Today I'm writing from the Silfor Europejski Hotel in Wroclaw, Poland. I know that after my last blog entry you were probably expecting an account of our time in Dresden, but while we did make it to Dresden, we bought our train tickets to get out of there A.S.A.P. within an hour of our arrival!
You see, what we didn't realise and what no guidebook or person had told us, was that our intended trip was to coincide exactly with a massive church festival attended by hundreds of thousands of people. The fact that our train was so full that we had to sit in the passage for the entire trip, should have given us a bit of a clue, but what do we know about trains and overbooking in Germany? Being nosy as I am about what people are reading, it did catch my attention that quite a few people in our carriage had their noses in religious or church-related materials (e.g. Jesus fur Atheisten!), but I thought that perhaps a group of people on my carriage were attending a church conference in Dresden.
Little did I realise that my mother and I were probably the only people on the entire train not planning to attend Kirchentag, as this German Evangelical festival that runs over 5 days is known. Upon our arrival the train station was teeming with people and signs welcoming one to Kirchentag, or pointing Kirchentag attendees in the right direction for storing their luggage. Outside there were marquees set up with Kirchentag information, Kirchentag performances, etc.
We made our way to the tourist information centre, where, according to our guidebook, the friendly staff can organise any kind of accomodation for you on the spot. That is, except when it's Kirchentag! The woman behind the counter just shook her head while staring at her computer screen, which was confirming what she already knew: That there were no hotels, inns, rooms, dorms, or any other kind of accommodation for us in Dresden, nor in the surrounding towns up to 50km away. What were we to do? We decided to walk over to the train station again to look at available trains leaving Dresden.
When we were about 20 metres into the left wing of the building, a deafening alarm suddenly went off, startling us. After what must have been just a few seconds, the heavens suddenly opened up and rained dirty water down on top of us, while inaudible announcements over loud speakers presumably urged us to move towards the exit of the building. Soaking wet people were scattering everywhere while the water continued to gush out of the roof. Clueless as to what was going on, we made our way to the door and stood outside, waiting for an indication of what to do next, while brown water was dripping off our hair, our faces and our clothes.
After a while we summised that what happened must have been by some technical fault, as only the flooded section of the train station was cordoned off, while the rest kept on running without a hitch. By this time droves more festival goers had arrived, and dirty, wet and without a roof over our heads for the night, we decided to rather get out of Dresden, and bought ourselves tickets to Wroclaw for later in the afternoon.
While waiting for our train, we went for a walk and managed to locate both the Lutheran Church offices and the Rathaus, where we would start our search for civilians who perished in Dresden in WWII if we do make it out that way again. That is, after Kirchentag is over! While obviously not comparable, the confusion and shock we experienced yesterday, as well as the ringing alarms and tons of police and ambulances on standby for Kirchentag, did make me think about what people must have felt during the air raids 66 years ago, before nearly the entire city and thousands of its inhabitants were killed when fire bombs were dropped on them. Nothing was untouched by that war, something which is as evident here in Wroclaw. But more on that tomorrow.
You see, what we didn't realise and what no guidebook or person had told us, was that our intended trip was to coincide exactly with a massive church festival attended by hundreds of thousands of people. The fact that our train was so full that we had to sit in the passage for the entire trip, should have given us a bit of a clue, but what do we know about trains and overbooking in Germany? Being nosy as I am about what people are reading, it did catch my attention that quite a few people in our carriage had their noses in religious or church-related materials (e.g. Jesus fur Atheisten!), but I thought that perhaps a group of people on my carriage were attending a church conference in Dresden.
Little did I realise that my mother and I were probably the only people on the entire train not planning to attend Kirchentag, as this German Evangelical festival that runs over 5 days is known. Upon our arrival the train station was teeming with people and signs welcoming one to Kirchentag, or pointing Kirchentag attendees in the right direction for storing their luggage. Outside there were marquees set up with Kirchentag information, Kirchentag performances, etc.
We made our way to the tourist information centre, where, according to our guidebook, the friendly staff can organise any kind of accomodation for you on the spot. That is, except when it's Kirchentag! The woman behind the counter just shook her head while staring at her computer screen, which was confirming what she already knew: That there were no hotels, inns, rooms, dorms, or any other kind of accommodation for us in Dresden, nor in the surrounding towns up to 50km away. What were we to do? We decided to walk over to the train station again to look at available trains leaving Dresden.
When we were about 20 metres into the left wing of the building, a deafening alarm suddenly went off, startling us. After what must have been just a few seconds, the heavens suddenly opened up and rained dirty water down on top of us, while inaudible announcements over loud speakers presumably urged us to move towards the exit of the building. Soaking wet people were scattering everywhere while the water continued to gush out of the roof. Clueless as to what was going on, we made our way to the door and stood outside, waiting for an indication of what to do next, while brown water was dripping off our hair, our faces and our clothes.
After a while we summised that what happened must have been by some technical fault, as only the flooded section of the train station was cordoned off, while the rest kept on running without a hitch. By this time droves more festival goers had arrived, and dirty, wet and without a roof over our heads for the night, we decided to rather get out of Dresden, and bought ourselves tickets to Wroclaw for later in the afternoon.
While waiting for our train, we went for a walk and managed to locate both the Lutheran Church offices and the Rathaus, where we would start our search for civilians who perished in Dresden in WWII if we do make it out that way again. That is, after Kirchentag is over! While obviously not comparable, the confusion and shock we experienced yesterday, as well as the ringing alarms and tons of police and ambulances on standby for Kirchentag, did make me think about what people must have felt during the air raids 66 years ago, before nearly the entire city and thousands of its inhabitants were killed when fire bombs were dropped on them. Nothing was untouched by that war, something which is as evident here in Wroclaw. But more on that tomorrow.
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