Today I (Dave) finished the Passiv Haus conference at the outstanding Congress Convention Center, here, right on the Elbe River. I’ll write more about that over at GreenEarthEquities. But here I’ll note some difference between this convention center and the typical ones in the US.
1. As a 3 story venue, there was only one elevator, mainly used by handicapped. Everyone else tramped up and down the stairs, many times as the sessions changed. No wonder there are almost no overweight Europeans.
2. Standing around tables is the way they eat here.
3. There was more thought put into design than in most US convention centers which are just big.
Once again, we were impressed with buildings that are centuries old rather than decades.
Luelle said … the downtown shopping area of Dresden was very interesting. As it was Saturday, there were a lot of people and families
enjoying their day off. There were several big (5 story) department stores in the area, and a large mall.
Most of the mall was similar to what we would find in any US city, a lot of clothing, shoes, sporting good stores, etc. But the thing I always like about European Malls is that they have grocery stores in them. There were two in this Dresden Galleria, and I checked them both out. I like to see the different ways they package and sell food in other countries. The food prices seemed very reasonable, I’d say less expensive than at home. But I may not have taken into account the difference between the dollar and the Euro.
Most of the clothing, shoes, other necessities seemed more expensive. I had thought with the Euro going down in value against the dollar that things would have appeared less expensive. Two years ago we were in Scandanavia, when the dollar was low, and everything was very expensive. The restaurant food here was been reasonable, and very tasty. Although I have only been to Germany once before, I anticipated rather bland food — but that was not the case.
We are looking forward to the other countries we will be visiting — Austria, Hungary and Switzerland to see how they compare.
Tomorrow will be an adventure getting to our ship. I am going by plane to Munich and then catch the transfer provided by Uniworld. That shouldn’t be a problem. Dave is doing a final field trip with his Passiv Haus conference. He’ll need to leave a little early and cab to retrieve his bags and then get to the train station. He’ll (hopefully) make three transfers and get to our ship about midnight. I dont know why he likes those trains so much, but he does…..
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