While the stubbornly detail-obsessed nostalgic in me would have preferred being delivered to the Hauptbahnhof in a forward-facing window seat of a Deutsche Bahn train, I was instead dropped off at Bahnhof Neustadt by a middle-aged Berliner driving a late-model Ford hatchback (arranged through a ride-sharing service). So began my triumphant return to Dresden in November 2011!
My friend Chris and I have at least one thing in common: Some level of appreciation for and/or experience with Germany. While I can only admire from a distance his dedication to learning the language and immersing himself in the culture, we still used to regularly share our experiences living
there over beers at East Village dives. So when he finally took the ultimate step in his embrace for the culture and moved from New York to Berlin the Summer of 2011, we agreed that at some point in the future, he could show me around Berlin, and I could show him around Dresden. Bundled with a last-minute visit to my dear brother in London, Chris and I made that seemingly-hypothetical trip a reality!Where were we? Ah, yes, Bahnhof Neustadt! Needless to say, the first thing we did was grab a Wegbier for our trek to the hostel. Where was the hostel located? Oh, just on the corner of one of those quintessentially beautiful, narrow-street blocks in the heart of Neustadt, on Louisenstrasse
and Goerlitzerstrasse--one block away from Katy's Garage (more on that later)!So we get checked in, it's around 8 pm, and it's freezing cold, mind you. So Chris is ready to relax and grab a bier at one of these world-famous-according-to-Jeff Neustadt night spots he's been hearing so much about. Me? Fuck no. I'd been waiting four fucking years for this. So I put my foot down: We're going to the river.
"Aren't we going to that part of town tomorrow anyway?"
"Yup."
"Is it a short walk?"
"Nope."
"Is it a particularly nice walk?"
"Nope."
So we suffer through the cold, walking through Albertplatz, then down Hauptrasse, all to the accompaniment of Chris' not-too-serious-complaining. We emerge from the pedestrian underpass that crosses Meissnerstrasse, walk down the steps that connect the Augustusbruecke to my old favorite Biergarten, and then, the angels start to sing, causing any complaints to cease immediately:
The View is everything I remember it to be and so much more. And it's not just nostalgia: Despite the fact that we were cold and hungry, we spent an hour hanging out right there on the Neustadt bank of the Elbe (Elbebiering, if you will). Chris told me that if everything else about our trip to Dresden proved to be a failure, The View itself was worth the journey from Berlin, the cost of the hostel, and so on and so forth.
Next stop: Team Ararat. Not much to say here, except that it is delicious, and the staff is still friendly. I will omit our subsequent Ararat visit, and the visit to the Doener shop across the street from Ararat that we once ate at just because we were embarrassed to be having two Doeners within a four-hour period.
Which brings us to what was, ironically, supposed to be the highlight of our first night, but ended up being the biggest disappointment of the whole trip: Katy's Garage. I basically felt like a parent chaperoning a high school dance. So we did what any good chaperones would do: Played foosball while reminiscing about the days when I, too, was young enough to join in the fun on the dance floor (the night we went was mostly 90's alternative rock, e.g. Nirvana and The Offspring).
So it turns out that Lebowski Bar, which I had once frequented with The Ohioans, is more for folks of our age and tastes. It's small and cramped, it's cheap, it has an ironic/vintage/quirky theme, and the patrons are all in their mid-20's clad with facial hair and skinny jeans: It is, as Chris pointed out to me after several Radebergers, New York. I laughed at myself for being "that guy" who seeks the familiarity of home when abroad--but hey, I didn't care. I was happy. I was in Dresden.
Saturday, our only full day in Dresden, was for being tourists (mainly for Chris' benefit) and nostalgia-seekers (solely for my benefit). I found myself much more appreciative of gawking at all that Innere Altstadt has to offer--Hofkirche, Frauenkirche, Semperoper, der Zwinger--than I ever was when living there. So much, in fact, that I insisted on a classy, high-price lunch at the Radeberger restaurant, built into the bluff of and overlooking the Elbe.
After hours of soaking in the beauty of Innere Altstadt with my renewed, matured sense of appreciation, it was time to begin the walk down memory lane--or, in this case, Pragerstrasse. There's nothing particularly pleasant about the walk up Pragerstrasse from Innere Altstadt to the Hautpbahnhof; in fact, many would call it downright unpleasant, in that whole shopping mall meets Times Square kind of way. But it is a walk that I once took so often for so many different reasons with so many different people, that it formed the physical backbone of an era of my life.
We walked out of the still-stunningly-Baroque Hauptbahnhof; crossed St Petersberger Strasse with its maze of above-ground, elevated pipes; and through the little overgrown plaza that serves as the shortcut to Hoschschulstrasse. Walking up the gently-sloped, half-cobbled, half-crumbling-asphalt street, to that glorious shining beacon of green that I once called home, we took in the other DDR-era buildings flanking the street, famously compared to 1960's American middle schools by none other than my own brother Alex. Chris thanks me for the opportunity to see the "real" Dresden--a city best known internationally for its near-obliteration in World War II and subsequent reconstruction--putting to rest any guilt I had for dragging him through the setting of my old life.And it was just a setting. Walking around Dresden four years later felt like walking around a movie set. The buildings, the streets, the bars, the doener shops, the trams--they were all physically there, but any relationship I once had with them, and the people with whom I shared these experiences, are not there. Two days seemed sufficient for me to get my nostalgic fix, and for Chris to get an idea of the city, but I couldn't help but think of what I wouldn't get a chance to do: Ride my bike along the Elberadweg to Pirna, eat at the Mensa, drink at the student bars... Of course what I really wanted to do was relive those three months, but that is of course silly.
Chris' open-minded embrace of the otherwise mundane gave me the confidence to continue the nostalgia tour right through the University campus! And so began the old commut
e: Crossing 
the roaring six-way mega-intersection of Zellescherweg and Bergstrasse--in lockstep with the phases of the traffic signals and the herds of students on foot and bike, through the overgrown courtyards amongst the gracefully-aging campus buildings, past the Mensa, and up the promenade to Barkhausen Bau. Meanwhile, Chris was using the campus buildings to prime me on his new-found passion for brickwork. He was particularly delighted to find a quite excellent example of English Cross in Dresden.The walk through campus conveniently brings us to the terminal station of the number 3 tram, which we take, via a transfer to the 10 at the Hauptbahnhof, to Grossergarten. And I even bought a ticket! With its combination of the ornately-landscaped sitting and gathering plazas of a Parisian park, English-style winding paths
through more naturalistic landscapes, sports fields, and performance art spaces--tied together by the overgrown aesthetic of a German park, a DDR-built narrow-guage children’s railroad, and a 17th-centuray Baroque palace--Grossergarten is, to me, the ideal urban park. This is where I was re-born as a park-goer. I had no trouble locating my old favorite bench!
But unlike when I could go to Grossergarten every day after work and read on my favorite bench until 8 or 9 pm, it was winter, and darkness was fast approaching. So we hightailed it to the 13 tram which brought us back to our hostel in Neustadt, and a long night of Ararat Doeners and Radebergers at Lebowski Bar. I left Dresden the next morning with a hangover fit for the Summer of 2007.
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