Day 8: Dresden

We, dear readers, already paid tribute to August the Strong yesterday. But if you are in Dresden, as we are today, you can hardly avoid him, Frederick Augustus I.

When we visited the Catholic Court Church (seat of the Bishop of the Dresden-Meissen diocese) we were told that he had "only" seven mistresses in addition to his wife. So the rumors about his 354 children don't seem entirely plausible. He converted to the Catholic faith so that he - the Elector of Saxony - could finally be king, namely the King of Poland. His grave is in the Wawel Castle in Krakow, but his heart rests in an amphora in the crypt of the Court Church - you can supposedly hear it beating when a young, pretty woman passes by...

The inventiveness with which the Catholic community gradually rebuilt the destroyed church after the war is impressive - despite the socialist government's criticism of religion and the church. The priest at the time asked for support from all over the world so that the project took on an official character and the GDR leadership at least did not block the reconstruction, but on the contrary basked in the glory of the rebuilt, beautiful church.

In the "ZwingerExperience" museum we were able to follow the architectural plans of the Elector and Polish King in 3D animation.

In the afternoon we met up with a lovely colleague and his wife and their children. We had a lot of fun together and learned that in Dresden, a distinction is made between an adult and a child's portion of Obstler...

The "rest day" is now over, tomorrow morning we will saddle up our bikes again and - God willing - leave Germany for the Czech Republic.