Day 4: Dresden to Prague

We made it to the Czech Republic this afternoon!!  I still cannot believe that this is one of the countries we get to add to our list of places visited.  It seems like such an add place for us to visit because we don't know much about it, but we are learning.  For me, I think it is difficult to recall the history of these countries because so much of what is currently in place happened while I was in middle school.  So, it wasn't in the history books, and it wasn't happening during a time when it mattered to me as a middle schooler all the way across the world.  Maybe some of you can identify!?

Anyway, we left Berlin this morning and took about a three-hour bus ride to Dresden.  We were able to walk around for a little while and enjoy the city and lunch.  Germany has 16 states, and Dresden is in the state of Saxony.  Dresden was completely destroyed during WWII and has been rebuilt.  

 The first parts of the city that we saw were buildings like the one above....very dark/charred looking buildings that certainly did not look like they were less than 100 years old.  Our tour guide said that these important buildings were rebuilt using the materials from the ones that were destroyed.

 Dresden is known for its porcelain.  The "Procession of Princes" mural above is of 93 different people (35 royal men) and was created between 1906 and 1907 with close to 25,000 ceramic tiles from the porcelain manufacturer Meissen. The tiles miraculously survived the devastating aerial bombardments of February 1945!  That is really amazing considering almost every building was destroyed!

 This Lutheran church has a statue of Martin Luther in front.  It was destroyed during the war and was not rebuilt until 1995 - after the communist regime fell.  Some of the facades are new, but it does also have some of the older material from before the war.

Our small group decided to climb to the top of the dome.  (It was the kids' idea!)  But, it turned out to be a great one!  We could see the entire city of Dresden.  We also got a beautiful view of the inside of the dome! I had to laugh as I was walking up, huffing and puffing, and noticed an AED machine!  This climbing stairs is no joke, but at least we got our exercise in for the day!

Jordan volunteered to find out what this rock was during our free time and return to the group with the answer.  It is a piece of the church that fell when it was bombed and stays as a memorial for all those whole lost their lives in Dresden during the war.  She received a beautiful postcard as her reward.  By the way, she was not allowed to use technology!  She had to ask someone in the city.

 After a few hours in Dresden, we jumped back on our bus for another 2-3 hour ride to Prague, Czech Republic.  Vanja, our tour director, taught us a little about the area as we were riding on the bus.  We learned that Czech Republic and Slovakia once made up the Soviet country of Czechoslovakia.  After the fall of communism, the two countries wanted to be separated and consider their split a divorce - a Velvet Divorce, actually, because it was so smooth.  Their was no revolution.  It was a peaceful split.

When we arrived in Prague, we did a short walking tour through the old Jewish Quarter.  This is the oldest synagogue in Europe.  It was built in the 1300s.  We are looking forward to learning more about it tomorrow.

As in Berlin, there were many Jews living in Prague before the Holocaust and WWII, but they are starting to come back to the area slowly.

 Fun picture of our tour director - Vanja!!  She is probably the best tour director I've had!  She is fun, on time, always prepared and knows how to handle a large group of people!!

 Before dinner, we viewed one of the old entrances/gates to the city of Prague.  They began building the tower in 1475!  The music hall next to it was built in 1383!  Of course, it was destroyed during the war and rebuilt in this "Art Nouveau" style.

We had a good dinner and arrived at our new hotel around 9:00 this evening.  Everyone is down for the night and preparing for a day of walking tomorrow!  Thank you to everyone who made it possible for us to come on this trip!  We are learning a lot about history, other cultures, language, and each other!

Day 3: Berlin

Today we woke up refreshed and ready to go!  We had a good breakfast at the hotel before boarding the bus and beginning our bus tour of the city.  We love Vanja, our Tour Director!  She is very sweet and super organized!  Both of the other groups that are with us are kind, and everyone seems to be getting along well and making new friends!  

We had our first local guide, Dominic, today.  He is the local expert on all things Berlin!  We started the tour at a different past of the Berlin Wall than what we saw yesterday.  This part is on one side of the Spree River which was once the actual border between East and West Berlin in this area.  This wall has been painted by many different street artists.  Here are a few things we saw:

This is a famous picture that seems a little weird to us as Americans, but here is what we learned:

"The Kiss depicts Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev giving the East Germany President Erich Honecker what appears to be a passionate kiss on the lips. At first glance, you might think it’s a complete joke, with no bearing on reality. But the image was based on an actual photograph taken in 1979 in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the German Democratic Republic–East Germany.

Fraternal kisses among socialist leaders were not unusual, but as the website, Iconic Images, points out, “Both Honecker and Brezhnev were a little more enthusiastic than your average Communist dictator in kissing.”

By the way, I found this on http://www.disappearingman.com/berlin-wall/the-kiss/.  It was written better than I could remember the story! :)

Nothing to do with Germany, really, but we did get to see the hotel where Michael Jackson once hung is child over the railing - Hotel Adlon!

The German Parliament Building

Dominic gave us a good little history lesson using this map!   You can see Germany is split into East and West in the smaller picture, and Berlin is just a small section of East Germany.  It was once the only part of East Berlin that was not Communist, but when the younger generation kept leaving the country through "free" Berlin, the Soviets had to stop it.  So, they built the wall around West Berlin making it almost impossible for people under Soviet rule to leave East Berlin.  The larger picture shows how Berlin was divided.  There were three checkpoints where people wanting to come in or go out of East Berlin had to "check-in" - Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie.  

We went to the memorial site for Checkpoint Charlie and were able to get some pictures with the "fake" soldiers.  It is so different to hear these stories in the land where they occured.  There are so many more details that we just don't get from our history books and even the media.

