From Dresden with Love

We are pleased to include these memories of Andrea’s visit to Dresden (and beyond). In the second part of the blog she visits Dresden meeting many new friends, has a guest teaching  session at Dresden university and meets Patrick, Annika, Lucas, Reiner She performs at the FrauenKirche and visits some of the local landmarks. Click here to go back to the first part of the blog.

Monday

Monday morning is a bit of a daze. Did I do anything? I think I stayed at Annika’s and wrote poems and rested. I’m still feeling a bit ill and my body is very shaky. I realise I’ve been eating too many of these vitamin sweets for my throat and I’m probably overdosing on B12. A few hours later and I feel fine again. I’m with Annika and Rainer waiting in the back room of the Frauenkirche to perform poems in the afternoon service. I step out of the room and sit on a chair at the front. A sea of people. A vaulted marvel of architecture. The altar behind us is gold and faux marble interspersed with stones and sculpture from the burned shell of the first church.

‘A pastel sunset in a tower

Winter in Summer

Italy in Germany

A heaven raised from Hell’

(from Frauenkirche)

 We bow to the altar and after an introduction from Rainer I deliver my poems. Rainer translates each poem and we alternate between English and German. Two poems is enough. Outside an American couple approaches to tell me how much they enjoyed the work. We chat for a bit. They are on a grand tour of their own, stopping on so many countries it makes my head spin. The three of us, plus Patrick and Volkmar end up in a Bavarian bar in the square – just like the one in Birmingham. I notice that many of the waiting staff are foreigners. A Korean staff member serves a big party of Koreans behind us. We are waited on by a German girl in traditional Bavarian dress, but there are African staff too. Being from Coventry, with a Rwandan husband, I’d immediately felt the lack of diversity among people in Zittau –the only exceptions were two of the students in the lab we visited. But Dresden is more cosmopolitan and feels more comfortable for me. There are many tourists, and it’s lovely to hear different languages being spoken.

We leave the bar and head to Lucas’ studio, where I am utterly enchanted by his gorgeous paintings and sculptures. From the walls, beady-eyed boys juggle, louche men smoke or get spiked in the face by red stiletto’s, a tall wooden man welcomes us with open arms and owls watch us. We sit on the floor, chatting about culture. It’s so natural and lovely. I feel so relaxed and I remind myself that everyone here is speaking in English, just so I can understand. I’m incredibly grateful and humbled.

Tuesday

Rainer picks me up and we go to the University where I deliver a one and a half hour lecture to student English teachers about using poetry in the classroom. I read some work, talk about my experiences, and get them to use poetry to help with reflective practice. They are listening – but are they enjoying it? Not sure! Then we write and perform a renga together – every single one of them writes a poem and gets up to read it, and they are so good. At the end I get the classic German version of applause – raps on the desk! Yay! Marc, whose class it is, accompanies me to watch the students (The Tudors) rehearse an Agatha Christie story they adapted themselves. ‘Poirot’ has grown a huge moustache and delivers all his lines in an accent. The actors are brilliant and as it’s in English, I can understand perfectly. I honestly think they could give the Knives Out on Netflix a run for their money.

Marc treats Rainer and I to a Vietnamese lunch and leaves us to explore the city centre together. I see hidden socialist murals, palaces and museums. We find an ice-cream parlour the likes of which I’ve never experienced in the UK. I have a smoothie for my throat.

Back home, (isn’t it funny how quickly we begin to use that word?) I wait for Annika to finish work and we go to Schillergarten to meet up with a welcoming crowd of English ex-pats and Germans for a big meal. It’s a lot of fun and the lady opposite orders that raw pork dish I saw back in Zittau. I find a beer I like, but the glass is so big, I don’t have the strength to lift it across the table to say cheers! I meet Laura who I’d met in Coventry, and Andy, Maria and many others (apologies, my memory for names is awful). Rainer, Patrick and Volkmar are there, too. Everyone is very gracious and we all have a good time. The Elbe is visible through the window, spanned by the Blue Wonder bridge and I hear about the bridge that gave way when Navkiran was visiting Dresden on the exchange.

‘Each day I borrow different eyes

Images multiply into kalaidoscopes

Timelines run like yellow trams down intersection lines

And Moravian stars into light cones’

(from the poem Dear Dresden)

Wednesday

The castles I saw yesterday on the banks of the Elbe from Schillergarten have captured my imagination. Rainer takes me to see them. We run into a man cos-playing August the Great in  this Japanese and Italian inspired palace. There’s a ceramics shop there – a treasure trove right out of a Ghibli film, and little owls, fledging from a nest just inside a window on the second floor of the courtyard. Owls tumble down the roof and into the gutter, their parents squeaking from chimneys.

Then, there is a castle originally built by  Scottish Lord Findlater, who came to Dresden to escape a feud with his neighbour and to live in peace with his boyfriend. Findlater’s castle was destroyed and rebuilt by a Florentine Prince for his commoner bride. The central palace was built to house the planners and architects of the third castle. 

