Dresden 1996

The my little family is going to Germany for Christmas. It's been 11 years now since my first trip to Dresden, during Christmas break from Iowa State. How young I was then. Just look at the picture. I could be 12. Anyway, I was going to visit this girl I had only met four times. How insane was that? My heart had been crushed and battered around 6 months previous to meeting the cute girl in the fall. She was something and she really liked me. She made no doubt that I knew that, which was something I had never really experienced before. So I was going to go visit her for Christmas. Being young and dumb really paid off in that instance. I had these thoughts of, what if we don't get along when I get there and she kicks me out? I'll have to wander the streets of Dresden alone for two weeks until my return flight! As I think back now, it's patently ridiculous, but I did have that thought. It just happened to work out.

It was bloody cold when I got there. A cold snap had started the day I arrived. It hung around zero Fahrenheit most of the time and the temperature never reached above freezing until the day I had to fly home. Which is really odd for Germany, the weather there is generally milder than the Midwest. No one there could recall such a long cold, cold spell. At the time Anke was living in this old apartment building that had yet to be modernized. The place had a coal stove to heat it! And being a poor college student she was frugal with her coal. It was bloody cold!

The neighborhood she lived in was cool and trendy. We would go to these little bars that were only lit by candles. Another one was in the basement of an old castle. We met up with Maurice one evening while he was there visiting his Anke, and had tandoori chicken and many beers. We went camping in a cave up in the mountains with some of her friends one night. Had Christmas with her family and New Years in Prague. I'll tell you about Prague later in another post, but I love Prague.

The visit went mostly well and she never did kick me out. I never had to sleep on a park bench by a frozen fountain. Who'd have thought that I'd end up marrying the old roommate of Maurice's girlfriend at the time? That I'd be visiting again almost exactly 11 years later with Anke flying with me and our two very small children in tow? I was too young to have thoughts and dreams like that.