Settled In...

I have a little time to write now, having just finished the second day of classes. 

The lessons are from 8:30am to 1:00pm Monday to Friday, and are only in German. There's no way around it, since most of the students don't speak a common language. I understand about 90% of what's being said in class, but my passive knowledge is much better than my active abilities.

Dresden is intriguing, especially for a history buff like me. They have made stunning progress in the past 10 years rebuilding architectural treasures destroyed in the 1945 firebombing. Many boxy, concrete socialist-era monstrosities are being replaced with replicas of what was lost, or at least more harmonious versions of modern buildings, but it will take many more years to expand the work beyond the central core.

As a result, the city has something of a split personality. Beautiful historic buildings (or, more usually, restorations) stand next to crumbling 1950s socialist-era relics, and fancy stores poke out from otherwise drab, Soviet-style pedestrianized areas. Many more pre-war structures (apartments, villas, gardens) seem to have survived in the suburbs, which have a much more cozy and human scale than the semi-restored center.

As for the people, many of the youths are as pierced, gelled, tatted and accessorized as their American counterparts. The older Dresdeners, though, seem more reserved and stern than their generational equals in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf or Stuttgart. My guess is that this probably has more to do with the DDR experience than Dresden's own shattered history.

Poking around in Saxony is definitely on my list: I plan to visit Meißen (of porcelain fame), Leipzig, Görlitz-Zgorzelec (a historic town now divided with Poland by the Niesse River) and Bautzen/Budysin, the major city of the Sorbs, an indigenous Slavic minority.

Today is the first cloudy day, so I plan to hit some of the Zwinger museums, including the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and the Porzellansammlung. I also plan to visit the Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner museums in the suburb of Pillnitz, but those will probably have to wait until next week.