Landkreis Meißen

What we did:
- Took what was supposed to be a 2:30-5pm train from Prague. The train was delayed leaving 30 mins later and then we actually sat for 45 mins or so at the Czech/German border. Cops boarded the train and took multiple guys off the train that were traveling alone, without a passport and appeared of middle eastern descent. Per research, Germany is having issues with all the migrants they took in and are really starting to crack down. A similar thing happened when we crossed from Italy into France.
- We were tired so just grabbed a quick dinner, checked into the hotel and passed out early.
- Woke up and took a 45 minute train to the “Saxon-Switzerland” national park, which is actually just a national park in Germany. No idea how they landed on that wildly confusing name! Consistently rated a top 5 national park in Europe, we enjoyed the two-three hour hike through the forests and intricate rock formations. The “Bastei Bridge” is a frequent photo cycled through our Windows laptop screensavers. Definitely worth coming!
- After the hike we tried to find food at 6 different restaurants in the area, which were all closed or surprisingly very unfriendly to foreign tourists. One entirely ignored us. From Google reviews it seems that all the restaurants in this area essentially refuses foreigners and sometimes get openly hostile. WTF Germany
- There is a barge that gets you across the 50ft wide river from the train station to the park. They pack it full to its max capacity of 320 people. There is no other way to describe it than this barge is a janky contraption. It has no motor and instead is just tied to a buoy in the river and they use some sort of pulley system with the river flow to move it across. Coming over it was only a 5minute experience, but on the way home they packed all 300+ of us onto it and made us sit there for almost an hour. People were losing it! Almost 80 degree heat in tight quarters - there were some elderly people really starting to struggle. I guess we had to wait for a window in which there were no boats or kayakers anywhere in sight before this floating piece of sh*t could cross. Build a damn bridge Germany! This Huckleberry Finn schtick isn’t cutting it. Starting to really question the “German Enginering” touted in the Volkswagon car commercials now.
- We got back to Dresden and walked around Old Town and the river. Super cool and underrated city! The palace and old buildings are gorgeous and don’t have the tourist chaos of other areas. We grabbed beers at the “Augustusgarten” riverside biergarten.
- Grabbed some dinner and headed back to the hotel by 10. Watched the 1st episode of the Netflix Beckham documentary on David and Victoria - definitely recommend!

Where we ate -
- Dinner of Poke at Hawaiin restaurant M’oolea. Delicious!
- Train station coffees and croissants for breakfast. Trent ate a pretzel because hey we’re in Germany after all
- Lunch at KFC. Yes that KFC - Colonel Sanders is a luxury food item over here.
- Trent had 1st dinner of a pretzel and brat at biergarten. Brat was delicious and gave us faith in German brats again after the clunkers in Munich. Steph opted out of 1st dinner
- 2nd dinner of Pho at a local Vietnamese place! Not as traditional as Salzburg but good enough for what we needed.

Fun Facts -
- Dresden was the old capitalist of Saxony and is surprisingly full of gorgeous old churches and impressive Palace items.
- Dresden was basically leveled by the UK/US at the end of WW2. There were actually inquisitions for many years after to determine if they acted incorrectly in doing so as the war was nearly over and there were substantial civilian casualties from the resulting fires. Almost all of those old churches/palaces were damaged/destroyed and had to be refurbished/rebuilt afterwards to try and keep the old town vibes. To the untrained eye you couldn’t tell that they were not naturally so old.Read more