November 1st 2012

We got so little time to see the city I was kind of bummed. We only got to see the city yesterday when we walked through the main streets quickly. This morning we ate breakfast at the hotel, then immediately got right back onto our buses. We settled in for our ~2 hour drive to Dresden. On the bus all we really do is talk, watch movies, sleep, and listen to music. After this trip is over I will have logged at least 20 hours on a bus, let alone the 10 hours total by train. Anyway, we stopped once at a little gas station along the way, but soon enough we were in Dresden. The city was bombed heavily in WWII, so there are a lot of new buildings, as well as the most resilient of the old ones. I was unhappy when we were informed that we would be taking a bus tour, since I was tired of sitting for so long, but I can’t complain while in such an amazing place. A tour guide joined us on our bus, and then we began to drive around and check out the major sites. We saw many government buildings, churches, stadiums, really everything worth seeing. Our tour was in German, and though when I pay attention I can understand German, being on a bus with English-speaking friends distracts you from your German, so I really did not catch much of the history or what I was seeing. After about a half hour we arrived at the Bahnhof. Juliet has a twin sister on a RYE in Germany (only about 40 minutes from Dresden), so we stopped our tour there so they could reunite. Kathryn and Juliet got back on the bus, and they got about 5 hours to spend with each other before we left the city. Our tour lasted a couple hours, and then we stopped at a little cheese shop on a back street. We had a 20-minute break to get some food then return. Our tour concluded at the center of the city, then we got an hour and a half to go exploring on our own. I went with Juliet, Kathryn, Mark, Austin, Izze, Kathryn’s RYE friend, and a couple other people to McDonalds... I know it is bad how much we go to McDonalds, but when you are living on a budget and are hungry it just makes sense. Next we walked to a mall in the center. There was an Apple store there, and we ended up spending about 20 minutes perusing the iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, iMacs, etc. The other shops weren’t very memorable, but afterwards we walked by a large church in the center of a square. Kathryn’s friend knew a little about it and said that only the dark blocks were original, all of the others were destroyed in the bombings. But afterwards, they found the exact spot where the intact blocks belonged and reassembled the church. Also, the golden cross on the top was a present from the son of the man who dropped the bomb on the church, making it come full circle I think. We ran out of time, so we walked back to the bus. Juliet and Kathryn had to say their goodbyes, then we got back on the bus and drove to Berlin. We were under the impression that Berlin was only about 1 hour and 45 minutes away, but it ended up taking 3½ hours to get there with the traffic. We stayed at a large hotel/hostel in the downtown area of Berlin, so after we settled in and had our dinner at the cafeteria, we went out to explore. I went with Juliet, Mark, Austin, Emily, Emily, Clio, Simon, Celeste and a couple others who came and went. First we visited the Brandenburg arches. The effect was amplified at night, and the monument was incredible. Next was a Jewish memorial. It was a series of concrete blocks beginning about a foot high, then getting taller and taller while becoming deeper and deeper. It was a maze of large concrete columns. We continued on to the main street, walked through a few parks, visited an opera house (from the outside), then went back to the hotel. It was a full and super successful day; I saw Prague, Dresden, and Berlin all in the same day.