Hochwasser in Dresden

In August 2002 I was finishing two months of language summer school at the Goethe Institut in Göttingen in the center of Germany. I hadn't expected the summer to be so cool and wet and ended up wearing the same pair of blue jeans and a gray flannel sweatshirt borrowed from a classmate pretty much the whole time we were there. I can still smell the rain-soaked mornings that came through the open, unscreened windows of the room I shared with a girl from Korea.

At the time, the Germans all said this was unusual weather, but when I was back in 2006 for pre-dissertation research and again in 2007 for the German Historical Institute's archive seminar and found similar weather, I wondered whether the Germans were familiar with their own summers? At any rate, those trips confirmed me in the belief that there is no time of year during which one should travel to Germany without an umbrella (ein Regenshirm).

Looking upstream from Carolabrücke, c. 4pm Tuesday

Anyway, in Göttingen we would read the newspapers in the mornings together, and I remember seeing pictures of devastating flooding in Dresden (among other places). Wikipedia tells me that "the Elbe River reached an all-time high of 9.4 meters (30.8 feet)" during this "Millenium Flood." 30,000 people were evacuated, and there was substantial damage done to residences, businesses, and landmarks like the Semperoper theater (click both words for previous blog posts).

Supposedly it was the kind of flooding that only happens every century or so, but some of my acquaintances in Dresden think climate change means more frequent flooding. They are now worrying whether two weeks of rain will mean a situation "as bad as ten years ago" [sic], when it rained and rained, and then after the rain stopped, the water came down from the headlands, leaving destruction and "all manner of junk" in its wake.

Thus far the famous Blaues Wunder bridge has been closed since Monday for fear that at 120 years old it could not handle both high water and modern traffic. That has meant serious transportation difficulties, as the ferry upstream has of course been stopped, the nearest bridge is under construction (causing delays and detours itself), and the next bridge (die Albertbruücke) well into town.

None of the more modern bridges have been closed yet, but everyone is carefully watching the official reports online. I bought some flowers for the family that hosted me for dinner tonight, and the shopkeeper said to me, "Es ist was los in Dresden." (There's something going on/happening in Dresden.) I agreed: all day sirens sounded as the fire department and army sped around town laying sandbags and erecting barriers to flooded low-lying areas. Even the Main State Archive had sandbags out front!

In fact, they've closed the archive for the rest of the week. Wednesday was supposed to be my last day, but to my complete surprise, I managed to finish what I needed to do on Tuesday. In fact, I got out a few hours "early" (i.e. before closing), so I wandered over the Carolabrücke to take photographs. Lots of locals had come out to look at the water, too.

They were still out on the bridges when I crossed the Albertbrücke at 6:15 pm on my way to dinner, and then again at 10:15 pm on my way home after Hauskreis (Bible study). There I found the scene less serene than at the other bridge earlier in the day. In the shallows, the water merely reached out wherever it could, but in the deep center of the river, the water gushed angrily around the supports of the bridge, making eddies and even some white caps. I found the noise and the sight of the speed of all that brown water angstproduzierend (alarming, fear-producing). It didn't help that the wooden foot-traffic bridge shook gently when a bicycle or jogger went by.

If you're curious what the situation looks like right now, click this link and then pick any one of the camera icons for "aktuelle" (current) images. This map is collecting data about problem areas where help is needed. These are probably better pictures than mine. Here is a graph of water levels (at 8.05 m = 26.4 ft as of this writing). This blog post shows what the Elbe River usually looks like. Editor's note: the river crested at about 8.8 m midday onThursday.

I should add that Dresden isn't the only city threatened by flooding; rivers around Germany are higher than normal. And of course, once the water passes us, it still has to pass Magdeburg and eventually Hamburg before exiting into the North Sea. Here you can see that the flooding was much worse in other parts of Germany, and in Austria and the Czech Republic.

In the right foreground stands a blue sign advertising where to pay to park. It is taller than I am.

The River Elbe

Loschwitz as Winter Wonderland

Reorganization of the zodiac notwithstanding, I am a water sign (Cancer), and I loved living near the magnificent body of water that is the River Elbe here in Dresden. The first three months I lived on a central, low-lying Platz on the right/northern bank, but in general the terrain is elevated there, with scattered small vineyards along the higher slopes. I couldn't quite see the river from my bedroom window, but just around the bend in the road stood the famous Blaues Wunder ("Blue Wonder"--first suspension bridge in Europe without pylons in the river). The last four months I lived on the left/southern bank, a few minutes' walk from the Marienbrücke, with the Neustadt across the river. One of my favorite memories from this time will definitely be the sight of the beautiful, reconstructed baroque buildings of the Altstadt, seen from a Strassenbahn while crossing one of Dresden's many bridges over the Elbe.

