[Sipping espresso in the hotel room].
We took a short little train ride to Leipzig, and the transferred to another train for the last hour or so to Dresden. Aside from being mesmerized by a fellow passenger who looked like a cross between 2023 versions of musician Paul Weller and actor Scott Glenn (silverhaired and wiry) it was a rather uneventful train trip.
Nora met us at the Dresden hauptbahnhof and we ambled from the neustadt to the altstadt. (We really were not in the neustadt much at all in 2021). We came across an eccentric middle-aged German "herren" on a bicycle (this was on a pedestrian-only thoroughfare in the neustadt with shops and restaurants on either side. I will need to "google" it later. EDIT: Hauptstraße of the Neustadter Markthalle). The gentleman engaged me in conversation, raving about the greatness of the United States and its superiority to Europe. I tried to make the point that, sure, the U.S. has its good points and has continually untapped potential, but is very "un-united" right now. He wasn't having this and me, wanting to get on my/our way, didn't want to press very hard. He bid us a cheerful gooodbye and bicycled away to wherever he was going (maybe to seek out more Americans?).
The rest of the day was spent ambling around the altstadt of Dresden, seeing the Zwinger and Frauenkirche again. Dresden was preparing for a big city festival this weekend, so it was buzzing with activity.
Unfortunately, the heat sort of drained us of energy and we didn't see as much as I'd have liked. There are certain factors in this trip that limit our ability to really deeply explore (IYKYK). I don't really want to get into it here.
At about 5:30 PM, we bid our goodbyes (for now) to Nora and took what ended up being a much longer train trip back to Halle. The fun part was I had a chance to spend about a half-hour on the train platform in the most polluted city in the GDR: the unfortunately named Bitterfeld.
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