Ta Da! As promised, I have returned once again to the side of the Information Super Highway to beg for spare change and dazzle the world with just how interesting my life is, which in this case means the second half of my Dresden entry.

Now, the last time we left our young adventurers, they had just arrived in the fair city, seen some of the sights along the river and eaten dinner, which pretty much wraps up the first day. OK, so we did some other things, sure, but I don't feel like writing about them, because, believe it or not, I'd like to write about something else one of these days.

So, the second day was, as I mentioned before, the long day in the Neustadt. Old and new cities don't always go together in Gemany, the product of about 500 years of advancements in urban development and planning, and a massive six year bombing campaign, but Dresden, again, manages to pull it off. For one thing, the New City is the oldest part of town, since it was nearly untouched by the bombing that destroyed the old center. That, kids, is what we call irony.

Anyway, the Neustadt is great. Keep in mind that that appraisal is based only on the small parts of it I saw, but since my opinions are so well informed and therefore carry the weight they do, I'd just suggest taking it to the bank and maybe buying yourself something nice with the change. When you get wiggled down into the club/old apartment sections of the city, it looks a lot like what I imagine a giant college district would look like if you constructed it out of turn of the century apartments, small clubs and cafes, plastered nearly every available surface with posters, stickers, and graffiti, then lacquered it all with that heavy European decay that makes eastern Germany so damn cool.

Poverty? Where? I just thought it looked nice.

It does look nice, too. The peeling doors, slanted side walks, stained exteriors; it's old, very old, a kind of age western Germany just doesn't seem to have. Don't get me wrong: western Germany has got some really old places that are spectacular, but this just feels different. Sorry, but I can't put THAT in this entry. The city doesn't feel dangerous, though. I guess it got that bit of advice from Berlin: "How to Look Rough, but Still Hold the Door for Old Ladies in Ten Easy to Follow Steps."

But Dresden wasn't always the hip little eastern city it is now. No, once it was one of the most powerful and richest cities in Europe, a center of music, art, theology, and gratuitous displays of absolute power and love of physical wealth. I have often wondered what it would be like to be an absolute monarch capable of manifesting even my most ridiculous fantasies into reality. What kind of buildings would I have built, what jewels mined, and what populations ground into poverty just to fulfill my deepest "needs" to make something bigger and shinier than that "totally annoying" prince two houses down. Well, thanks to the "das Grüne Gewölbe (The Green Vault)," I think I have a pretty good idea.

To sum it up, the vault contains some of the most amazing, yet utterly wasteful, art I have ever seen. Looking at it kind of gives you a strange feeling, a feeling that comes with marveling at an entire ship, sails and all, carved from ivory, yet realizing that everyone else in the kingdom was living in cronic poverty and without political representation. Oh well. It looks nice. "Hans, bring me ten thousand pearls dipped in chocolate and dusted in gold. It's just one of those days."

Some of pieces are as old as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but a good chunk of it was order by King Augustus der Starke (King August the Strong) to....I don't know what. But I guess when you're the Regent of one of the richest German kingdoms and King of Poland there's not a whole lot else to do. I guess knitting would come across a little too feminine, huh?

Anyway....

Oh, we took a boat ride down the Elbe! Now that was all kinds of fun! It took about an hour and a half all together, and it fantastic! If you want to float lazily down a river and stare at the vineyards terraced up the hills as they slide by your boat and wave at random people bathing, this is for you! Man! It was puuurty. Not to mention relaxing.

We ate dinner at a small Russian Cafe, "Cafe Raskolnikoff." Hehehehe....Sorry, but I have to take a few minutes to let my inner English major giggle at the name. Raskolnikoff. Hehehehe. "Relax and enjoy your dinner on our unique outdoor patio and take in the cool night air while brutally murdering an old lady and her sister with an axe and succumbing to mysterious and violent losses of consciousness. Turn away your only friends and you get a five percent discount on your bill."

I had Beef Stroganoff. YUM!

And the waiters had axes on their aprons. BRILLIANT!

It all seemed really bohemian to mean, then Ted reminded me that we weren't any more that 50 miles from Bohemia itself, which is nothing but cool. Bohemia. I wonder if they all wear black turtle necks and smoke thin cigarettes. Oh, and what's cooler: the cafe was on Böhmischestraße (Bohemian Street)!

That's pretty much it, really. We did have a shorter third day, but there's not a whole lot to talk about there. OK, that's a lie, but it's not something terribly exciting to people who weren't actually there. We did stop into a really old milk bar to, you guessed it, have a glass of milk. Gosh, you all are smart! The entire place, and do mean the ENTIRE place, was covered in painted tiles of, what else, cows, farmers, flowers, and anything else that could suggest a rural setting. They had a pretty awesome cheese counter that smelled like my socks smothered in steaming mulch, but I still wished I could have bought a piece of something to take back with me, but something tells me it wouldn't have been a good idea.

And yes, it was cool, in case you're wondering. I have a huge soft spot for stuff like that, a bit of an obsession, you might say. It's right up there with old folky religious stuff from the American South, old propaganda posters, and really old folk recordings. There's just something about all that, this milk bar included, that's missing from things these days, a kind of childish enthusiasm and excitement that's been swollowed by the uninspired and misinformed, killed off by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Moore in their quest to right all the damn time....Sorry. I went on a little tangent there. I'll have all that for another post. But I will say here that Rush Limbaugh is an aweful person. Oh, he's an idiot too, but mostly he's an example of everything aweful about our race. Other than that, he's alright. OK, I'm done. Really.