A weekend in Dresden - Slaughterhouse 5

I want to add another goal for this year. From now on I'm going to try and read fiction set in each city/town/village I  visit (if possible). For Dresden it had to be Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut (published 1969). Placed high up in the top 100 novels of the 20th Century it combines time travel, alien beings, and being a POW in Dresden on the 13th February 1945.
The Americans arrived in Dresden at five in the afternoon. The boxcar doors were opened, and the doorways framed the loveliest city that most of the Americans had ever
seen. The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd. It looked like a Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim.
Somebody behind him in the boxcar said, 'Oz.' That was I. That was me. The only
other city I'd ever seen was Indianapolis, Indiana." -- Slaughterhouse 5
And Dresden really is all that and more BUT on this occasion I wanted to look for the slaughterhouse district next to the river Elbe.
So I wanted to find the location of the former POW's at Schlachthof 5. This picture is taken at the location of the slaughterhouses where Kurt Vonnegut himself was a prisoner. Today these old buildings are used as a  conference centre and concert venue though I believe you can still visit the cellar which saved his life.

The tallest building in the slaughterhouse complex


Links
Letter written by Kurt Vonnegut to his family in a repatriation camp May 1945
Wikipedia
Kurt Vonnegut
US school bans Slaughterhouse 5 for profane language

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