Dessau

It was a fairly early start this morning, as I was booked on the 0730 train to Berlin.  The hostel wasn’t that near the main station; I’d planned on getting a tram, but then realised there was a suburban train station quite close, so thought I might as well take full advantage of the Interrail day.  My final destination wasn’t Berlin, however. I’d decided to visit Dessau, to see the Bauhaus architecture.  This was recommended in the excellent “Europe by Rail” book that G&M had recommended to me.

The journey to Berlin was quite dull; a similar landscape to yesterday’s journey to Poznan.  The passport checks promised/threatend by the DB app in Frankfurt an der Oder didn’t occur, and we made good time to Berlin Gesundbrunnen.  I ended up with a 50 minute connection there, so had a look around the rather generic shopping centre adjacent to the station.   Then it was an ICE to Lutherstadt Wittenberg followed by a local train to Dessau.  I felt I was somewhat off the beaten track when the guard looked confused at the interrail ticket and said she’d seen one “selten” (seldom).  It’s been nice being back in Germany; although my German is pretty ropey, It’s nice to be able to vaguely understand what’s going on, read posters and (try to) have basic conversations.

I arrived in Dessau for a late lunch, and then headed off to look at the Bauhaus architecture and museum.

I started off at the museum, which focuses on the non-building aspects of the design.  This was good – lots of nice prints, fabrics and furniture.

I’d bought the combined ticket (which covers all the sites in Dessau), so headed off to the temporary exhibition “Algae Debris Co_2“, which was included.  This was all about novel low carbon building methods (I think it was largely aimed at architects tbh – I guess a lot of  visitors to Dessau are), and was held upstairs in an old department store, complete with GDR lino. It was a slightly strange mix of technical exhibits about, e.g. building with clay bricks, or low carbon concrete, and art pieces.  Some of it was a bit technical for me (and the waterless toilet went into far more detail than I needed to know), but it was interesting. 

Then it was onto the main Bauhaus building.  This had an exhibition in it about the materials that went into building it (i.e. concrete, glass, etc.).  It’s a beautiful building, and was nice just to wander around

The exhibition was quite good, and was certainly comprehensive

I had a wander around Dessau afterwards. It seems very quiet (it’s not a big place).  Most of the residential areas near the centre are GDR era, though there are still a few older buildings.

I plan to go to the remaining sites tomorrow, before getting the train to my last stop on the holiday in the afternoon.  I think I’ll probably hire a bike to visit the outlying sites; it’s 12EUR a day from the tourist information center.