There are currently seven major bridges. In addition to the Blaues Wunder and the Marienbrücke there are the Albertbrücke, the Carolabrücke, the Augustusbrücke, the Flügelwegbrücke, and the Autobahnbrücke. The controversial new bridge is the Waldschlößchenbrücke. The Dresden Elbe Valley had been listed as a World Heritage Site, but when Dresdners voted in a 2005 referendum to build another bridge to relieve traffic congestion, the valley was listed as "Endangered." The city backed away from the plans, but a court ordered that the referendum had to stand, and in 2009 the Dresden Elbe Valley was de-listed as a World Heritage site (only the second time that has ever happened). Many people are upset because the bridge will be modern-looking and quite long (probably one reason why a bridge wasn't built across that stretch of river before). But I can attest that it is necessary, because at the moment there is really only one Strassenbahn line that serves that stretch of city, and when it's late or not running, you don't have many options.


I decided to take a picture of the Elbe at the beginning of each month, as a memento of my time in Dresden. Below is a chain of images of the river, the first three looking toward my first apartment (Oct., Nov., end of Dec.) from the far side of the Blaues Wunder. In the first photo, you can see there was Hochwasser (flooding) when I arrived. I waited to take the November photo until after I had run my errands, and by the time I was ready to walk back across the river, the beautiful morning had clouded over. The early December photo is at the start of this post; we had snow on the ground continuously from the week of Thanksgiving into January. The third photo below I took on moving day the last week of the year.

 

  

The new views are from the near side of the Marienbrücke at the beginning of January (still snow). While I was gone on the East Coast in mid-January, the snow finally melted, as the February photo shows. The March image is unfortunately over-exposed, but the April one hints at the nice blue skies we sometimes had. The bottom image shows my last day, cloudy in Dresden at the end of April.

Of course, the Elbe isn't always beautiful. In 2002 there was terrible flooding. The stereotypical German Stube (hunting-themed pub) down the street from my second apartment had a mark at least waist-high on the wall, showing how high the water was then--and that wasn't exactly close to the river. Here's an image from the river-side amphitheater at Schloss Pillnitz with markings of historical floods; the 2002 deluge is the one off to the right, as high the epic flood of March 31, 1845.


I am in Leipzig now, which has a river (the Weisse Elster), but is somehow not as defined by it as Dresden, "the Florence of the Elbe," perhaps because as the river runs through the city, it is surrounded by parkland (a flood zone?). As it turns out, Leipzig has lots of parks and Schrebergärten (those little garden colonies), so even without direct access to the Weisse Elster, the big-city architecture is broken up by green space. I am finding Leipzig a prettier city than I had originally thought.


Editor's note: This, my farewell post for Dresden, was slightly delayed by the difficulty of having laptop, camera, cable, and internet all in one place at the same time.

Two weeks ago, Dear Husband (DH) came to visit me!, part 1 of 10

Two weeks ago, Dear Husband (DH) came to visit me!  We spent the first couple of days here in Dresden before taking a week-long trip through Austria.  He is, after all, half-Austrian, but it had been almost 20 years since he had been there; and I knew some about the country, as the theme for my brush-up German course the summer before last was Austrian geography, culture, and literature.  We’d been talking about and planning this trip since before I left the States, so it was exciting to finally go.  But first, DH got a small dose of what my days are like in Dresden.  (These posts were all written by the time I got back here, and I will publish them one or two at a time, with photos.)

Tuesday:

I spend the day at the Main State Archive, where there is no internet.  I am supposed to leave from there to meet DH at the train station at 5pm.  The night/day before, I suggest he call the archive if he doesn’t make his train, so the archivists can let me know.  (No cell phones allowed in the reading room, of course—although why I didn’t just have him call my phone directly, for me to check on break, only just occurred to me.  Especially since the archivists speak English, but apparently the receptionist does not.)  After my lunch break, in fact, one of the archivists tells me a Herr Hammer called and that something happened with his train.  I didn’t know the word(s) she used, but since we set it up that he would only call if things weren’t going to plan, I guessed he was coming in an hour later.  We did eventually manage to meet each other at the train station.

