Waking up early while on holiday should be a no-no but my partner was gung-ho from the start about getting a rental and driving somewhere like we’ve ‘traditionally’ done these past couple of years. So this dark early morning I got to ride the S-Bahn for the first time – conveniently there’s a station right smack in front of our hotel – and saw the impressive and relatively new Hauptbahnhof, the city’s central train station, in all its Christmas glory, so we could pick up our sub-compact for the 400-kilometer round trip journey. Dresden here we come!