Dresden - last day with group

We spent Tuesday in Dresden. As most of you know, Dresden was a jewel of a city before the Allies bombed it in WWII. The intense heat created a firestorm that sucked the air out of underground shelters, killing thousands of people (many of them women and children who had flocked to a supposedly safe haven). The bombing raid also destroyed most of Dresden’s magnificent buildings, such as the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). It is only recently that some of these treasures – belonging not only to the Germans or even the Europeans, but everyone – have been restored to something of their former glory.

Our first stop after the 2.5-hr. bus ride from Berlin was the Neue Synagogue. The original was not destroyed in the Allied bombing but on Nov. 9, 1938: on Kristallnacht. On that night, many Jewish buildings (residences, shops, and houses of worship) across Germany took the brunt of growing aggression – a taste of far more brutal crackdowns to come.

The replacement synagogue is basically a box, a well-designed and constructed but uninspiring box barely 10 years old. While I liked the high ceiling (a deliberate choice by the architect when he learned that the Dresden city planners wouldn’t let him build on the entire original site – more narrow and up was okay), I did not find that its other features suggested a house of worship, shall we say.

In the adjoining community center, we met with Michael Hurshell, the artistic director of the The New Jewish Chamber Philharmonic, Dresden. He explained how he ended up in Dresden after being born and raised in Seattle, and why his orchestra plays work by Jewish composers, many of whom have slid into undeserved obscurity since the turbulent first few decades of the 20^th century. Music has no borders, he implied. It has the power to bring people together instead of underscoring their differences. Very uplifting to hear this!

In our remaining time, under gloomy skies, we had a quick look through the art gallery, where Raphael’s most famous Madonna had been on display since early May. I can’t remember running through a gallery like that before! We were really under the eye of the clock. As the Lucas Cranach “Adam and Eve” was in the vault, and I could see only a few other German and Flemish works, I think I could have given the gallery a pass. Anyone with a penchant for Italian religious art would have been begging to stay another two hours! I have lost any taste for that – or perhaps I feel fonder of German art because, well, I’m in Germany.

As the cool day seemed to get even cooler, we visited the Frauenkirche, then decided to have Kaffee und Kuchen in a tearoom before heading back to Berlin earlier than planned. I had a hot chocolate that really woke me up, while the rest of the group sampled the tortes. (I’d had enough yummy cake at lunch, at the synagogue, after vegetarian couscous.)

We returned to Berlin around 8:00, as the sky cleared a bit, and ate (much later) at a fancy place called Oxymoron. Tired of pasta – about the only veg option at most fancy places – I had potatoes and white asparagus, period. They actually hit the spot

A bunch of us said our good-byes outside the hotel, and thanked Naomi for all her expertise, patience, good humor, and kindness. We will never forget this trip, much of it thanks to her.