It turns out that DH would have made the original train, but that after he bought his ticket and went down to the track, he discovered the train had been canceled.  Why they still sold him a ticket, neither of us knows.  At any rate, he was able to sleep some on both the plane and the train he eventually took.  After the usual pleasantries, we head out to catch the street car home, and manage to catch it after a sprint.  We listen to Miles Davis while catching up with each other and cooking dinner.  DH is thrilled to bathe after 18 hours traveling.

Wednesday:

Him: Are we on our way to meet God?

Me: You know, if the builders of the Tower of Babel had started here, they wouldn’t have had so far to go!

I thought we might combine a little business with pleasure by taking a walking tour of my neighborhood, Loschwitz, which was once the home to a number of health spas and some of Europe’s richest and most famous.  The attraction for DH, a train enthusiast as a kid, are the two Bergbahnen (mountain railways): the Schwebebahn (the first mountain suspension railway; built 1901 at 274m long, 84.2m up, at a 39.9% grade) and the Standseilbahn (a funicular railway; built 1895 at 547m long, 96m up, with a maximum grade of 29%).  Unfortunately, the Schwebebahn is out of service for annual repairs, so we don’t get to ride this antique transit specimen: Strike 1.  We do look at the little church down the street, which was built by the same architect as Dresden’s famous Frauen Kirche, but earlier.  So as to be able to continue our tour, we decide to “walk” up to the lookout point at the upper tram stop.  You’ve heard about the enormous hill/small mountain of which I live at the foot, right?  Well, back in the day, the residents used dog-carts to carry things up and down the slopes, because horses and donkeys weren’t sure-footed enough (!).  We had to hike up another one of those ridiculously steep paths to get to the lookout, laden with our laptops, books, and provisions: strike 2.  Once we get to admire the view of the Elbe River and Valley, my camera battery icon starts blinking red.  I snap a few quick shots before it dies for good: strike 3.  By this point it is nearing noon, and I had hoped to spend the afternoon working, so we give up on the tour, vow to try again the next day (with re-charged batteries!), and find the bus stop.

Luckily for us, the bus we want, which only comes twice an hour, will arrive in 10 minutes.  We snack as we wait.  The ride was actually pretty cool: the street just seemed to go up and up and up.  Eventually we do reach the top, where the woods give way to fields of some unidentifiable crop.  The rest of this day consists of transcribing, reading, and (for one of us) napping in the archive.  Dinner is pasta and salad back at the apartment.

To the right you can see the Schwebebahn tracks stretching down the hillside.  The trams hang underneath the rails.  I suppose this could be a vista picture from just about anywhere, but on the right-hand side in the middle ground you can see the Blaues Wunder (Blue Wonder), a suspension bridge that was a "wonder" when it was built in 1893 because it does not have any pylons in the river proper, just one on either bank, and the bridge is suspended between them.  Supposedly it is "blue" because of the paint, but I think it looks more "sea foam green."

Adventures with my bicycle, Part 3 of 3

This is the last of my bicycle adventures, the detour I made on the long trek back up the hill above my house to visit Schloss Albrechtsberg, which dates to 1854 and a certain Prince Albrecht, kicked out of Prussia for his morganatic marriage to Rosalie von Rauch, the daughter of a former Prussian Minister of War and "merely" Countess of Hohenau. The afternoon was lovely, so I parked my bike and wandered around the grounds, which have been open to the public since 1930.  Like the other Elbschlösse (“Elbe castles”), this one has a magnificent view of the river and the city on the other side.  Because of the leaves on the ground and the vines over the baroque architecture, it felt a little like I was discovering a forgotten civilization.

 

Albrecht, in case you are wondering, was the fourth and youngest Hohenzollern son.  His older brothers included Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and also Prussian King/German Emperor Wilhelm I.  Poor Albrecht made it to the rank of Generaloberst (Colonel-General) in the Prussian cavalry before he kicked off in 1872 at the early age of 63, but he's probably best known for the Nazi SS using his Berlin palace as their headquarters, with the Gestapo just down the street, also named after him.

