Living in Dresden, pt. 1

This weekend yielded no epic Adventures to castles or hospitals, but instead emphasized the fact that I have really just moved to another country and now I live here. So this entry in my "travel blog" is not about traveling. It is about Not Traveling.



Living in Löbtau


This gorgeous building to the right is my apartment.

The area of Dresden that I live in is called Löbtau, west of the central part of the city. It does mean that I have to use the expensive tram system more often, and that I need to build in travel time getting to the University or to Neustadt or to just about anything. But on the other hand I live in a beautiful old neighborhood with affordable rent. And that I can shamelessly label everything in this part of town as my own.

Most of Löbtau is large apartment buildings like mine with shops on the first floor and residences (and sometimes Cytology Laboratories) above. These were built at the turn of the last century, largely survived the bombing, and were nearly all renovated in the past ten years, so they're all beautiful and freshly painted and picturesque, and in the morning my walk to the bus stop (and, someday again, my bike ride to work) presents me with views like this.



These buildings are one block south of my apartment, at Conertplatz. Several times an hour, the convenient but obnoxiously loud 12 line rumbles to and from the Conertplatz stop past my windows. Located at Conertplatz are my Döner Place and my Bakery.

Actually, my Döner Place acts primarily as my fridge, because it is the easiest source of refrigerated coke. From what I can tell, Dresdners do not drink coke. At all. They sell it, but I've never seen anyone over here drink it. This may be a result of Coca-Cola being one of those more recent western introductions. I don't like drinking coke out of 2-liter bottles because it tends to go flat on me, but even if I had a 2-liter (which I did, last week, one of my get-well presents) I wouldn't dare waste precious fridge-space on it. My Döner Place tends to be a bit German in its refrigeration temperatures-- if you find the right one, Turks are much more likely to keep drinks TRULY cold-- but it's better than nothing. Additionally, My Döner Place advertises the Mini-Döner, only 1.50 euro, which is actually small enough for me to finish. So I'm a fan.

My Bakery is totally awesome. I don't just have a Backerei, I have a Feinbackerei, and it is indeed very fine. It is lovely, very pretty on the inside, the baked goods are all on little doilies and there are flowers and just what you'd want at a nice lovely little bakery. It's a small operation, so it has tricky hours, but the lady who owns it works there the whole time and must recognize me and my stilted German by now. It is the first bakery I've found here that has Erdbeertortchen, those marvelous little strawberry torts that I was introduced to on my first trip to Europe five years ago in Switzerland. If I don't have to start work too early, I have time to go by every morning for breakfast. And it is essential to go every other day in order to buy Brötchen so that I have BREAD for any later meal I might want. The first weekend I was in Germany I made the mistake of buying a loaf of bread and it went stale before I'd finished a quarter of it. The Brötchen method works much better. And Bakery goods are fantastically cheap. This morning I bought a piece of Streuselküchen, an Erdbeertortchen, and zwei Doppelbrötchen for 2.10. That's insane. I think the first place I walked to after my fall was this bakery.

On the way home from the bakery I can cross the street to the other side of Conertplatz-- my park-- and eat my cake or drink my cold coke on a park bench surrounded by roses. I have not made enough use of this park and intend to fix this soon.

Occasionally I leave my own street (and the street connecting me to more bus/tram stops) to explore more of my Löbtau neighborhood, which is composed of similar lovely apartment buildings on enviably quieter streets. The closest cheap grocery store, Netto, is located somewhere back there-- when I tried to find it Saturday afternoon I eventually had to loop back and admit to flatmate Christoph that I'd lost the thing-- but when I finally made it there and bought groceries for myself it was wonderful. All day Sunday I reveled in how many choices I had for each meal. A few days later, these are declining quickly, and I should go shopping again soon, I suppose.

Hmm, that's Löbtau for the moment, though I think I'll probably update it later with some more pictures, including one of the late Erdbeertortchen from this morning. Despite the blue sky and fluffy white clouds, Dresden has pulled one of its surprise rains on me, but I still need to make my way to downtown to run some errands-- specifically, replace the dead Handy and buy a helmet-- before I start work at... 4:00 this afternoon. Sigh.