This is the third episode of a true story of a school trip to a lost world… East Germany just before the wall came down… (episodes 1 and 2 in Witchtapes 46 and 47)

We were happy to leave the town Erfurt behind us, where my classmates and I had spent our very first night on the other side of the iron curtain.  For all of us Erfurt was an eerie ghost town with empty streets, covered in thick fog and the air was so polluted that some of my classmates even had trouble to breathe.  On top of that, the hotel was a shabby place with brown tap water and horrible food, including a murky substance which was supposed to be yoghurt (which I ate but most of my classmates went on a voluntary hunger strike, probably hoping things would get better the next few days).  Actually, we felt so uncomfortable in Erfurt that we all wanted to go back to Belgium.
It was a long and shaky bus ride from Erfurt to Dresden in the outermost south-eastern corner of the German Democratic Republic.  Actually, we rode on a very bumpy concrete highway which had been built by the Nazi regime in the 1930s and hadn’t seen much repairs in the next 50 years.  The mood of the schoolgirls was getting better while the sun started to shine.  And we were slowly getting used to the sight of all these primitive Trabant cars on the road.  But when entering the City of Dresden, something broke down in the front suspension of the bus (it turned out that it couldn’t be repaired in East Germany, which meant that a few days later the bus would crawl at a slow pace from Dresden to Berlin before finally getting the much-needed repairs in West-Berlin).  When entering Dresden, I was shocked to see that there were still some buildings in ruin and visibly blackened by the allied fire-bombing of 1945, which was already 42 years earlier.  
Luckily, after getting out of the bus it became immediately clear that this city was a surprisingly vibrant and pleasant place.  Up to that moment, we didn’t interact much with the locals.  We thought that was pretty normal in communist countries, where people from the West (even 17 year old schoolgirls) were regarded suspiciously and we thought it was more or less forbidden for the locals to talk with tourists from the West.  And we also believed that the population of all communist countries had been brainwashed with propaganda, so I couldn’t imagine that it was possible to have a pleasant conversation with the locals.
Luckily, in Dresden we quickly found out this was not the case.  To our great surprise, the local people were really nice and friendly towards us… and visibly warmer and more laid-back than the West-Germans.  Their mentality was even pretty similar to the Belgian style, so it was very easy to connect and we chatted (in our broken German) with lots of lovely and sweet teenage girls and boys, who were apparently very eager to get in touch with foreigners.  This made our stay in Dresden very pleasant and all the Belgian schoolgirls started to feel very much at ease.  The hotel was way better than the one back in Erfurt and although they also served the same peculiar substance named ‘yoghurt’, all my class mates finally got hungry again and spontaneously gave up their hunger strike.
The town of Dresden was really beautiful, at least the part of the historical center which had already been rebuilt… some old building were still being reconstructed while the most famous church (the Frauenkirche) was still a pile of rubble back then.  Actually, reconstruction of this church would only start after the reunification of Germany and fortunately this beautiful monument has now been fully restored in all its glory, symbolically completing the rise from the ashes of the beautiful and vibrant city of Dresden…

Mix self-produced by https://soundcloud.com/feinheitsbrei

Photo : Kunsthofpassage, Neustadt, Dresden
Photo credits : frantic00

Witchtape #63 | Guest Wizz : Feinheitsbrei

Witches are the guardians of the forests.  We're not evil or dark, just a bit shy.  And even surprisingly sweet and kind... as long as you respect the forest.

Art project of Hekske ('Little Witch' in my native Flemish language).
Founded on the 22nd of January 2017

Avatar and wallpaper by Ironika (Irina Alexandrovna)

Witchtape #63 | Guest Wizz : Feinheitsbrei

Hekske ❋ The Magic Witchtapes