Dresden

More Eastern Bloc kitsch from Dresden, I'm afraid I'm a sucker for all that stuff... Beck and I had been to Dresden on an otherwise all-German coach trip pre-wemde and were interested to see how much it's been buffed and polished by westernization. Mostly it's a thoroughly beautiful city - even more so, we thought, than Prague - though the multi-coloured pastel interior of the rebuilt Frauenkirche is frankly too much Disney baroque excess for my taste (fabulous views from the top, mind...) We went on the train from Konigstein and stopped on the way back at Pirna to have dinner in a hilltop biergarten overlooking the town where a brass band played from a balcony on the church steeple as the sun went down (a lovely contrast to lunchtime, when we'd eaten just desserts underground in a massive keller across from the Zwinger...)

No songs, either - a welcome bit of mental clarity!