Sunny day in Fulda

Walked and walked this morning, enjoying the sunshine and beautiful town, Fulda very fortunate that it escaped damage in the wars.
rooftops

statues on roof tops



flowers in the Schlossgarten

looking across to the Orangerie

a door in a wall, what lies behind?

the children in Germany are trusted with far more exciting play equipment than Australian children

The Dom from a distance, built 1704 to 1712, Baroque style

Inside the Dom

more great roofs

Goodbye Dresden and old East Germany

Leaving Dresden after a wonderful 4 days, we do recommend a visit here. Lots to see and great atmosphere to soak up, strangely we weren't tempted to visit the Hygiene Museum .

The iconic traffic lights. found in what was old east Germany, found now elsewhere in Germany






So off on the train again, another delightful trip, clean, on time , what more can one ask for.
Our destination, Fulda. Fulda is about 100km from Frankfurt airport and the perfect place to stay with a quick 1 hour train ride directly to the airport Wednesday morning.
After over a week of grey overcast and wet weather it was great to suddenly get a glimpse of blue sky !
A touch of sunshine combined with a very pretty town and the camera went into overdrive.
Following are just a few of the places we saw when we went out to explore late this afternoon.


















and finally after all this exploring a beer garden! how lucky can you be

Concert in Frauenkirche

Decided last night to splash out and go to a concert in the Frauenkirche. Weather cleared a wee bit so took yet more photos of the church and surrounds.
The concert was beautiful. First half songs by Franz Schubert sung by baritone Mathias Goerne and second half the orchestra performed Bach, Brandenburg Concerto #3




looking up into the dome






Trying to get a feel for the beauty and grandeur, a very pleasing and restful interior.

Frauenkirche Dresden

The Frauenkirche was ,even before it was destroyed , one of the wonders of architecture. It was well known because of its stone dome among other features. February 13th 1945 saw Dresden almost totally destroyed, particularly the centre of the city. There was little remaining of this beautiful church, only a couple of partial walls. Attempts were made after the war to begin trying to rebuild but with the Russians moving in little was able to be done so it remained a ruin until the 1990's
1990's saw a lot of rebuilding of the old town centre in the original style, huge public support not only in Germany but also from overseas saw massive donations towards the rebuilding of Frauenkirche and so the work began. From the huge piles of rubble excavations began and within 10years the church was completed and reconsecrated in 2005

Looking across to Frauenkirche, in the foreground is a site that has been recently excavated , had been covered in rubble for past 70 years.

Looking up to Frauenkirche, the dark stones are some of the original stones

Trying to get the whole church in difficult

Dresden

What an amazing city. So where to start?
Weather has been grey and overcast with a tendency to drizzle a lot of the time, the only disadvantage with this is that this little tablet really prefers some sun shine to take a halfway decent photo so I feel photos really don't do the place justice.

Looking down the street where our hotel is,we are staying in the Altstadt area ,old town


Looking across the Elbe River towards Altstadt. One cannot grow weary of this iconic skyline

Beautiful detailing on buildings.

Detailing on Schloss


Harvest festival time so one of the squares has been converted to a market, lots of stalls selling bratwurst, beer and other crap with of course umpa music playing!!





Knud doing his bit to help the beer and bratwurst economy stay afloat.

Dresden

A relaxing train trip, a change of trains in Magdaburg, then Leipzig then hey presto we were in Dresden, on time and without buses being involved. ( I know , a snide dig at VicRail)
Dresden, founded in 1206 , Capital of the state of Saxony, nestled in the Elbe River Valley near the Czech border. Population of half million in the city itself plus another 2 million in the surrounds.
Severely bombed by the Brits and Americans towards the end of WW2, the entire city centre destroyed and 25,000people, mainly civilians killed. Lots of restoration work gone on since.
Baroque and Rococo architecture abounds. We are staying in the old part of town, beautiful.

Of course what stay in a German city would be complete without a trip to a car factory. Here VW produce their Phaeton car in what they call Die Gläserne Manufaktur , or the Transparent Factory.
A factory tour was the plan for today where we were supposed to see the production line in action. The only problem with doing a midday tour is that all the worker's are at lunch and the production line stopped, oh well still interesting , sort of.



Knud looking forward to the tour



Beautiful afternoon so before the promised rain arrives a walk in the Großer Garten
Palace in the gardens

Sunlight filtering through the trees , beautiful

Back to home port , Brandenburg Plaue

Our last night before getting back to B Plaue and we lay on anchor and enjoyed a beautiful, warm and calm evening
up on deck


sunset
As were sitting up on deck flocks of Swale came over and settled for the night in the corn fields close by, a stunning sight so we decided to get up early, before the sun rose ,to watch them take off again.

sunrise ,what a beautiful time of the day



So back to our new home port at Brandenburg Plaue where Linquenda will spend the next 7 months.
Time for Svend Ove and Jytte to head back to DK after a lovely 5 days together.
Busy times for us as we got things ready, ship shape, closed down , packed up etc.

Linquenda all wrapped up ready for winter.

Decided as we were organised in good time that we would take a little trip somewhere where we couldn't take Linquenda, so Dresden was the final decision. Although the Elbe runs through Dresden it is not a river we would be keen to battle with because of the currents, fluctuations in water level etc.

Tangermünder

Svend Ove and Jytte arrived to meet us in Schollene and what better way to spend the first evening than to make a little camp fire and sit around drinking champagne.



Next day we decided to drive to Tangermünder , actually this is where we cycled to a few days before but didn't have enough time to check the place out because we had 40km to cycle back plus gather fruit. So off we set again pretty well following the same route.


Caught the ferry

Entertained by the ferry master again

Tangermünder, a walled town dating back over 1000years.

Neustädter Tor

Neustädter Tor

Old Traditional Post Box , still in use. So much nicer looking than the modern.

A mosaic in the process of being produced , will have to return to check on the progress!