Culture in Dresden Waurich"). Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" describes the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 seen from a slaughterhouse near the old city of Dresden. Vonnegut was prisoner of war in Dresden during that event. Contemporary novelists who are active in Dresden include Uwe Tellkamp and Ingo Schulze. Both broach up the theme of "Mythos Dresden". Tellkamp is known for his novel "Der Turm" ("The Tower") plotting the life of an academic family in its educated social environment (ivory tower society) of Dresden in the last seven years of former East Germany. Dresden's heterogeneous cityspace strongly influences the lifestyle of the city.
Transportation in Dresden is operated by the Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe AG/DVB. The origins of the Dresden tramway can be traced back to the year 1872, when the first horse-drawn line opened between the city centre and the former village of Blasewitz, now a borough of Dresden. The tramway system is the backbone of public transport in Dresden. DVB operate twelve routes on a 200 km network. On the major lines through the inner city, where different routes intertwine, vehicles run up to every two minutes. Different routes can be identified by a route number scheme, which also extends to local and regional bus services,