Walkabout 2009: Dresden

By the time we were done with Prague we still had a few more days in Europe looking at us right in the face. With nothing better to do, and not wanting to take too long of a train ride, we moseyed up to Dresden. We had no idea President Obama was doing the exact same thing.

When we arrived at the main Dresden train station, I immediately commented on the large number of cop cars there. Honestly, I was being snarky and figured there was just a police station near by. That was until we got to our hotel.

We weren\’t staying in the city center. When I hit Orbitz up for hotel rooms, almost all of them came back at over $200. I didn\’t know why. I just assumed that Dresden was very popular this time of year.

The tram we took to our hotel gave us our first clue as to what was going on.

But when we got to our hotel we saw this.

The intersection the hotel was on was shut down and a crowd had formed hoping to get a glimpse of the US President. Unfortunately, I guess, this route was a decoy and Barack never showed up.

The next morning, after packing, we were headed to Frankfurt to decompress for a day before our flight home. The only problem was the streets were blocked again.

No problem. There was another train station three tram stops from our hotel. We can either take our train from there (hopefully) or we could take a train from this station to the main one. Either way it was better than just standing around.

We hiked to the train station and just as we were to cross the street to the train station, we were told we could not cross. A friendly police officer informed us that President Obama\’s motorcade would be passing by in about an hour and that no one was allowed to move until after he\’s passed.

So I guess we did end up just standing around.

After what seemed to be much more than an hour and enduring a light sprinkle, our friendly Polizie announced, \”Here he comes!\”

And there he was. What, you don\’t believe me?