Europe 2025

We were really looking forward last year to visiting Dresden. This was the last day trip on our list, booked for the day before we left Berlin, to return to Frankfurt Airport, and eventually home.

Alas, it never happened. Neil woke up on that morning with severe vertigo. we spent the morning chasing up a (very helpful) English-speaking doctor, and then, when Neil had recovered, exploring the Potsdamer Platz in a vain attempt to buy a stamp for a postcard. (I ended up giving the said postcard to a helpful Middle Eastern gentleman at Frankfurt Airport. He promised to post it for me, and did,, having refused to take any money.)

This time around, with pleas for postcards from my two youngest granddaughters ringing in my ears, I was smart. Or so I thought. I found two 3-D postcards at Frankfurt Airport, in a souvenir shop where they even sold stamps! I filled them out - one with some difficulty as the writing surface was plastic. I had to engrave my message with a ballpoint pen, rather than write it. So all I had to do was post it. The concierge at the hotel was polite, but no, he wouldn’t do it. There were no postboxes we could see on the street, over the road from the huge train station. Aha! we had spotted a Deutsche Post shop inside the station as we walked. So we raced over next morning ahead of our walking tour and - the office was shut.

Finally we found three yellow tin boxes which looked to a Kiwi like rubbish tins. These were our precious post boxes - so the postcards were in and away.

With last night being a Saturday, there was much hooting and hollering coming from the station. We woke early, got our bags sorted, and treated ourselves to one more excellent three-course German hotel breakfast. An army marches on its stomach, and so do the Jurys, who quickly become savage and morose if not fed at regular intervals, like the lions at the zoo. We were tickled by the honey dispenser on the breakfast bar. it looked like a baby robot from a 1950-s Sci-Fi film. Pull the metal arm and the honey squirts out the bottom into a little tray you can eat after.

We headed off to Platform 8. Right on time, a sleek metal snake slithered into place, its carriages stretching as far as we could see. It turned out that our seats were in the carriage at the far end, which we reached after a brisk walk.

Last year we staggered along dragging too much weight in too many bags and suitcases . Lesson learned, we donated the large suitcases to our favourite charity shop as soon as we got home, bought two medium-sized ones, and took backpacks instead of a second 7K suitcase. This paid off immediately, as our new suitcases fit two to a rack on the train, where last year they took up one each.

So there we were at 9.15, suitcases stowed, looking out the wide windows, and waiting for our adventure to start: to go where no Jury had gone before. German is a great language for inventing new words, so I’m sure there must be Zugfreude - “train joy”, for that flood of delight when you settle in your seat and adventure awaits.

So for the next four hours the rolling green countryside spooled past: farms, forests, rivers, settlements of little square houses with steeply pitched roofs and small square windows, to keep out the winter cold. Neil was pleased to find takeaway coffees in the restaurant car - also our granddaughters’ favourite Oreo biscuits. We got into conversation with the young man opposite who was wearing a Springbok jacket. It turned out his hobby was long-distance car rallies in old cars (at least ten years old). He was returning from one all over Britain, from bottom to top, ending in Edinburgh, and covering 5000 kilometres!!

At 1.40 we pulled into Dresden station. We saw an attractive new food court but were driven away by the bashing and crashing din of a very amateur Dixieland band in the concourse.

At the hotel we waited for news of the school-friend we stayed with in Hamburg last year. She had set off from the northern outskirts of Hamburg to join is, but after a series of track work delays and missed connections, was hours late. We celebrated her eventual arrival with thick hot chocolates from a cafe next door to our hotel - it is cold here - then went looking for a place to eat. Alas we were Sundayfied. In Germany shops shut on Sunday, and the few cafés close early.

After searching the neighbourhood we found one still open in a complex called Kraftwerk Mitte. This was a hole in the wall conversion in what had obviously been a large manufacturing site, to a series of boutique businesses and eateries. We were lucky to get a table (not surprisingly the place was busy), and were able to plan our next three days in Dresden.Baca lagi