jessybxx

2006-08-04 Fri

Should I ever forget why I don't go on holiday with my parents on a more regular basis these days, please remind me of that very morning.
I woke up at 7 AM and got dressed in some sort of sleep-deprived haze (so much for regular sleeping patterns XD) and entered the kitchen.
There, I was greeted by the very thing I had been dreading since the second this trip had been announced: A tirade od questions starting with "Have you got...?" directed at me and my partents snapping at each other like a pair of angry poodles.
What fun. Not.
Well, after bro had arrived (Yuu should see him when he just got out of bed. Zombie, anyone? *lol*), we had the usual German breakfast (coffee, rolls, cheese, ham, honey, marmalade, eggs) and then started collecting luggage and doing some terminal tidying-up of the soon-to-be empty house.
Mum also prepared a ton of "Brötchen" ("little breads"), as we call them. She had also bought a gazillion of drinks (mainly mineral water) and together with the army of Brötchen, this was supposed to become our second brakfast, lunch and whatever meal we were to miss on the trip to Dresden.
At 8:15, we had finally managed to stuff all of our crap and ourselves into dad's BMW - and off we were...
... not quite cuz the car needed to be fed as well so we first stopped at a gas station.
On the way there, we had already laughed out asses of at my poodle reference (I did use that throughout the weekend and whenever our parents started arguing, I'd growl and bark XD), mum clumsily setting up faithful Else (her portable navi) and various other silly things.
Soon, we had left North Rhine Westphaila and were rushing along some autobahn in Hessia (the part of the country where Tobi Sammet and Dirk Schlächter are from). The radio skipped from one awful station to the next, but personally, I was much too tired to mind.
There was little talking but lots of dozing off until 11:30 when we stopped to take down part of mum's army of Brötchen and to get some fresh air.
That was also when mum and dad changed places and she drove the car for the next 150 km. Das had fallen asleep in an instant, me and bro had taken out our respective mp3 players to enjoy some Metal.
At 1 PM it was time for yet another stop.
Everyone except for bro headed for the bathroom (jokingly wondering whether someone might succeed in stealing the car with sleepy bro inside XD) and mum bought some magazine to read in the evening.
We were pretty close to Dresden already and after some driving around the block (cuz dad somehow still doesn't seem to trust faithful Else completely), we arrived at the hotel.
It turned out that we'd have to wait half an hour if we wanted to get two rooms next to each other. So dad set off to park the car and we occupied the lounge for a bit.
When we got the keys (or rather, the cards) to our rooms, they said 622 (bro and me) and 623 (mum and dad). Of course, mum got a lot of facepalming and shaking of heads when she asked what floor they were on. Stupid much? 622? 623?
Well, we headed for the sixth (and BTW, top) floor and checked out our rooms. The hotel is called "Art'Otel" and that's exactly what the rooms are like. Weird and artsy, but kinda cool.
Bro was especially fascinated by the window in the wall between the bathroom and the rest of the room that could be blurred and unblurred at the flick of a switch.
But we didn't stay inside for too long cuz next it was off to the old city of Dresden.
Now, there's one general thing I have to say.
As in every bigger city, public transport in Dresden is supposedly very good and not all that expensive. My parents, however, prefer to walk if the distance is less than twenty miles or something. Unfortunately, in Dresden, that meant a few hours of strolling around per day, and we didn't always get wehre we wanted to either. Meh.
Anway.
I love old buildings, so Dresden was just for me.
After walking around for a while (D'oh), we sat down in the little café next to the rebuilt Frauenkirche and had some Dresdner Eierschnecke (a trademark speciality, one of the tastiest cakes EVAH), coffee and hot chocolate.
We also checked out more of the city and visited an exhibiton showing old instruments from various sciences (telescopes, old clocks, vacuum pumps...). Of course, I especially liked the analogue calculating machines :D
In the early evening, we headed back to the hotel again.
We were supposed to meet at 7:15 to go for dinner, which meant more than an hour of free time. I tried out the shower which rocked big time, and I managed to only set half of the bathroom under water, hehe XD
Bro and me then watched some news and finally it was time to leave.
We had actually discovered a shortcut into the old city and soon we were there again. Shortly after, we had decided on a restaurant at the terraces of the river Elbe (great view!). All of us had venison except for bro ("What's this supposed to be? Peer pressure?") who decided on pasta. Dinner was really fun and did I mention the great view onto the river?
There was an Asian family at the restaurant as well. Dad insisted on them being Korean but when two of them walked past our table and said something that contained the word "samui" (cold), I could prove him wrong. They were Japanese!
Well, when we had paid we walked around the river terraces some more.
Suddenly, dad pointed at an ice cream booth, saiyng "I want vanilla". And before I knew it, each of us had some ice cream.
In Dresden, there is a street musicican in each corner. Literally. But one of them was particularly good and did I mention hot as hell (OMFG long hair)? When mum asked "Should I give him something", I replied "Yeah, me" before I could stop myself. Eh, girls XD
We checked out the street that had most of the restaurants (my parents fittingly call it "Fressmeile") but then we walked back to the hotel cuz wer were dead tired. Back at our room, bro and me watched some comedy and were asleep before we knew it.

