Lion and his wife Mathilde of England). There are 4 cherubs, one on each corner. The sculpture is quite impressive.
The other picture I took was of this building that is across the street from the only mall I came across, and where I was sheltering from the rain a bit. None of the stores were open, but there were quite a few people (both old and young) wandering around inside or sitting and chatting.
I love the whimsy of these buildings and have never seen anything else like them, anywhere.
After returning to Poznan, Christmas Day itself was a quiet day. I did go for a walk for a while down by the Warta River and took a few more pictures.
This picture is taken from one of the bridges over the river near my apartment. This is looking mostly south. And as you can see, there is still some ice floating downstream.
But apparently, even the ice won't keep the ducks away. I thought any ducks should have been long to the south by now, so I was surprised to see these.
This is the view to the north from the same bridge.
And one last picture looking to the northwest where some folks had brought their dog down to frolik on Christmas Day.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Have a happy and safe New Years!
No comments:
Post a Comment