Saturday in Dresden - January 16

Noah is on the ski club for his school so every Saturday he goes skiing and this gives the rest of us some time to do different things that Noah may not like. The first Saturday of Noah’s ski club David and I took a walk around Dresden. We wanted to see the Mozart Memorial and go look at the Dresden football (soccer) stadium (and the fan shop).

The Mozart Memorial includes three female figures dancing around Mozart’s name; they symbolize serenity, earnestness and charm (no, i don't know which one is which). The memorial is close to our apartment so I will try to visit again when the snow is gone:

We stubbled upon what looked like a practice match featuring the Dresden Dynamo and some other team. Football (soccer) seems to be a year round thing, they have matches in the winter also (we are planning on going to see a game in the next month or so, but we will bring Noah); that is when it warms up a bit. You can see the stadium in the background, this is where the real matches are held:

Something I have come to understand here is where the tradition of putting mistletoe on the doorways came from. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows in the trees and bushes and if it not removed will eventually kill the tree. In Europe you see it a lot in the trees, especially in winter when there are no leaves; round globes leaves. I always wondered where the pinning of the mistletoe on a door way came from; this seemed kind of bizarre and random. But seeing it in the trees in the winter I can understand this a bit better as i could see people finding themselves under a clump of Mistletoe. In the picture below and to the left you can see a tree in the early stage of infestation and on the right a more advaced case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe

Noah's ski bus in front of his school: