Trip to Dresden

I don’t feel I was there long enough to develop a long description adequate to this beautiful city on the Elbe, one that stands as proof to the German people’s Romantic period pride at keeping the cultural depth of Greek Civilization alive in the 18th and 19th centuries. (It really is that beautiful.) Yet, being in a city whose fundamental artifacts are buildings that have been reconstructed, some of them quite recently, gave me pause to think about tourism in general and the sentimentality that can sometimes take place in the moment of experience: a projection of the current into a future reflection. I was sitting in the grass along the river, alone, across from the inevitably touristy altstadt, looking at the completely reconstructed Frauenkirche under the light of a full moon: my mind shot immediately to a time in which I would recall this moment, a corner stone of experience to reconstruct my brief visit to this city demolished by allied bombs in the closing days of World War II.