Berlin and Dresden: a crayfish in the park, a bridge in the Elbe, and rocks on the way to Prague

On September 17, 2024, we arrived in Berlin and checked in for two days.

A day in central Berlin

The next day we walked around the center. One of our stops was the Lustgarten park. If you look closely, there is a large granite bowl in front of the Altes Museum, almost seven meters across. It is called a wonder of the world of the Biedermeier era: it is the largest bowl carved from a single piece of stone.

St. Mary's Church looks more impressive from the outside than inside, but inside we found a digital cross. Berlin Cathedral is the largest Protestant church in Germany.

Leia quickly fell sound asleep in the stroller.

A stroller with its canopy down on a wide square, the Brandenburg Gate with the chariot on top and people strolling in the distance — Leia is asleep, and we are at the Brandenburg Gate

We headed to the Reichstag hoping to go up to the top, but all the tickets for that day were already sold out.

The Reichstag building with corner towers and flags, people walking toward it along the sidewalk, cars parked along the road — The Reichstag: no tickets left to the top for that day

We looked at Bellevue Palace, the residence of the president of Germany, and walked around the park.

A crayfish on the path

While we were making our way through the park, a little crayfish crossed our path.

A crayfish crosses a path in a Berlin park, Leia watches it from the stroller

A memorial and a gallery church

The Holocaust Memorial is a field of 2711 concrete slabs set in rows on uneven ground. Long narrow passages run between them, and the ground in them rises and falls.

Pavel, seen from behind, pushes a stroller down a narrow corridor between gray concrete slabs of different heights, a pine tree nearby — The Holocaust Memorial

We went into the Friedrichswerder Church: in September 2024 it hosted a National Gallery exhibition of nineteenth-century German sculpture.

The tall nave of a Gothic church with a red vault and a stained-glass window at the far end, white marble sculptures along the aisle — The Friedrichswerder Church

We took the tram back to the hotel.

Dresden after the flood

On September 19, we moved to Dresden and checked into a hotel for a couple of days. On the first day we only went to IKEA to eat, and went out to explore the city later.

Old Dresden across a wide street: tall towers with domes and long palace facades under a clear sky — Dresden

On the Elbe you could see what the September flood in Central Europe had done: the river had overflowed its banks. And the Carola Bridge stood wrecked: part of the bridge (the tram section) had collapsed into the Elbe on September 11, before the flood.

A wide muddy river level with its banks, a bridge across it whose middle section has collapsed into the water; a domed building on the far bank — The Elbe after the flood and the collapsed Carola Bridge

Pavel and Leia on the parapet.

Pavel in sunglasses holds Leia, who has two pigtails, on a stone parapet, both looking into the distance — Pavel and Leia on a walk around Dresden

We saw a long wall with the rulers of Saxony laid out on it, the “Procession of Princes.” The mounted procession stretches for 102 meters and is made of about 23,000 Meissen porcelain tiles.

A long wall along a cobbled street with a porcelain mural of a mounted procession of riders running along it — The “Procession of Princes”

We also spotted two retired ladies sitting at a street café with Aperol spritzes. To me, a scene like that is what Europe is.

Tiské stěny on the way to Prague

On September 21, we went on to Prague. On the way, already in the Czech Republic, we stopped at an interesting place, Tiské stěny. It is a sandstone rock town near the village of Tisá, not far from the Prague–Dresden highway. The rocks there are flat, and we walked around among them.