Tour Day 3

Today is a travel day on the bus, we are driving from Dresden to Munchen. Rather than by nationality, the seating pattern was established by degree of gregariousness. The shy kids are up front, the loud kids are in the back, with the exception of Andrey, who is so shy that he made himself a private corner by the window in the back row, behind a couple of suits hanging on a clothing rack bar across the seats. I started a group Tagebuch, or day journal, for people to express their thoughts and reflections on this journey, so this got passed around the bus. I will include quotes from now on.

Yesterday morning, we visited the national porcelain collection at the Saxon castle, and Katya gave a guided tour on its history and artistic ideas. She is an expert porcelain scholar who works at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Her enthusiasm was catching, and she opened my eyes to the business side of the porcelain trade, as well as the meanings embedded in the shapes, colors, and figures represented in the objects. As Abi wrote, “From the stories of attempted espionage of the valued secrets of “white gold” to the symbolic meaning of the figure pieces depicting love via birdcages, (and to the Comedia del’Arte clown figures with goats!), it was the first time I understood the wonder of porcelain beyond kitsch! Brava Katya!”

Porcelain has an interesting history as a technology. After the Germans were able to reverse engineer its production and crack the production monopoly held for hundreds of years by the Chinese and Japanese, the artists who knew the secret became well-kept prisoners, unable to travel or interact with foreigners. For the first twenty years, they imitated Asian forms, like vases and sake pitchers, before beginning to develop a new German style of animal and flower figures. But the secret leaked, and before long, porcelain was being produced around Europe, just in time for the development of cups and saucers for people to enjoy newly available beverages in the late 1700s, coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Since these developments made these beverages affordable, a new type of public space emerged: the café. Today cafés remain a distinctive feature of every European city, proliferating along main streets and public squares.

In the afternoon, we took a short bus ride to the mountain town of Glashutte, to visit the watchmaking factory of the same name. Founded in 1845, the company makes watches entirely by hand, which is an incredible thing to witness. Three hundred craftspeople sit hunched over tables in room after room, polishing tiny screws and assembling intricate parts through microscopes. They are hired through an apprenticeship program where about half are hired after being trained for three years. Each watch takes more than 400 hours to produce, and the entire factory output is about 7,000 per year. Needless to say, they are extremely expensive luxury items, starting at 5,000 Euro, up to 120,000 Euro. We were told that they serve a large Arab clientele. One buys them for show, rather than punctuality, because they lose one to ten seconds per day.

After the tour, we were served coffee in Meissen porcelain cups, and given a presentation by Glashutte’s CEO, Herr Muller. He started out by asking us, “What is luxury?”, and leading a contemplative discussion. He was so enthusiastic and engaging that he inspired a barrage of questions for over an hour. As Olga commented, “The visit to the watch factory was so interesting, and I never thought that anybody could be so proud of his own business, more than he was. We could feel this and it was great.” He told us about their corporate philosophy, which was all about maintaining the original vision of producing a high quality product completely in-house, using traditional methods. Existing in a world where change is the only constant, he said, there is value in being a constant thing. I thought there were interesting contradictions: producing hand-crafted goods, yet in a factory, and using out-dated technologies, yet meeting a modern demand. These reminded me of Germany, which is a place with a long history, and yet a young nation.

Yesterday’s last stop was to a spot of unexpected beauty, the “Saxon Switzerland”. We gaped at the pastoral views from steep limestone cliffs as the sun went down. After we got back to Dresden, Abi and I went to the theatre. She is a playwright and director, and so had scoped out a local production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It was a rock-n-roll production of the comedy, with characters dressed in 70’s punk, which we enjoyed.

Today we woke up to snow and are passing through frosted coutryside. Although Friedrich, or Fritz, as we call him, has the job of keeping everyone together and is most often heard saying “Wir mussen punktlich sein!”, or “Please be on time!”, he is also one of the gang, joining in a snowball fight a reststop. As Ed wrote: “My highlights from the bus ride to Munchen were the baroque opera house (and especially the mean lady who tried to confiscate our cameras), the pineapple, and a feeling like a kid at the Sachsische Schweize. Lin told me Fritz’ Chinese name, which I promised to keep secret. That he even has one by now made me laugh.”