We have seen several buildings that were severely damaged by the war.  Most of the city was demolished after the war, but there are a few places that survived!  

 After touring around Berlin, we visited Potsdam -- the location of the Berlin/Potsdam Conference after World War II where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met to discuss reparation.  The conference was held in this small village outside of Berlin because there was not a large enough space still standing in Berlin to accommodate all of the people who attended.  We walked through the palace that was actually the last palace built for the monarchs.  Each of the three leaders had their own office and living space in the palace.  They even had their own entry doors into the actual conference room.
We also learned a lot about what took place during the conference, but I will not go into that much detail with you!

As we were leaving the palace and had just been talking all about WWII, we walked outside to see two army airplanes flying overhead!  We were all a little nervous about it until our tour guide very excitedly told us that there were 30 planes flying this afternoon to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the air lift.  I found this at https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-airlift

"After World War II, the Allies partitioned the defeated Germany into a Soviet-occupied zone, an American-occupied zone, a British-occupied zone and a French-occupied zone. Berlin, the German capital city, was located deep in the Soviet zone, but it was also divided into four sections. In June 1948, the Russians–who wanted Berlin all for themselves–closed all highways, railroads and canals from western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin. This, they believed, would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France and the U.S. out of the city for good. Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S. and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the “Berlin Airlift,” lasted for more than a year and carried more than 2.3 million tons of cargo into West Berlin."

We were also told that one man made homemade parachutes from tissues and attached them to candy - dropping it to the kids from his plane!  This got many people excited and people from different places made him more parachutes and sent them to him!

After another short ride, we visited the palace of King Frederick AKA The Potato King!  His humble palace is only 10 rooms because he lived alone and "didn't need much space".  He was known as a great soldier, but he is also credited with bringing the potato to the Germans!  So, our tour guide told us, their are always potatoes on his grave as a memorial!  If you want to hear his very clever way of convincing the people to eat the potatoes, I found the story here:

http://scihi.org/frederick-great-potato/

 Just before dinner, we vistited the Memorial for Murdered Jews in the Holocaust.  It is a very large memorial with 100's of different sized rectangle stones.  It is a unique memorial, and the artist says that you must walk through it and listen, feel, think and you will know what it means.  It was a pretty interesting experience.  It is just rows and rows of stones in different heights, but walking through it felt lonely and quiet.  I even felt a bit anxious.  I love how the Europeans have such an appreciation for art and for experiencing it more than just looking at it!

 We walked across the street from the memorial to Brandenburg Gate which was once the royal entrance into Berlin and survived the war!

 Then, we ate a dinner of sausages and potatoes with some veggies before coming back to the hotel!

Tomorrow we leave for Dresden and then Prague.  More tomorrow! 

Day 1 & 2 - Berlin

I was so exhausted last night that I could not type after three sentences!  I kept falling asleep and waking up to see sentences that made no sense!  So, here is a recap of our first 2 days which really seem like one to us!

Our plane left Houston at  3:00 local time on Friday afternoon and arrived around midnight in Amsterdam (7:00 a.m. local time)!  We then boarded another plane for an hour and a half flight to Berlin.  We arrived at about 10 a.m. (3:00 am Houston time), and waited for two hours for another group to arrive.  We then loaded our luggage onto our bus and drove down to the city center where we walked around in the hot sun for what seemed like forever!!

We learned a few interesting facts throughout the day:

White rabbits lived in the area between the walls!  Not only were the people trapped in East or West Berlin when the walls went up in the middle of the night, but the rabbits were burrowed underground and also trapped when they came up the next morning!  Apparently, they were very happy living in the space undistrubed by people, but there were A LOT of them by the end of the Nazi reign and .....

Things we saw on our tour:

A beautiful protestant church with a fabulous organ.  We even got to hear the organ being played!

We stopped at the Topography of Terror Museum which included an original section of the Berlin Wall.  We took turns taking our pictures with the wall, but we got some even better ones today!  We did not have much time in the museum to really read, but we are getting bits and pieces of the awful times in Germany's history everywhere we go.  You really can't get away from it!

Amplemann is on all of the walk/don't walk signs instead of just a stick figure.  He was actually a part of East Berlin and was incorporated into all of Berlin when it was reunited.

We stopped by the train station where the first children were saved from the Nazis in 1938.  This statue depicts the ones who were not saved and eventually had to live through (or die) in the Holocaust.

On the opposite side are these children who thankfully made it out safely before having to go through all the torture.  However, we were reminded that these children left without their families, and had to start a whole new life with people they didn't know.  Even their story can be tragic!

There are many places in Berlin where the country has tried to memorialize the Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust.  One of those ways was placing these "stumbling blocks" at the entrance to each house where Jews lived in the Jewish quarter.  Each block has the name of the family who lived there and where they went when they left their homes (which concentration camp, etc.).  They are called stumbling blocks because they are raised a little so that you literally stumble over them a when you pass and are reminded to look down and remember - not just Jews in general, but the names!  These stones can be found in most of the countries where Jews were exhiled.

We spent a very short time in the Jewish quarter learning a little about the people who tried to save others.  One man was made known for helping disabled people learn to make brooms and other equipment - trying to give them a trade or job so they weren't seen as worthless.

170,000 Jews lived in the Jewish quarter before the Nazi invasion.  Only 4000 remained after!  They are now coming back slowly.  About 20,000 Jews now live in Berlin.


We did a walking tour of downtown and then ended with a dinner of sausages and potatoes.  Lastly, we boarded the bus and were in our hotel rooms by about 8:30 p.m.  Then, we crashed until this morning!!  The "first" day is always the hardest because they are trying to keep us up and moving constantly so we will quickly get acclamated to the time change.

We all felt better this morning and were grateful for cool weather and a lot of time on the bus!