Adventures with my bicycle, Part 2 of 3

The Monday of my first full research week here in Dresden, I had an appointment with myself at the Main Saxon State Archive, which I had visited once before while doing pre-dissertation research several years ago.  After eating breakfast and packing a lunch, I checked Google Map one more time for directions to the archive, which I remembered as being in the Neustadt rather near the river.  It looked like I had a rather “straight” shot along the curve of the Elbe.  Just to be sure, I entered the address from the archive’s website into the directions form…and was surprised to discover that the archive had moved!  Sure enough, when I read the archive’s website closely, it gave its “interim address,” which was rather more north.  Fabulous.  I had almost ridden to the wrong part of town!  But the map suggested a 30-minute ride, so I wrote down the major streets, packed a city map just in case, and set out.

Right off the bat I ran into trouble: cobblestones.  Not the little ones either, but big bumpy ones. This was going to be an uncomfortable 2 miles.  Just after I noticed an older man going through a doorway in the wall holding up the hillside, I looked ahead and was disconcerted to discern what looked like continuous cobblestones and wall as far as I could see.  Which wasn’t far, considering the fog (right, a look back at the way I had come).  But what if there really wasn’t a path for me to turn north when I needed to?  So I back-tracked to the doorway.  Big mistake.  There followed the most ridiculous exercise of me pushing my bicycle up what I swear was a 45-degree angle for at least 10 minutes.  The path seemed never to end.  Below is a look back from the top of the path, which unfortunately was still not the top of the hill, so I had to continue up, up the street.

At the next intersection I checked my map, and I appears that I had taken 2 sides of the triangle that included a rather “straight” shot using another street that runs by my house.  Great.  Well, at least I was up now, and it should only be a matter of riding those two miles and then making a slight jog to the right.  Yeah, right.  This mostly down-hill stretch actually wasn’t too bad, if you excuse the calculations I tried to do in my head between whizzing cars on my left and when the signs allowed me to be on the sidewalk (i.e. not at tram stops).  My first attempt to turn right required another consultation of the map, because despite being a major intersection, there was no street sign.  Okay, I had to go another two blocks and then turn right.

And this is what I saw when I got there: Strassenumbau! (construction).  The picture doesn't really do it justice; to the left, where I wanted to go, the entire street is torn up several feet deep.  So I walked my bike through the gauntlet of pedestrian fences to the next street I was looking for, where there was more Strassenumbau!.  So I walked my bike along the street, until finally I came to the next turn.  Which I made.  Then things started getting a little strange: the road became a dirt footpath through some field with random trash piles.

And this is what greeted me at the end of the path:*

Just kidding, actually, it was a locked gate.  Thank you, GoogleMaps, for sending me the back way to the archive, which is currently housed at a low-key military base.  I didn’t stop to take a photo but turned around, retraced my route, and took the street like a normal (law-abiding) person.

An hour later, I had arrived…but I didn’t relish the trip home at the end of the day.  I ended up taking a different (cobble-stoned) street down to the main road, where I braved the traffic as I climbed the hill most of the way, before finally giving up and walking my bike to the top (no gears, remember!).  To break up the hike, I took a short detour, which is the adventure described in my next post.  To get home at the foot of the hill, I wasn't about to go back down the wooded path, so I decided to take the hypotenuse of the triangle from this morning (Schillerstrasse).  If I hadn’t been afraid of careening into the enormous intersection at the bottom, I might have actually enjoyed the slalom.  But—and this is the catch I mentioned in my last post—the brakes on my bicycle are rather "soft": you have to squeeze the handbrake all the way down, pedal backward to engage the pedal brake, and then will the bike to stop.  It was thrilling, to say the least.

I finally made it home, but I haven’t replicated the feat since, in large part because of the cold I had caught in Bonn developed into a full-blown sore throat/fever/cough, and also because the weather is getting colder, especially in the mornings.  It takes 30-40 minutes and a bus, a streetcar, and a bus to get from home to the archive, but as a compromise, I now walk one third of my commute each way: up the streets under construction in the morning, and down, down, down Schillerstrasse in the evenings.  So I get about 30-40 minutes of exercise each day that I go to the state archive.


*--This graphic courtesy of Electronic Captain.

Adventures with my bicycle, Part 1 of 3

The first weekend I was in Dresden, I started looking for a bicycle as a cheap way to get around town and get some exercise too. (I can’t really make an environmental argument out of getting a bike, since my alternative mode of transportation is the city’s trams and buses.)  Plus, Dresdeners ride a lot, so that makes it a pretty safe town to bike in.  There’s a catch, though, and I’ll get to that in the second installation.

