For me visiting the Bauhaus in Dessau was an essential part of any trip to Germany and when I found out we could stay in the original student accommodation I was thrilled. Dan wasn’t as keen on the idea of shared bathroom facilities but I convinced him it was worth it. When we arrived in Dessau it was sprinkling rain and Dan was pretty tired so we headed straight for the Bauhaus bistro to pick up our keys for the room. The building, which has been kept extraordinarily well, is exactly as you’d expect a Bauhausian building designed and built in the 1930s to look. Simple, uncluttered and functional. Built well before there were elevators, the Bauhaus foundation has maintained the building in largely original condition. Our room was on the fourth floor so that meant four flights of stairs. The stairwell, as you’d expect was all tubular steel balustrades and concrete floors. There were four rooms on the floor with a small kitchenette at one end and bathroom facilities at the other. There was a separate toilet. And next to it was a communal shower. There was a wall dividing the room. On one side there were three steel basins and on the other what I imagine was originally a row of showers like you see in gym rooms in American movies. Except now it was just the world’s hugest shower space with a massive rainshower head above it and a wall of windows behind. It was the kind of bathroom you could imagine people paying big bucks for. The room itself was also quite large with a simple double bed a sink in the corner. A table with Bauhaus style cantilever chairs, a simple shelving unit and coat stand and industrial style lamps. You can go out onto the balcony but the brochure does warn it is totally at your own risk and that the balustrade remains as per original specifications so without the safety features required today. The windows, which can be opened, are really heavy as they are made of steel. This building was completed before aluminum became a cheap and reliable building material.

Dan wanted to chill for a while so I went to check out the exhibition in the main building. Unfortunately it shut at 5pm but I did have the opportunity to look in both the book store and the gift shop. Of course I bought a couple of things to bring home including a book on design-a collection of 500 objects that have shaped the way we live that are all still in production today and a collection of post cards that can be cut out (if you are good enough with a scalpel to form design objects including the Barcelona chair. There was a huge range of books, although only a fairly small English section. And I don’t think my German will be good enough to read design philosophy. I have a hard enough time with the likes of Said and Umberto Eco in English thanks.

After that we decided we should probably head into the main part of Dessau to find some dinner. We walked through the main train station to find ourselves in a park, with quite a lot of trams about and just one eatery for what seemed like miles in any direction – a quite expensive Greek restaurant. The town looked very East German and incredibly desolate. We decided that if we walked for a while we had to find something, especially considering we had already seen posters for the local Christmas Market – called an Advent market here. Eventually after seeing some lights in the distance and walking through another quite dark park, we found it.(Run to the Hills – Iron Maiden – the most well known metal track of all time (with the exception of ACDC’s Long way to the Top and Metallica’s Enter Sandman – all of which are must have tracks on any playlist I own)

Part fairground with quite a few rides and those stupid games where you have to use a mechanical arm to win stuff, there was also a number of food stalls and gluhwein, of course. Dan’s first stop was the crepery for a crepe with Nutella. I had a little piece – it was really yummy. After that we headed for the more traditional fare. The local specialty appeared to be some kind of bratwurst cooked in spinach – we both gave that a miss. Dan had a Bratwurst in bread, we both had fried potatoes – Brat Kartoffeln- and I had the cooked mushrooms I had seen in a few places. My effort at ordering in German faltered when it came to the part where the lady asked what I wanted on them – what I got I’m pretty sure was crème fraiche. It tasted good though. Then we needed a drink. It is really hard to get still water here. The Germans all seem to prefer sparkling mineral water. In any case the only place that had any kind of water was also selling Gluhwein so of course we decided to have some. The girl serving, who spoke really good English, asked whether we wanted the good one. We chose that. It was really strong, possibly because the alcohol dissipates as it steams away. Or maybe it’s because you get used to it. It does get easier to drink. You get served the gluhwein in cups or glasses. Part of the price for the first one is a deposit on the drinking vessel. If you return it once you are done you get the deposit back.

After the gluhwein we headed into the nearby mall to find a supermarket to get some still water. First we found a toy shop. And wouldn’t you know it, they had model kits… After that episode we found the supermarket –nit was a lot like Aldi but it was called Normas. The supermarket opposite had a bakery and well displayed fruit and vege – it looked more like a coles. Water and OJ in hand, we headed back to the Bauhaus. On our way through the train station, we saw our first annoying drunk person. A man in maybe his 50s or 60s, he was being hauled away by the police. After that it was back up the four flights of stairs to our room and bed for the night.

We awoke to a magnificent sunrise through our top floor window in the Bauhaus apartments and just laid there for a while enjoying it. Eventually we got up, dressed and showered and headed to the bistro in the Bauhaus to access a locker to store our gear while we walked around and to have some breakfast. Dan had bacon and eggs which came with a bread roll and was quickly turned into a bacon and egg roll. I had the salmon breakfast which came with smoked salmon, spring onions and horseradish cream. The horseradish cream was awesome. Just the right amount of horseradish zing yet still mild enough to enjoy for breakfast. It also came with a roll and Dan donated one of his three eggs so I could make a salmon and egg roll. Almost like my standard Tilley’s breakfast but not quite. They love their butter in Germany. The little butter packages that you get with breakfast here are about two-three times the size of the ones at home. They don’t really make Espresso coffee though. While Filtered coffee is available everywhere and you can get a latte or cappuccino but it is not made barista style. It comes from one of those prefab machines – not a George Clooney – the ones you used to find in the Qantas lounge before they realised the popularity of a real barista. I am sure if we found a good coffee shop, we would find a good espresso here. I haven’t been bothered so far – I don’t mind good percolated coffee – reminds me of childhood. This morning I felt like a milkier coffee though – of course it was a pre-fib cappuccino. (Here me Out – Ben Keller – I discovered the then teenage Ben Keller about a decade ago when he toured with Ben Folds and Ben Lee on the three Bens tour. I haven’t heard much from him since but still really love this album)

