It‘s a matter of course that you can wash down your delicious Saxon dish with a genuine Radeberger beer in one of the many beer gardens along the Elbe or taste a glass of wine from the vineyards of Meissen, a place ten miles north-west of Dresden.

In the Christmas season, you should not miss a visit to Dresden’s Christmas market and taste some Striezel – also called Dresdner Stollen – a Christmas cake that looks like a loaf of bread covered with icing sugar and is filled with lots of raisins, almonds, and candied lemon peels. 

If you like milk, cheese, and other dairy products, you should visit Pfund’s Molkerei (Pfund’s dairy) on Bautzner Strasse 79. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the most beautiful dairy store of the world. It was opened in 1892, and the walls and ceiling are covered with hand-painted porcelain tiles of Villeroy & Boch. In the restaurant on the second floor, you can taste lots of dairy delicacies, milk shakes, and about 120 sorts of cheese.

As a city of the arts, Dresden offers lots of music events – from operas and musicals to German folk and popular music. In case, you are no opera fan, you can go to rock concerts all through the year, or visit the annual International Dixieland Festival in May, when jazz bands from all over the world give concerts on several squares, in many bars, and Dresden’s Kultur Palast (palace of culture). And in June, the Dresden Music Festival invites for concerts of classic music and stage performances.

For those visitors who like doing sports, Dresden offers many opportunities and facilities such as a public swimming center, a sports hall, a bicycle path along the river Elbe, or a twelve-mile-long skating tour through the town at night, which takes place every Friday at 9 p.m. from April to October. And those who prefer a more comfortable tour, can book a round-trip in a historical tram through Dresden.

If you have enough of sightseeing and the hustle and bustle in the city of Dresden but still sufficient time to explore the surroundings of Saxony’s capital, you should take your hiking boots and catch the next local S-Bahn train to Saxon Switzerland. The train, leaving from Platform One of Dresden’s main station every thirty minutes, will bring you to Saxony’s most popular hiking destination east of the town – an area which is full of sandstone cliffs and vertical outcroppings that look similar to some rock formations in Colorado. When the train snakes its way along the river Elbe, you will pass the renaissance castle Pillnitz and the town of Pirna with its Church of St. Mary that rises above the skyline. The next place on the opposite river bank is Wehlen, which lies on the narrow flat land between the river and the mountains, and stretches up the hills on terraces. On the banks of Elbe, some remains of an ancient castle can still be seen, which was used as a customs station. Most buildings date back to the early 20th century, when Wehlen was a refuge for Dresden’s upper class. Today some of the large houses are divided into apartments and pensions to provide accommodation for the numerous tourists who want to enjoy hiking tours through the National Park of Saxon Switzerland. From Wehlen you can follow well-marked trails through a dark beech forest to the rocks of Bastei, the most accessible and spectacular cliffs and pillars of the national park. From the top of the rock platform, you can enjoy the view of the sweeping curves of Elbe and steamboats moving up and down the river. The railroad line, tiny villages, streets, and fields one thousand feet below the rocks look like a perfectly crafted model railroad scene. On the other side of the cliffs, you can peer into deep ravines, spanned by the Bastei Bridge. Amidst the sandstone rocks and pillars, you can explore the remains of a medieval fort which once safeguarded the trade routes along the Elbe river and  dates back to the 13th century. A reconstructed catapult and some stone balls are on display and an old well can still be seen. When you walk down the footpath to the health-resort and town of Rathen, you will pass the two-thousand-seat outdoor theater Felsenbühne (stage in the rocks), which is surrounded by vertical stonewalls and rocky pillars and where theater plays and musicals are performed throughout the summer months.

After taking the ferry across the river, you can visit Fortress Königstein, one of the best–preserved medieval forts in Europe. Built in the 1400s, the unconquerable fortress was a secure refuge for Saxon kings and their treasures until the end of the Saxon monarchy in 1918. When gazing up the walls fifty feet in height, you will understand why no army ever conquered the fort that is situated on platform-like rock formation of 23.5 acre that rises about 780 feet above the banks of the river Elbe. After having gone through a heavy gate, you climb more ramps and pass a device for pouring hot pitch onto a potential enemy before you reach the plateau with the old barracks, the armory of the fortress, Castle Magdalena, the treasure vaults, and the building with a well that miners from the Erzgebirge (ore mountains) dug from 1563 to 1569 five hundred feet into the rock to supply the garrison with enough drinking water. Since the Saxon kings had always preferred drinking wine to water and got huge wine casks on Königstein, King August the Strong ordered in 1717 to build the largest wine cask of the world. It was almost 30 feet long, 22 feet in diameter, and was filled with 63,000 gallons wine in 1725 for the first time. Unfortunately a fire destroyed that masterpiece in 1819. The fortress also served as a prison, which was the most feared of Saxony.

The museum of Königstein tells everything about the history of this important fort, and when you walk along the perimeter, passing old canons, many look-outs, and the loop-holes in the battlements, you can see nearly all of Saxon Switzerland. You will discern the Bastei rocks and Lilienstein (lily stone) – one of the most prominent rock table and a two-hour walk from the ferry station in the town of Königstein that lies at the base of the fortress. You may notice many other sandstone rocks in the distance as well and will have a wonderful view of the Elbe valley with its checkered grain fields and the dark green forests left and right of the curves of the river. 

For accommodation in Dresden please visit the homepage www.dresden.de, which also provides a link “Living and Working in Dresden”. Information on places in Saxon Switzerland can be found at www.stadt-wehlen.de / www.kurort-rathen.de / www.koenigstein-sachsen.de or www.bad-schandau.de. For information about the national park, contact the information center via www.nationalpark-saechsische-schweiz.de.

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