Mixing with the cultured citizens of Dresden

If you ever find yourself in Dresden and you think it might be a good idea to book an opera house tour in German, when you know, at most, about 50 German words, you can trust me and skip it. Ron and I spent 40 solid minutes, trying to look like we fit in with the Dresden citizens who had booked this tour for a super special night out. I’m not sure if we fooled anyone at all, though, as they were in their fine evening wear…lovely sparkly sweaters and long gowns and full suits…and we were in…well the same North Face jackets we have been wearing for 19 rainy days in Germany! I had paired my jacket with the same black and red Hokas and purple cross body travel bag that I wear everyday.

Down below is a picture of the beautiful opera house from the outside. It was destroyed in 1945 in the final months of the war and not rebuilt until 1985. Dresden was decimated in a 48-hour firebombing from February 13 – 15, 1945. Here’s a good summary of the devastation if you’d like to know more: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945. Here’s Dresden just after the bombings:

And now here’s the opera house – a good example of “Dresden Baroque” architecture, which dominates the old town area. It’s truly gorgeous!

Back at the opera tour, though, we were finally turned loose to look around the opera house on our own. We’d only seen the lobby areas, which are nice, but my goal was to see the theatre. Here’s the lobby, with Ron mixing with the German tour group:

In order to do the 10 Euro German tour, we also had to buy tickets to a German production of the Italian opera Carmen – performed as a ballet. German+Opera+Ballet is a BIG stretch for me, from an artistic appreciation point of view. These tickets were 13 Euros each. (Quick math total for this adventure: 46 Euros or 50 US dollars!)

Ron showed his “support” for my plan to get in the opera house by asking – over and over – if we were underdressed and reminding me that all of this was my idea.

At any rate, we made it to the end of the tour and it was time to finally get into the theatre…and in we walked to our seats, way way way up at the top of this steep showroom. Was it beautiful? I have no idea. We walked in, saw this terrifying view from our seats and had to leave immediately because the height made us both so dizzy. I can’t even offer a picture that shows the precariousness of it because I was so busy trying to inch my way out from our seats and over to an area where I didn’t feel like I was about to fall over…you’re lucky you’re getting any picture at all! Ron – in another one of his intuitive moments – dubbed the seats the suicide seats.

At any rate, there was really no need to appreciate the architecture of the opera house because Dresden is full of amazing architecture. Here’s a couple of pictures from our first walk through town:

And here’s the view from our hotel room:

Since I cannot offer you the architectural interior opera photos I had hoped to, I’ll leave you with this equally important interior photo. It’s the Dutch Pancake House where we had dinner. Not quite Dresden Baroque – but still fun: