Dresden City Festival

Dresden City Festival

Gold horse raider statue

I never been to the former East Germany before, so when I had a chance to visit Dresden, I didn’t hesitate to go.  My Indonesian friend who study in Dresden informed me about the city festival, so I go there not just visiting the city but also experiencing the crowd.  In addition, Indonesian students would also perform traditional dances!  This is something that I always admired from fellow Indonesians: none of the students are professional dancers (c’mon, engineer, scientist, linguist…) yet they are wiling to learn to dance for introducing Indonesia to the world. 

Preparation before the dance

Anyway, so I went to Dresden by train with several language course students.  The trip took about three hours.  We planned to have one-day trip, we would go home in the evening.

Arriving Dresden, I didn’t waste my time, I directly went to the stage where the Indonesian dances would be performed (there are several stages spread all over the city center).  There I met my friend and saw the preparation before the dances started. 

The dances attracted people around.  Some were videotaping, took pictures, and kids also tried to follow the dances.  Very cute!  There were four dances: three Balinese and one Sumatran.

People attracted to Indonesian dances

After the dances, I said goodbye to my friend and continued my sightseeing around the festival.  There were several areas divided by themes, for example: sport theme, medieval theme, youth theme, culture theme, etc.  Very interesting!

After awhile, I met with my Berlin friends again and joined them to a palace and explored the garden.  And after that I got separated again until we met again in the train station before going home.  Overall I think Dresden is a nice city, it has old and modern buildings.  To be honest, I never thought that Dresden would be a big city…

'Biggest' fan

Fountain in Dresden's castle