(Original Date: 12/2/2023) The day started off with a simple walk around the beautiful old town of Dresden, from the Catholic church of Kathedrale Sanctissimae Trinitatis around the beautiful snow covered Dresden Opera House and around to the famous Dresden Palace, we saw the famous Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady – weren’t able to get in due to a concert being held inside). And of course walking around the beautiful Christmas markets. But the main thing which was my mom’s absolute favorite and most anticipated thing was Dresden’s Militärhistorisches Museum – the Military History Museum. I didn’t wanna go, so she really had to convince me. It was chock full historical artifacts dating from the 1300’s all the way to modern times. It encompassed weapons, wagons, banners, uniforms, instruments documents and all kinds of other relics from the horrendous “30 Year’s War” (1618-1648) a sort of pre-world war which involved all the powers of Europe, leading to the deaths of up to around a staggering 6-8 million soldiers and civilians.

There was a section on the Napoleonic Wars, as he conquested (a word I just invented) his way through Germany and into Poland and Russia. And of course there was a large segment on WW1 & 2, as well as more recent engagements of the Bundeswehr (German Defense Force) in the Middle East. Outside also, was all kinds of old military vehicles from fighter plans, to tanks to personnel transports to missle launchers to even a boat.

After that all, we made out way back into town to visit through the markets which were surprisingly unfun. While extremely pretty, and decorated and themed so wonderfully, the main Dresden Christmas Market was just so jam-packed with people. Most of it was nothing but being almost literally crunched shoulder to shoulder with little itty bitty baby steps. It was so full we couldn’t even see much of the market because it was just packed so tightly with people. At least we could see it all from our hotel room.