This week a new Mall opened here in Dresden. It is a pretty huge deal, both physically and culturally. They have been working on it for three years. It is unusual for a German Mall. In one Architect’s words, “German shopping centers tend to be very pragmatic. This one has got a huge open space in the middle. It could almost be called a cathedral. It is Dresden’s newest church!”
That is mostly meant to be a humorous statement, but it is a telling one. Germans (East Germans anyway) are not yet as materialistic as say… Americans, but the tide is changing. On opening day people started lining up at one in the morning, and when the electronic store (that has other branches in town) opened it doors at 6:00 AM nearly 2,000 people were waiting to get in. We went to check it out early figuring most people would be at work or school, but it was wall-to-wall people.
Not everything is negative about the Mall, though. It is a pretty space, and the Architect in charge of that aspect of the building is a member of our new church plant, the Netzwerk Church. Oh, and there is a Starbucks in Dresden now, for anyone interested in paying twice as much for a coffee.
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