This is the place I called home for 5 1/2 years, and now again after a 10 month hiatus in Michigan. Michigan is my home too, it's the place where I come from, but it's Dresden that has grabbed me and isn't letting me go any time soon. I can't seem to break free of this place, and don't really want to anyway. So for the people who haven't been lucky enough to visit us here, or those who have and want to see it again, here's a bit of the Neustadt for you.
Here's a view out over part of the Neustadt from the tower of the Martin Luther Church.
That's one of my very favorite walls. It's on Böhmische Strasse by the playground.
Blast from the past! This was in 2004, when people were already protesting the possible construction of a parking garage on this site. Not to mention the cobblestones hadn't been removed yet and so Kamenzer Strasse was a miserable bumpy mess for anybody on a bike (or in a car). A while later, that little flat building was demolished, creating an empty lot where a bunch of people started to camp out, protesting whatever would be later built there. In 2008/2009, while we were gone, the new supermarket/preschool/parking garage/apartment house was finished on this site. We now live just around the corner from here, and I am so happy to have a supermarket there, this part of the neighborhood really lacked in shopping opportunities when I lived on Prießnitzstraße, so we had to haul heavy backpacks full of groceries and sacks of kitty litter from the Königsbrücker Str. Not fun.
Yet another of my favorite walls. This one is on Pulsnitzer Str. and this was when it was still fresh and new. Some jerks have grafittied it now. I think grafitti can be pleasing too, but why do it on a facade as nice as this? Why not pick a boring wall from any of the hundreds of others?
Pretty much at the heart of the Neustadt, and the heart of the BRN--the Bunte Republik Neustadt, a festival held at the end of each June here.
Parker Louis! This guy has a giant empire of pay parking lots in the Neustadt, and he is a much loathed figure, because he patrols his parking lots and photographs your car if you have not purchased a parking ticket. Then he fines you. But he has to be able to prove who was actually driving the car when it had been parked, otherwise he can't just force the car owner to pay a fine. He's been sued over this a number of times.
"Against exorbitant rent and complete refurbishment...noise and dirt for all"
You can figure out the yuppie part.
This neighborhood used to be occupied in large part by squatters and artists and punks around the time of reunification (1990), but has now become well-known as a "hip part of town" with lots of trendy bars, good restaurants and clubs, and interesting shops, driving rent prices up and a lot of the artists and punks out. The artists and punks strike back.
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