After breakfast I couldn’t find the map of where all the Bauhaus sites were so we just started wandering, using the GPS on my phone to find the Elbe – the Cornhusk Restaurant, one of the remaining Bauhaus sites in Dessau sits right on the edge of it. As we wandered we took note of the new housing developments – a mix of recreating old Germany and some heavily influenced by what became known as the Bauhaus style – and t5he many ways in which the Bauhaus heritage had been ripped off – including a new apartment block in Bauhausian style and colours called Haus Elbe and an art gallery called Bau Art.

The restaurant was not as well looked after as some of the other buildings – Lonely Planet said it was empty when they put together the latest guide but it now has a restaurant trading from it. The outside could do with a paint and it could use some other repairs. The Bauhaus sense was still there. The rounded building was sited to take full advantage of views of the Elbe River that flows through eastern Germany and the original fittings, including straight glass windows angles appropriately to provide the circular vista, were still intact. Thankfully there was also a map of the other Bauhaus sites so we could work out where the Masters houses were. We thought we had missed them but they came up on us along a street. That is the thing about the Bauhaus structures – while they are instantly recognizable, they are also sympathetically designed and so don’t jump right out at you. There was clearly some construction going on when we were there. It was hard to tell if they were rebuilding Masters Houses that had been destroyed or whether they were just refurbishing. We chose not to go and do the tour as I was keen to visit the permanent exhibition in the Bauhaus.

For me the Bauhaus is more about a design philosophy and an approach to design education than it is about a particular style. That was what it was always supposed to be about but because the school itself lasted only such a short amount of time, the style of architecture and products that it produced is very similar and really marks a point in time. Of course the design it produced was revolutionary but that was as much driven by the philosophy of form follows function and integrity of materials. It is a philosophy that has lasted almost a hundred years and has produced products and architecture in many different styles. One of the most interesting things about the exhibition from my point of view was the leading lights of the Bauhaus that aren’t household names – designers like Marianne Brandt, who stayed in Dessau and East Germany following the war and who taught in design schools behind the iron curtain. It is the Bauhaus masters who fled to the US, to try and set up a similar school in Chicago – who we recognize as influencing 20^th century architecture and design – names like Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe. (We Got Two Jealous Agains – NOFX – the closest thing to a love song from the album War on Errorism. ‘I knew you were the one.. .’ Seems appropriate for today – our anniversary – half spent at the Bauhaus and half in the baroque Christmas fairytale of Dresden)

There were three things I found in the museum that were really interesting to me. And no, none of them were the collection of designer chairs or indeed any of the actual design pieces. Let’s face it I’ve seen a real Marcel Breuer chair before – even sat in one and even Aldi now sells replicas of the Barcelona chair – intellectual property rights don’t actually last as long as you’d think (except when it’s the flute solo from ‘I come from a Land Downunder’. The three things that interested me most were to do with the Bauhaus philosophy of education that guided my own design studies (too) many years ago.

The first was the journals of handwritten notes of one of the students – they looked like a cross between the sketch books that I and my contemporaries scribbled our idea in 30 years ago and my father’s notebooks from his scientific studies in the late 40s and early 50s. This was partly because my father’s notes were almost as old as the ones in the museum and partly because the Bauhaus had an emphasis on science and technology in its teachings.

The second was an assortment of (recreated) projects from the foundation year studies – like my own foundation year studies, the Bauhaus focused on creativity rather than technology during this period (They also reportedly used it to ensure only the best students progressed past this point – something I am probably glad wasn’t a focus in my own studies. The project they had chosen to recreate was a paper task – taking a single piece of paper and a scalpel – create a three dimensional structure. There were some fabulously creative pieces. While we weren’t asked to complete this particular task, we did have to create a usable chair out of corrugated cardboard and in high school I was asked to make a 3D sculpture out of a single disc of aluminum and a pair of tin snips.

The third item of interest was a diagram of the course structure –the tenets of the foundation year, which included technical, historical  and scientific studies– an apprenticeship in a particular discipline – metalwork, textiles, photography etc, including scientific and technical studies and then a number of years studying architecture. (Dirty Deeds – You Am I with Tex Perkins – recorded for the Australian movie Dirty Deeds, this is an excellent cover that’s worth seeking out.)

We didn’t make it to the unfinished housing project in the South of Dessau but I was much more interested in seeing the Bauhaus itself and learning more about the philosophy. The housing project though was a mark of what the Bauhaus design principles were founded on – egalitarianism, harnessing the tools of mass production and the ability for everyone to have their everyday lives improved by good design. Ironically the National Socialists in Germany in the 1930s dismissed the Bauhaus and their philosophies and the Bauhaus tradition was lost to both the East and West for decades. Where it did find a new home was in the US but the nature of US society meant that while the Americans embraced the architectural style and the mass production of the Bauhaus, the egalitarian ethos disappeared in what later became known as the International style that was adopted by American architects that followed the exponents of the Bauhaus.

After the exhibition and one last look at the buildings it was there that we left the Bauhaus and Dessau for our next stop, Dresden.

Christmas themed activities – 15  War museums and model shops – 1.5  Design experiences – 2