9/14/23: One of the ways to get to Phil's apartment building from his sister's apartment building is by walking through a cemetery. A few of the headstones have a window that looks into the grave. Fortunately, you can only see the casket, and not the actual decomposing body. (I had a dream featuring these types of graves that night. :P) We walked through the cemetery to Phil's apartment for breakfast of toast, and filled our water bottles, and Phil made snacks for our hike in the countryside of Dresden. When looking up some of the pictures I took that day, Google named the area the Sandstone mountains, otherwise I don't know if I would consider it hiking in the mountains. It felt more like an area with steep hills, and cliffs. I looked it up to gather further information and found that they are also known as the Sandstone Highlands. The Sandstone Mountains overlook the Elbe Valley, and have the Elbe River going through the valley. The particular area I hiked in with Phil this day was a touristy area as it featured a castle bridge called the Bastei Bridge. Hundreds of years ago a castle also stood there and was known as the Neurathan Castle. People come to the area mostly for the bridge, but also for the views. The Sandstone Mountains are 3/4th in Southeastern Germany (The Dresden area) and 1/4th apart of the Czech Republic. The highest parts of the mountain range are located in a city confusingly named Saxon Switzerland in the Czech Republic, and are around 2,000 ft. The person who had named the city did so because it reminded him of his homeland. The particular area we hiked was at about 1000 ft.
To get to the countryside of Dresden you take a train. Once we had picked out some seats and had been in the train for a couple of minutes Phil fell asleep. This did make me nervous, as of course I wouldn't know where we were supposed to get off at to be able to wake him, but Phil woke up before we had driven past our destination. Notice that I hadn't been the one to fall asleep. :P. Once you get off the train, there a series of shops and of course biergartens. To get to the hiking trails you have to take a small ferry the couple of feet it takes to get to the other side of the river. There are various trails of different levels, but Phil and I settled for a shorter but not too simple of a trail for our hike. The hikers in front of me had been smoking cigarettes, which had decreased the amount of oxygen that my lungs were taking in at that moment even more. I wasn't too nervous about the hike, as I had hiked in the mountains in Colorado before. The stairs were steep as you can imagine, and at one point my lungs were screaming at me to take a break. What made it worse was the fact at some point Phil had taken the lead, and was taking way longer strides. It was hard to keep up with him. He reassured me that we had almost made it to the steepest part, and he was right. The trail became a little easier and less steep, and the incredible views made up for all those steep steps. To look out into the sandstone cliffs and Elbe Valley with the Elbe River flowing though. There are different stopping points where you can get different perspectives of the valley as you walk further on the paths. We stopped and had our snack in a less busy area of the trail, but equally as beautiful. To gaze upon the valley while eating cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes, and eating mozzarella sandwiches. (legit just bread, butter, some mozzarella cheese, and lettuce. :P.) Phil had made another type of sandwich too, but I don't remember what the ingredients were, and hadn't tried it. The whole hike was about 5 miles roundtrip. After our hike we sat down on a bench overlooking the river while waiting for the ferry. It was the same river we had sat and looked at the day before, just in a different place. I pointed out how the ferry had a German flag on it, and how I hadn't seen any German flags before then. We discussed how weird of a concept the pledge of allegiance actually is for school children and some of the other differences between Germany and the United States. We discussed the differences a lot during our conversations. Again there were geese by the shoreline of the river. We sat looking at the river for around 20 minutes before taking the ferry over. Before getting on the platform to wait for the train Phil and I ate authentic bratwurst for lunch.
We got on the train, and when we got back to Phil's neighborhood we went to the grocery store to pick up some of the ingredients needed for dinner that night. Phil had said I could grab something if I wanted. One of the things that grabbed my attention whenever in the grocery stores was the selection of juices. There were so many juices to choose from, and they all looked so good. I realized while looking at the labels that oh right....I don't know German, but was drawn to this blue colored juice. I was able to translate the fact it was agave juice, with possibly apple, and coconut water. I looked around at the other juices before just deciding to choose that one. (it was funny seeing all the German words on everything and my mind trying to pronounce the words in my head probably way wrong.) Phil and Anna both pointed out how the blue color of the juice was concerning, when that's exactly what had drawn me to it in the first place. (Definitely a difference in European and American perspective.) The United States definitely uses color as a draw to get people to buy things. On the walk back to Phil's apartment Phil asked about what words I knew in German and had me pronounce them. I knew hello, good morning, please, no, yes, and thank you, and pronounced them all correctly, and I guess that was pretty impressive even though it definitely wasn't. Knowing tons of words in Spanish is not helpful at all in Germany. Knowing how much of my ancestry is of German descent maybe I should have tried learning German instead, but also Spanish was probably way easier for me to learn when in school.
For dinner that night Anna made German Potato Salad, and Phil made grilled cheese. (Legit put thick slices of different flavored cheeses on the grill, and grilled them, no bread. This was no sandwich. :P) While preparing dinner two of Phil and Anna's friends from church were riding by on bikes and stopped by. They ate dinner with us when it was done and conversed about different things being sure to speak in English and include me in conversation. Quite a bit of the conversations I had with everyone in Germany involved me trying to figure out the specific American term they were trying to explain when describing something. One of their friends was an occupational therapist who had a client that she worked with who had Autism, so we had similar career paths. A lot of people in Germany are pretty fluent in English and learn it from a young age so it was easy for them to switch to using English around me.
After their friends had left and dinner was cleaned up, everyone decided to take an early night. I was more than happy to agree, to take some time to wind down for the night and relax. The cemetery was closed at night so we would have to walk a couple blocks extra to get to Phil's sister's apartment like we had done the night before, but there was another option. A moped. Phil and Anna's main mode of transportation around Dresden was bicycle, public transit, and moped. Apparently the term moped is used both in German and English. Phil first tried asking if I would rather walk or take the moped by calling it a scooter. When he explained that you sit on it, and don't stand on it, but it wasn't a motorcycle I answered with "moped" which Phil was shocked to know is what we call it in English as well. I was a little nervous of the idea, but being on the actual moped felt really secure, and I wasn't ever afraid of flying off. We put on our helmets and drove to the building, and it was so much fun. On the day I had arrived in Dresden Phil had talked about us riding bicycles around the city instead of walking. I gave the honest opinion that I hadn't ridden a bike in over ten years and wasn't sure if I would get easily winded or not. There are also a lot more people out on bicycles so factoring in not having other bikes crash into you, and sharing a very narrow road with cars when you're not used to it, didn't seem like the best plan, so we decided against it.
In the next blogpost which talks about 9/15 I went to Prague by myself. Both Phil and Anna had to work that particular day so I took a 2 hour bus ride and explored Prague on foot for the day once arriving, so look forward to that tomorrow or in the next few days. :)
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