Dresden Weihnachten by Edward von Behrer Page B

delighted when the new art director quickly became a great ally.
    The Radisson Gewandhaus turned out to be not only a superb hotel (with a fabulous restaurant called Weber’s); the office was only a block and a half away on Kreuzstrasse—a wonderful blessing in those first weeks. And next to the office was a language school, where I promptly signed up for private German lessons, five days a week at seven a.m. That was one way of making sure I was at my desk by eight a.m., much to the annoyance of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee from Berlin.
    I was pretty amazed when two of our initial ad campaigns were greeted with such enthusiasm by the clients, who promptly upped their ad budgets in their excitement. That gave me some much-needed credibility in the office plus an e-mail from Jason Solloway (or his secretary) expressing his congratulations.
    From the beginning I had forced myself to do a lot of wandering around Dresden despite my ridiculous work schedule, so when the art director told me about an available apartment in the Neustadt section of the city, just on the other side of the Elbe River from the office, I knew I was very interested even before I saw it.
    Dresden dates from the 800s, so it’s not really a surprise that the Neustadt (New City) largely came into its own in the eighteenth century as opposed to the Altstadt (Old City) that had already been around for centuries by then. I had walked many times across the Augustus Bridge, which links the two sides of the city over the Elbe, marveling at the incredible beauty of Dresden’s baroque skyline during different times of the day. I was already a bit familiar with parts of the Neustadt section, and grateful to discover that 18 Obergraben was not one of the parts that had been rebuilt by the Communist East German government (back in the day) as prefabricated “people’s housing.” Instead it was one of the eighteenthcentury buildings that had survived the ghastly bombing at the end of World War II and had been turned into gorgeous apartments.
    The available apartment was advertised as a “one bedroom” but had an “extra room” that—to someone used to the size of Manhattan apartments—could easily be used as a guest bedroom. It was on the ground floor, in back of the building and, best of all to my mind, its L-shape cradled a large brick patio otherwise surrounded by a high wall. Both the living room and bedroom had French doors that opened on the patio, and there were two trees that would offer great shade. The place was the perfect combination of eighteenth century grace and style with twenty-first century conveniences. It came with a washing machine in the modern bathroom and had a well-equipped modern kitchen for which the landlord (a friend of the art director’s) offered apologies on its small size. True, you wouldn’t want to try serving Christmas dinner for sixteen in it, but it looked plenty roomy to me. The apartment was about a twenty-minute walk from the office, but a half dozen streetcars were three minutes away if the weather was bad, and, being a residential neighborhood, there were plenty of shops.
    I knew there was a great indoor farmer’s market, the Neustädter Markthalle, about five minutes further into the Neustadt district, but there was also a chain grocery store just around the corner and up a couple blocks.
    And that’s where I met Dieter.
    Dreams of weekend shopping at the Markthalle and then using all the delicious farm-fresh meat and produce in gourmet meals throughout the week pretty much stayed just that—dreams. I had forgotten what it’s like setting up a kitchen from scratch, and I had never done it in a foreign country. You try picking up a sealed package labeled with a nineteen letter word (including two umlauts) and a photo of a smiling family gathered around a table with about a dozen different foods on it and then trying to figure out 1) what food is inside the package and 2) is it already cooked or not. Not all