Recently I was very honoured to be invited by some of my friends in the DACH (aka Germany, Austria, Switzerland) tech community to be the keynote speaker for AWS Community Day 2022. This was going to be their first time back in person after two years of virtual events, and I was very excited to finally meet some of them in person. Rodd was going to accompany me, of course, and he had planned out some fun touristy things for us to do as well.

We caught the Tuesday morning train from Munich. It was about a 4.5hr trip, including a short transfer in Leipzig. I mostly used the time to finish off my slides for the keynote!

On Tuesday night, the local AWS Dresden group were having a pre-Community Day meetup so we went along. Here’s my buddy Mohamed presenting about a couple serverless apps he built, as well as Martin from Groundfog sharing how they built a personalised web experience for visitors.

Wednesday was the big event, so we headed over early in the morning to the conference venue to help set up. My friends Linda (from Vienna) and Markus (from Munich) were going to be kicking things off in the morning.

Markus insisted that I wear the AWS dress. 😂 He was also going to be introducing me on stage.

Eventually everything was ready and the hosts kicked off the morning. I was very excited to see them launch the Förderverein AWS Community DACH, which brings together all the different AWS groups into a single association. (Bonus points for the pun in the logo – in German, “Dach” means “roof”.)

Markus gave me a very humorous intro in which he’d scraped some dubious photos from my social media accounts, but thankfully he ended with the nicest one. ❤️

My talk started out quite personal, talking about how isolated I felt in the first ten years of my career. It wasn’t until I started going to meetups and hackathons that I finally felt like I belonged. At that point, it turned into a big soppy love letter to the folks in the room, who were my first friends when we moved to Germany. I ended by talking about how much AWS values the external community, and some of our plans to support them even more in the future.

One last photo of me with Markus and Linda, who I’m going to really really miss. 😢

We spent the rest of the day at the conference, going to sessions and meeting sponsors and attendees. It was a small but passionate crowd, and everyone was so excited to get back together in person. Thank you to the organisers for inviting me!

We were pretty tired that night but of course had to take advantage of the hotel sauna…

I worked from the hotel the next day, but Rodd got me out into the sunshine for a quick walk and lunch in the city.

We were very amused to see that there is actually an Australian restaurant in Dresden! The Snook was dubious, but hey, they serve kangaroo goulash soup. 😂

We walked up to Brühl’s Terrace, a large elevated terrace overlooking the Elbe. It was a beautiful day.

Here we are with the Hofkirche (Dresden Cathedral), the most important Catholic church in the city.

We also found the Lego store, which had a “Selfie Point.” Okay, then.

Our hotel was very close to the famous Frauenkirche in Dresden. This Lutheran church was destroyed during the firebombing of the city in 1945 and left in ruins as a war memorial for 50 years. It was only rebuilt after German reunification and was completed in 2005. The darker stones you can see were salvaged from the original church and were able to be reused in the reconstruction.

We went inside to take a look as well. It was all soft pastels, trompe l’oeil, and extravagant carvings. Very pretty! The story of how they rebuilt it is truly amazing.

That night we had booked a special dinner at Genuss-Atelier, a local Michelin-starred restaurant. It was described as “rustic vaults” and it felt very cozy.

One of the coolest things was that the tables had built in drawers with all the cutlery you’d need, so the waiters didn’t need to keep bringing fresh sets. I’ve never seen that before.

We went with the six-course “Surprise” menu, and since it’s all seasonal and not printed, I tried to keep notes on my phone about what we had. We started with a couple small bites: pickled herring with potato chip, and felafel with yogurt.

The Snook enjoyed the little bread rolls and butter. (He may have also been drafting a post for We Want Plates.)

Our first proper course was beef tartar with sour cream and chives.

Next was a vegetarian course – turnip cabbage (aka kohlrabi), celery, and yuzu.

Next was the fish course – “eagle fish” (which we think is also called a “meagre“) with radicchio, celery, and capers.

For the meat course, we had lamb with pumpkin and polenta, and of course we opted for the extra shaved black truffle!

Everything was delicious and beautifully prepared. We were also having matched wines with each course, all of them from the local area. Rodd was amused when the waiter excitedly told him how one of them was matured in oak, which is something of a novelty in the region. (It’s very common in Australia!) Needless to say, we were having a wonderful evening.

And we finished with TWO desserts! First was “blueberry, butter cookie, and vanilla.”

And lastly, “banana, coconut, mango sorbet.” Yum!

Highly recommend Genuss-Atelier if you are ever in the Dresden area!

(more…)