So our first night in dresden. What a night. I'm pretty chuffed we found this place. And thanks to Andy & Christina for telling us about it.

They have two main districts here. The Altstadt (old town) and the Neustadt (new town). Before the war there were apparently a lot of beautiful buildings here. All the biggest artists and architects and even composers came here to show off all their work. Then war occurred, the German's set up some ammunition and bomb factories and we bombed the b*****y out of the whole city. I'm guessing there was a lot of important stuff lost in the fires, but since the iron curtain came down they've been working incredibly hard to rebuild everything. So its strange but apparently a lot of the buildings in the Neustadt are older than some in the Altstadt.

The neustadt is where all the nightlife is though. So we got off the train at about 5:30pm and headed straight for the hostel in Neustadt. We booked it all the day before on the net. What I think we'll be doing from now on. Much easier to find good cheap places. The dude at reception was properly friendly, we got our keys and entered the room. Once the pic's up you'll see how cool this hostel is. I'm sitting in the common room just now. Still very quiet in here, but some well chilled music is playing. Its a nice place to sit and type. Katie's upstairs sleeping off her hangover.

Its the day after we got into town. After we sorted our crap out last night, we checked out the tourist map. Its a great map. Easy to read and all the best drinking, eating, sightseeing, and sleeping places are marked down and even described for us to see.

We decided to head to The Lebowski for a couple of drinks. Very groovy little bar. Was only about 7 in the evening or so, so we were the first people in and we got good seats. Its only a small place. But the cool thing is they have a couple TVs constantly playing the movie 'The Big Lebowski' and the whole place is themed on the film. The barman ewas friendly too and we started our drinks tab. On our second drink the bar started to fill up and by our third drink, as we were thinking of moving on, the German guys sitting across from us decided to give us some extra company! They were three young guys, all local; and once we got talking to them (in excellent english) we didn't stop for hours! This is what travelling is all about. Hanging out in random places, meeting random people. We've had some great times here, but its always best when you get talking to other people. And this is coming from somebody who generally doesn't even really like people that much. Maybe i love it cos its such a fleeting thing when you're on the move.

Well, hours later, many drinks later and many laughs later, it was time to settle up. We said our goodbyes, exchanged E-mails, paid the barman and headed home very worse for wear. Got into bed at about 4 in the morning and woke at 10 for breakfast. Breakfast never happened.

We woke up about twelve and struggle out of our beds toget some food into us. Gonna go check on Katie now, poor girl!