‘History casts slatted shadows

Like the blinds in the green house on Augsburger Street’

(from the poem Dear Dresden)

The views of the river are gorgeous. Once of the successive castle owners, who made a fortune from toiletries, left it to the people, insisting that affordable food should always be available there. I order a sausage salad and I get what looks like a bowl of pasta. Nothing green at all, except for  minuscule pieces of gherkin. It takes me a while to work out that the ‘pasta’ is actually sausage – the salad is a huge bowl of sausage!

On the way back to the car from the last castle, we see a black squirrel by the path. It sniffs around the bottom of the tree peeking at us and runs in front of a young lady and her Grandmother across the path. None of the four of us has ever seen anything like it. Later, I will Google it and find it is extremely rare. I can tell you that they are also extremely cute!

Wednesday evening the team and I go to the Adult Education Centre to present the film of ‘It Takes A City’, a Talking Birds theatre production about bomb disposal. The film is edited from live recordings of the two shows we put on in the old and new Cathedrals for the anniversary of the Coventry Blitz in 2025. After an introduction in German from Rainer, people watch in silence and I watch people watching. I think it’s going OK. A long break allows everyone to chat, get drinks and snacks and then I perform a few poems, inviting Patrick on stage to perform his and Rainer’s joint translation of one of them – The Dresden Peace Rose. I invite Patrick to perform some of his own work, too. At the event I meet another Coventry/Dresden Exchange artist –Reinhard – who’d actually attended the live performance  of ITAC in Cov. The evening is well received and the turn-out is great. Afterwards we enjoy the stunning sunset from the roof of the building.

Thursday

Rainer and I go into Dresden City Centre and he takes me through Palaces of grinning satyrs and baroque knights.

‘Dresden hides her pain behind a beautiful smile’

(from Reversals)

We go over the bridge to Neustadt, for the first time. I wanted to get a present for Annika and Rainer knows a shop here we can try. This is the Rive Gauche of Dresden – it has a younger, more chilled vibe. There are street performers and lots of people, but almost no tourists. It’s a very different Dresden. We go to another Italian ice-cream place and I follow Rainer’s recommendation, choosing ice-cream rolled in chocolate and pistachios topped by chocolate ganache and cream. I understand the person who, when asked to describe their favourite thing about Germany, replied ‘Italian Ice Cream’.  We find Annika’s present , and  pass the bar that Vladimir Putin was banned from entering when he revisited the city. There’s more graffiti in Neustadt, but it’s still so clean, much cleaner than British cities, with lots of leafy park areas and playgrounds.

I spend some time in the afternoon going through my notes, journalling and processing. In the evening there’s another performance planned. Through golden light we walk up a long lane after a short drive. Honesty lines the path – dried papery windows catching the sun with an amber glow. There’s a blackboard with my name on it, and we enter the small Vineyard in Radebeul I’m to perform in. Familiar faces and one new one turn up. This is another event organised by Stephan and it’s good to see him again the Lonesome Lakes. In such a beautiful venue, looking out over the vines in comfortable shelters, we eat gourmet food and drink wine from Meisen. I have rye toast with pea guacamole, micro herbs, olives, avocado and sun-dried tomato and Annika and Patrick have what I can only describe as lard on toast. Except that the lard is vegetarian and comes in a little pot mixed with nuts and candied peel. It tastes good. The last time I ate anything like that was in my Nanna’s kitchen a very, very long time ago – beef dripping from the roast the day before.

The sun sets as we drive back through Radebeul and Annika, Patrick and I go for a drink at a local Irish bar to round off my Dresden adventure. The World Cup is on TV, but it doesn’t bother us at all. It’s a lovely end to an extraordinary trip.

Andrea Mbarushimana 

Acknowledgements

I’m truly grateful to everyone involved in funding, planning and supporting my exchange to Dresden, including the Cov contingent; CAIF who funded and supported my exchange and all the other exchanges, kind and generous Monika – flag-bearer, organiser and team assembler, without whom I’d never have got there at all and Nikolai – who helped organise and found Oliver. 

Thanks to everyone at Lola especially Stephan – who arranged my attendance at the Festival and Radebeul and funded my flight and stay in Zittau, and Colin who spent time looking over my poems and performing wonderfully alongside me. Thanks to Oliver – who generously gave me his time and the benefit of his extraordinary knowledge and insights into Zittau.

Thanks to German British Society in Dresden and the Dresden massive – Annika – the best most generous host ever, Patrick – my favourite German Poet, Volkmar, Marc and TU Dresden, the venue staff at Volkshochschuke (Adult Ed), The Frauenkirche, The Tudors and students, Lucas, Andy who kept turning up for us and everyone else who attended events.

If you missed the first part of the blog click here.