Arrival in Dresden

The hostel door would not really close unless it was locked was a minor annoyance that I did not really notice until early this morning when the outside noise kept waking me up at strange hours in the night, but I was still a bit sad to say goodbye to Berlin, the city that keeps trying to reinvent itself and where the echoes of its violent past are far hidden from the normal traveller, lest they know what to look for or go in search of its darker history.

For me a more pressing urgency is where on earth they hide their cash machines outside of the city centre, as I must have looked in every shop window and storefront in search of this holiest of golden fleeces, but try as I might unless you get directions or are prepared for a long walk you wont find any easily.

Seing as I didnt fancy another long two hour walk into town, or to fork out another EU $15 for the taxi fare, I decided to bite the bullet and head off back into town via bus, which was surprisingly easy and only EU$ 2.10 for the forty minute ride.

It is at times like these that I know that they UK is overpriced as you have barely sat down before you have to get up again in England for only £2.

The main station or HBF was huge in that it was over seven floors high and this gave me my first chance to taste a German McDonalds, which the chips not worth mentioning, the burger fine but as always with too much relish and thankfully the strawberry milkshake was gorgeous and only second so far in my taste test to the heavenely one I had in Aukland.

Down at platform 3 I spotted a couple of Americans nattering away to a Aussie and so I sat next to them happily in my own world til they started saying that Stone Henge wasn't all that, and feeling a sudden surge of patriotism I hadn't felt in many a month I rose to the bait and said my small bit for the UK.

Another hit to my pride and the idea that world travel is select or hard was that the Aussie was saying that it had now become so old hat in Australia to tour the world, or at least large chunks of Europe, for a 25-30 year old that now it was almost a drag to have it get it out of the way before you can do whatever you really wanted to do.

Despite her being nice enough I could not get over her blasianess, or even her contempt, for the travelling community, as she was clearly only doing this in order to not be the odd one out back home, and certainly she didnt seem to be enjoying it or be grateful enough of what she was doing.

But all that aside, the train journey into Dresden was a 2 hour smooth ride through lush countryside and green hill, with yet more sweetcorn and also some of the quaintest and most cutsey houses and hamlets that you ever did see. I tried to snap a few as we were whizzing by, but each time I did a bloody great big tree would flashed past and obscured the view and so after a half a dozen attempts I gave in.

The outskirts of old Dresden look like the perfect idyllic little places to live and visit, with everything you could possibly want to hand. The centre of new Dresden on the other hand was a hodgepotch of old and new, with bunches of black wearing mods shading from the sun supping beers while across the street was bearded hippies and dreadlocks on the most unlikely of candidates.

I had taken the liberty of getting off at the newer train station as it was a good fifteen minutes closer to my hostel than the main station and the walk was pleasant enough with plenty to keep my roving eye occupied on the lookout for potential photo opportunities.

The walk was just beginning to get tiresome when I Arrived and so was never so glad that the twenty minute estimate was most likely for slower feet than my own. The lollis Homestead looked kind of bizarre but it wasnt til I reached my room that everything became apparent.

The internet, even to use my own laptiop and their wifi connection, was chargable by the hour { or half hour if you were short of money / in a hurry }, there was a seperate charge for the bed linen and the rooms had no lockers of any description and thus I have no idea if my laptop will survive the trip here should anyone spot it.

It is not that I doubt the honesty of my as yet unknown bed sharers, but the fact that I cannot lock away any of my goods, not even a smallish bag, means that the website lied grossly about there security measures and also that the other patrons who used the website were either blind or just never travelled with anything of any value that they cared about keeping.

There was very unusual black and white cartoons of frogs, flying dogs and clouds painted on the walls and ceiling of my dorm room and the bathroom had a bathtub full of sand and rubber toy dinosaurs pretty much summed it all up for me.

The use of a kitchen, breakfast facilities and such could not improve my view and although I have only been to a few hostels in my life I am afraid that this one might come out on the bottom of the list however long I travel for.

Its free map of the city and 'Dresden Survival Guide' did little to raise it anymore as I am now aware that maps and such are common place in hostels so without a free backrub or something equally useful this one will go down in my memory as one to be avoided and it is a shame as with all these little places it could do so much more for itself with such little extra effort. It certainly is a far cry from the Happy Cat Hostel in Madrid which was a converted Turkish Palace, I kid you not.

Luckily I had only ever planned Dresden to be a half way stop over point between Berlin and Prague, so the faults though a pain are minimal and in the morning I will be fast on my way to pastures new.

Now I will just grab myself a cool refreshing drink and then continue to bash away at a few overdue emails I have not yet got round to replying to.