Dresden

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I spent a week in Dresden. When I wasn’t work­ing, I was explor­ing, either alone, or with my co-work­er Hazel. The city was completely flattened in the Second World War (point­lessly in my opin­ion- it happened right at the end of the war, and Dresden wasn’t an indus­tri­al target). The DDR regime didn’t do much to restore the old town centre, but after reuni­fic­a­tion it was all put back togeth­er as much as possible as it was before (they kept a lot of the stones in a ware­house). The the city is a strange mix of restored Baroque, super-spruced up restored build­ings, dilap­id­ated build­ings wait­ing to be restored, and randomly spaced gaps of bomb sites that haven’t been built on yet. The setting of the city is along the River Elbe- you can see the wide banks left empty here- it’s prone to flood­ing. The local accent also sounds very much like a Brummie speak­ing German.

DDR Museum

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I’m fascin­ated by the history of the Cold War. Both the polit­ic­al side, and the social history of people’s every­day lives. I’ve always been extra fascin­ated by the former DDR, both because I can speak the language and because they tried so hard to be a “model” Iron Curtain soci­ety. You read about people being “intern­al emigrés”. Being a good comrade and work­er on the surface, but intern­ally escap­ing to their own world via drink or just plain daydream­ing. I suppose that’s what I’d do in the situ­ation. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but I’m currently writ­ing a zine about the trip this summer, so I’ll save them for there.

Starkes Vier­tel- photos of Dresden Neustadt in the 70s and 80s

When I was in Dresden, I bought a photo­graphy book by a local photo­graph­er. Günter Starke lived in Dresden Neustadt, the area just across the river from the histor­ic­al centre, in the 70s and 80s, and took a lot of photos. Despite the name, Neustadt is full of old build­ings that escaped bomb­ing during the war (it’s only new compared to the baroque city centre), and in the commun­ist days, the local coun­cil concen­trated on build­ing blocks of flats and hous­ing estates to house famil­ies.

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