Meißen

It's been raining all weekend, but Friday was a gorgeous day for traveling!  The train ride to Meißen only took about half an hour.  We went to the Porcelain Factory/Museum first.  Turns out Meißen was the first place in Europe to figure out the asian secret of white porcelain.  Even today, most of it is made by hand!  That probably explains why nothing was cheaper than 80 euro!

I enjoyed being able to look at all the artwork though, especially some of the figurines cast from old models.  There was one of an middle-aged woman and a young man getting married called "Die Geldheirat" (the Money Marriage) and another with a young woman handing a baby to a shocked rich man that read "Die Überraschung" (the Surprise.)  I guess people don't change much over time!

After the ceramics factory we got our last free BU lunch.   I went all out and ordered baked catfish and a local on-tap beer.  Delicious!  Danke B.U.!  Then we walked up to an old castle and church and walked through the museum there.  Everything was medieval-style, and I had fun trying to read the old German love poems written on the walls.  Everything was decorated, either with script (in German or Latin), or huge paintings depicting important events in Kings' and Princes' lives.  Silke and I attempted translating some of the Latin.  She remembers more of it than I do!  I don't even know how many languages that woman knows, but it's unbelievable.  The only language I've trumped her in is Spanish, but she already knows Italian so that's not much of a triumph!

There was a Weinfest (Winefest) going on that weekend, not to anyone's surprise lol.  I have yet to spend a weekend in Europe without seeing some sort of festival!  I didn't have enough money to try any, but sometime I'll have to go back.  Silke said that Meißen is famous for its wines.  Back before telegrams and telephones, the head churches of Dresden and Meißen were constantly in contact through letters delivered by messengers.  The messengers would get so drunk off Meißen wine that a lot of letters would get lost or destroyed.  Therefore the king ordered this famous bakery in Meißen (over 300 years old I think) to bake a bread so light and fragile that even one drop could break it.  The bakery made this big, hollow bread called aFommel, and the king stated that every messenger must bring the bread with him on his journey, and if he was took drunk to take care of it and it broke, then off with his head!

So of course we had to go to this bakery, which is of course still open and probably considered young in terms of German history.  Silke bought each of us one of these breads to take up to the castle with us and then back to Dresden.  Anthony broke his in the first minute because he kept poking at it to see how solid it was.  Jason kept going around trying to poke other people's bread, and he got Jen's pretty early on.  She returned the favor halfway through the castle tour.  The rest of us were doing pretty well, but when I got on the train I figured I'd done well enough, so I smashed mine over Jason's head.

I ate some of it, but it was oddly sweet and chewy.  I wonder who ate the Fommel once the messenger had successfully delivered it.  Maybe they let the messenger take it with him to eat with his wine. :-)