Day Seventeen: Dresden

I didn't know very much about Dresden, before we went there. Though I knew the phrase "firebombing of Dresden" and - to some extent - what it meant, I hadn't seen photos of the damage and didn't understand exactly what had happened.

On our first walk downtown, I started to realize that I was missing something rather... large.

Most all of the "older" buildings look like this:
I knew the damage was from the firebombing but - quite honestly - I couldn't figure out the patterns -- why were some bricks fine, and others completely blackened? (At this point, you may be saying "uh, Margie's a bit of an idiot," but you have to remember, I'd just come from Berlin. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what bombing-damage looked like up close, as well as what reconstruction looked like.)

So, for anyone who (like me) just didn't get it, this is what we're talking about reconstructing from:
The entire city looked like this.* The reconstruction has been done using, wherever possible, the original bricks. Thus, black stone and white stone.

Before the bombings, Dresden was known for being incredibly beautiful. Today, though there's still construction, it is one of the most amazing cities I've seen. Walking toward the river at night, I was (truly!) speechless at what I was seeing. When I finally did see photos of the damage (and the one above is in the "less gory" category, as tens of thousands of people died that night) I started sobbing. Whether or not one thinks there was a reasonable military reason to attack Dresden - and from what I've read, most people call it a "terrible mistake" - the methods and the results were horrifying.


*Note: this picture is of the Frauenkirche post-bombing, across the square from the church in my photo. I hate to say it, but Wikipedia does as good a job as any in addressing the timeline and such.