Anyway, I tried the local Craig’s List, but it was pretty sparsely populated, so I googled around for alternatives.  I ended up on an ebay site, where I found a nice enough looking bicycle, complete with basket, for 40 Euros.  I mustered up my best German and called the phone number listed.  Between the two of us we ascertained that the bike hadn’t been sold yet, and that I would come pick it up on Tuesday afternoon.  But she sent me an SMS with her address, to make sure I “got” it.

The bicycle is—how shall I put this?—a “classic.”  It’s reddish orange, and the front and back lights work, which is good, because the German police will pull you over if you are riding without them.  But the basket is smaller than I thought—my bookbag only fits if it is not full, which means I mostly have to carry it on my back = sweaty arrival.  And it has no gears…!  Sorry, that was a revelation for me, and it turns out that having gears or not matters, because I live on the right bank of the Elbe, which is elevated.  The reason my neighborhood used to be the most expensive in Europe is because of the stunning views and cool breezes way up above the stinking city = hills.

Nevertheless, one Sunday afternoon, when I should have been washing laundry or cleaning my room, I decided to take a bike ride instead.  The sun was shining on a beautiful autumn day, and it seemed like all of Dresden was out for a stroll, or a ride, or to fly a kite.  I had noticed a Schloss (castle or palace) a little ways up the river from me, so I checked the distance—something over 4 miles—and set off with some snacks, a book, and my camera.

Here’s where not having gears turned what might have been a joy ride into something of a workout as I pedaled through Loschwitz, Wachwitz, and Hosterwitz with their Biergartens and B&Bs.  (The place is probably a tourist trap during the summer.)  Thankfully the last bit was pretty flat as I rode past a pick-your-own farm and onto the grounds of Schloss Pillnitz.  I parked my bike and walked around for half an hour, enjoying the Elbe.  Then I sat and snacked and read a little.  Finally, I hopped on my bike for the half-hour ride home again.

Schloss Pillnitz is a popular site for walks and family outings; nearby is a steamboat stop; and it has a museum dedicated to Augustus the Strong (Protestant Elector of Saxony, and then Catholic King of Poland).  Augustus II got the estate after the death of his brother in 1694, and in 1706 he gifted it to his mistress, the famed beauty Anna Constantia von Brockdorff and Countess of Cosel.  The castle's official website doesn't give near as many juicy details as Wikipedia does: Anna Constantia had to wait a year for Augustus's previous mistress to be banished before she could take her place as the official royal concubine (hey, even kings must have standards: one wife tucked away in a castle somewhere* and one mistress at court at one time!).  They had two daughters and a son together.  But apparently Anna Constantia interfered too much in  Polish politics, and after Augustus took up with an appropriately Polish-Catholic mistress, she was confined to Schloss Pillnitz in 1713.  In 1715, she escaped to Berlin in an attempt to retrieve a secret document in which Augustus promised to marry her.  Unfortunately, she was captured and subsequently imprisoned at Burg Stolpen until her death in 1765.  

 

I suppose in part to erase the memories of his erstwhile favorite concubine, August had Schloss Pillnitz made into an Asian-themed getaway in the 1720s.  There is a Water Palace on the river, a Mountain Palace across the garden-courtyard, and a New Palace between them, reconstructed after the original burned in 1818.  I didn't go in any of the buildings, but the grounds were beautiful and at that time still quite green.

 

 

 

*--Christiane Eberdine von Brandenburg-Bayreuth lived in self-imposed exile from Augustus's court.  The marriage was for political reasons to begin with, and then she was really huffy over Augustus II's (husband) and III's (son) conversions to Catholicism for the sake of the Polish crown.  Remember that after the Thirty Years War, the residents of a state were to be the religion of their lord; so August the Strong did two things: he built a Catholic cathedral in Dresden, a stone's throw from the enormous and beautiful (and Protestant) Frauen Kirche; and he issued an edict that Saxons could remain Protestant.  Christiane was never crowned Queen of Poland and was respected for her faith as "Saxony's Pillar of Prayer".  She also fretted over her son's eternal soul after his conversion, as I learned at the exhibit on religion at the Hygiene-Museum (but that's a post for another day).