2006-08-05 Sat

My alarm clock went off at 7:30. We were supposed to meet for breakfast at 8:15 so we got dressed and shortly after, mum and dad appeared.
The first shock of the day leaped at us when we arrived at the breakfast room - it was full to burst.
We finally setled at a table outside. Luckily, it wasn't that cold.
Breakfast was okay and really fun. And we only had to fight two wasps. I loved watching the streetcars (or "Tram", as they're called there) passing by. Their yellow and black look is kinda nice, IMHO.
The next point on the agenda was the Green Vault where treasure and art is exhibited. That was cool and the audio guide was really informative though like all of the stuff we saw it was WAY TOO MUCH to get into your head so we didn't really look at everything closely. That might have taken us all day.
Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take pictures in any of the museums. A lot of people did it anyway but we're not that type of idiots so we just looked at the stuff.
After another pause at our hotel rooms (and eating more Eierschnecke we brought from a local bakery) we walked into another direction to find the mall. Well, find it we did but there was not a single free seat at any of the cafés so we left and went back to the hotel.
That long, but
entirely unsuccessful trip had taken us a few hours and so we had our usual free one and a half hours (Yay, I had my shower back!) and then it was time for dinner again.
It was raining like hell and so we decided to try the hotel's restaurant. The food there turned out to be as artsy as the hotel itself but it was still okay I guess.
Afterwards, bro and I went back to our room to watch TV and at 11:30 PM; we finally turned off the light.
As we found out later, mum had crashed at the bar. Well, at least she slept very well, which is more than you could say of dad *lol*

2006-08-06 Sun

So today, we got up at 6:45 (Holiday? This?? Nah...) and arrived at the breakfast room at 7:30. As we had calculated, it was empty as hell and we got a table that was close to the buffet but still far enough for people not to annoy us.
As it turned out, on Sunday, most of the people don't seem to arrive for breakfast before 10, so getting up three quaters of an hour earlier was in its essence, nonsense.
Still, I had my scrambled eggs and cereals, so I didn't mind. And I certainly didn't mind looking at a bunch of old people hardly finding their way across the room (Evil? We? Nah XD).
After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and put it in the car. And then we were off... to the old city, again.
There was one more exhibition we wanted to visit, and that was the Old Masters' picture gallery.
The pictures were interesting though again, having a good look at everything and listening to the whole audio guide whould have talken five hours.
After another visit at the bakery (We needed a good supply of Eierschnecke for the trip back home) we left the city at 12:30.
It had been raining more or less heavily since the morning and that didn't really change when we were on the road. When mum was driving, it got particularly bad so when we stopped for the second time, we'd barely made half of the 500 km.
And back in Hessia, it started. Traffic jam. Three hours of them, to be precise.
I won't be going into detail, but it was annoying as hell. Though we were lucky that our car didn't give in like so mayn others standing around on the sides of the autobahn, probably overheated.
Well, at about 7:30, we reached our town and I quickly (if you call twenty minutes of waiting "quickly") stepped into the local snack booth to buy sausages, chips and kebap.
I think I don't have to mention just HOW dead I was that evening. Be it because of the eight hours of walking a day or because of the soft bed-induced lack of sleep, all I can say is that the trip was exhausting (but fun) and I was glad to be back in my own bed.