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posts about sächsische schweiz.

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last weekend we travelled to dresden. with perfect weather, we (re-)explored the city and parts of the sächsische schweiz. we first started with a hop-on/hop-off sightseeing tour which led us among other things to the blue wonder, schwebebahn dresden, the funicular railway, the “balcony of dresden” (luisenhof), the dresden-neustadt station’s entrance hall and the “toilet cinema”. some impressions from these places can be seen below:

here are also some shots from during the night, mainly showing dresden downtown:

finally, we did an excursion to the sächsische schweiz, namely to the bastei and the adjacent neurathen castle. from there, we descended down to rathen and took a paddle wheeler from there back to dresden. here are some impressions. (you can see “our” paddle wheeler in the photos above, it was the “pillnitz”.)

as you can see, we had a great time with perfect weather. most of the time during the excursion, there wasn’t a single cloud on the sky!

in the beginning of april, we did a trip to the bastei. i never got around uploading some of the photos. so, finally, here are a few impressions.

here are some impressions from a stop-over in schirgiswalde.

on my way back from berggießhübel, i visited pirna a bit, where i found the monumentum of the grey busses, reminding of the aktion t4 by the nazis in order to murder mentally ill and otherwise handicapped people. this monumentum exists in two copies, one of them being stationary and one moving. the one in pirna is the moving one. here are a few picturs:

yesterday, i travelled to berggießhübel, near to dresden, to visit the marie louise stolln, an old ore mine which was turned into a show mine and opened for public in 2006. tours are very cheap (just five euros) and approximately one hour long. here are some impressions from the tour. (i wish i would have had more time for the photos, in particular having a tripod and no need to hurry, and no one running in my view. these photos are taken with iso 3200 and maximal aperture of my wideangle zoom, which is between f/3.5 and f/4.5 – i guess this explains the crappy quality…)

one word on reaching the show mine: the official website as well as the flyer only mention going there by car. but obviously you can also reach it by means of public transport. namely, you can use the vvo page to find a trip to the station “kurhaus” in berggießhübel. from that stop, the mine is just a few minutes walk away. note that the bus back to pirna only goes once per hour, or even less, so make sure to check the connections for your way back so you won’t miss the bus by less than one minute as i did today.
and, in case you’re claustrophobic: just don’t go. it’s really tight down there.

last week, we visit the borsberg artificial ruin in pillnitz, dresden. we were lucky, the weather was mostly good, and we managed to return just before a thunderstorm went off. here are some impressions:

in case you’re more interested in the ruin, and understand german, you might want to read this article.

on saturday, i visited the rock 2008, a one-day festival held on königstein fortress, located in the beautiful landscape of the saxon switzerland, together with a friend. here are some pictures from the fortress:

after strolling around the fortress interior a bit, we walked near to the stage to watch the first band, krieger, a german hard rock band. usually, the first band(s) playing on a festival have the ungrateful job of killing some time, while most of the crowd hopes they’ll stop soon. often, they aren’t exactly experienced or aren’t too good. but not krieger; they played a pretty solid kind of hard rock, maybe not exactly my style, but it was good and we enjoyed it. some photos:

after krieger, a short break took place when the stage was prepared for lacrimas profundere, a german gothic metal band. the break went on pretty fast, and the band entered the stage. i haven’t heard them before, just their name. i think i have to listen to some of their albums before i can give a better judgement, but they sounded pretty good. a photo:

a very noticeable thing about this festival was that all stage reconstructions were done very fast, and the sound quality was really good all the time. i haven’t seen this combination ever before; often, it seems that the reconstruction times were eternal and the sound quality still really bad.
another admireable thing was the strict adheration of the time table. the first two bands had like 30 minutes, and the whole festival was planned to be over by around 23 o’clock, and so they managed to do. even though the doors opened a few minutes later than planned. (well, please admit it, have you ever experienced some festival or concert without any delay?)
anyway, the third band was schandmaul, a german medieval metal band. i know a bunch of people who like them a lot, but this doesn’t change the fact that i managed to not know a lot of them except a few songs, maybe. schandmaul did a very nice show. they managed to get the last bits of the party rocking and rolling. definitely a very good live band. some photos:

then, finally, it was time for the big stars of the evening, the finnish cello rockers apocalyptica. i’ve already seen them last november in zürich, and they were one of the main reasons why i travelled so far for this festival. the stage design was as usual: four large metal chairs, formed like skulls, with a huge drumkit in the middle:

their performance was, as usual, excellent. it’s always amazing how eicca and perttu manage to combine heavy head banging with playing their cellos perfectly. unfortunately, antero wasn’t playing with a burning cello this time, though. besides that, they managed to let the crowd freak out, and played lots of great songs, including some of my very favorites like prologue (apprehension) from reflections and the norwegian black metal classichall of the mountain king from cult, featuring paavo stomping around the stage while playing the mountain king. simply great. here are some photos:

after maybe one and a half hour, everything was over. we took a peek at the merchandizing booth, where the guys from lacrimas profundere were waiting for their fans to talk, being photographed, autographing and talking. then, we took the bus down to the city of königstein and walked back to our hostel, where its owner, lutz, was waiting for the concert attendees at a nice bonfire.
well, i think this concert/festival qualifies for being one of the best i’ll attend this year. the technical stuff was marvellous, the timing good (except that at least lacrimas profundere should have played a bit longer and, well, apocalyptica could have played the whole day anyway :-) ). all four bands were ranging from good to excellent, and in particular the last two made the crowd go crazy. (even though i still don’t get it why on earth one wants to have a mosh pit while a gothic metal band is playing. but then, hell, kiddies aren’t exactly predictable…)