Day 5

I started off the day with a quick breakfast at the hotel. Then we loaded our bags onto the bus.



Then we were on our way to Dresden, a town about 2 hours from Berlin, near the boarder between Germany and Czech. One interesting thing about this town is that it was bombed during the last few days of WW2.

We had 2.5 hours to explore Dresden and eat lunch. One of the girls I met on the tour and I went in search for lunch. We ended up not eating at a restaurant. I got two pretzels and she got bratwurst.

This girl is interesting. She's hard for me to hang out with because she's really... "frugal" (same girl that didn't want to leave the club until we had 4 people to split the taxi cost). She goes from place to place searching for a bathroom that only cost 30c euro to use. Also, she walked to three different bratwurst stands to see if any one was cheaper. I can understand wanting to be frugal, especially because she's still a student, but why worry about one or two dollars if you already spent thousands on a trip to Europe?

So what ended up really making me mad was this. The reason why we grabbed a quick and easy lunch was because we both really wanted to see a museum called Zwinger. It was actually HER suggestion, but I really wanted to see Raphael's Sistine Madonna so I was excited too. Then, when we got inside, she saw that it cost money to enter (duh!) and was like, "I don't know if we should go in because we won't have enough time to see everything. Should we do something else?" So I was like, "We have an hour and a half, what do you want to do?" and she just kept walking around leading me around the whole damn city. It was too cold to be wandering around like that. I would have gladly paid just to be able to stand inside a building. So I've been avoiding her ever since. Hhaah.

Here's an old picture of me and JR with that famous image taken from the bottom of Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Looking at this copy hanging on the wall of Santa Maria's Straw Hat Pizza is not as cool as looking at the real deal in Europe, but oh well.



Here are some pics from Dresden.





We walked into a Mc Donalds because that girl wanted to find a cheap bathroom. But I thought this was cool... at most of the Mc Donalds I've seen here in Europe, they have a separate section for Mc Cafe which is like a little cafe with desserts and coffee drinks.



Then we eagerly got on the bus (it was super cold outside!) and were on our way to Prague! To pass the time, we did introductions. We had to stand up in front of the bus and tell everyone your name, where you're from, who you're traveling with, when you're leaving the tour, and one celebrity you love and one you hate.

Then, 2.5 hours later, we arrived in Prague. I instantly fell in love with this city. It happened as soon as I got off the bus. I just love everything about Prague.

It amazes me that a driving 5 hours away from Berlin will land you in a city completely different! It's a different country, different language, and different currency! It's amazing to me because if I drive 5 hours from my house, I could be in San Francisco. Yeah, SF has its own culture, but we still speak the same language, use the same money, and have the same governor etc.





After we checked into our hotel, we went out to dinner as a group. I was totally worried about Czech food, because German food didn't appeal to me at all. My tour manager kept saying, "Czech food is wacky!" Luckily, the dinner we were served was AMAZING! It was the most I had eaten all week. It doesn't seem wacky at all. It was salty and delicious!





After dinner, we went on a quick walking tour of the city, just so we could orient ourselves. The streets are narrow, crowded, and windey so it's easy to get lost!

Our tour manager suggested that we see a blacklight show. She warned us that it was weird "like an acid trip" but said it's "totally prague" so of course I wanted to watch the show!



It was... interesting. Weird. It didn't make sense to me, although I heard later that it was supposed to be about Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) growing up. Uhh.... okay. But I'm glad I went. I would totally go back tonight if it wasn't 25 euro. I think it was a bit overpriced.

I came back to my hotel after the show. It was sooo cold outside! I'm not used to this kind of weather. Anything under 55 degrees is "freezing" to me! My roomie was ready to go to bed, so I sat outside my room and skyped with JR/updated my blog. While I was sitting outside of my room, an old lady asked me if I needed help :) and some creepy old man asked me to come in to his room. Hahah. So I decided to go back inside my room and get some sleep.

Day 4

Oh yeah, excuse my spelling and grammar errors. When I ask blogger to do my ABC check, they highlight EVERY word because they're thinking I'm trying to write in German. I don't feel like figuring out why this is happening, so just excuse my poor spelling.

After only about 4.5 hours of sleep, my annoying alarm clock went off. Ugh. I took a shower and went to breakfast (late again). I quickly ate my breakfast and got on the bus.

My only planned activity for the day was the Historical Walking Tour. This was the BEST tour. Our tour guide was Amercan but he's been living in Berlin for like 6 years. He was extremely knowledgeable and he communicated his knowledge to us so clearly! I learned so much from this walking tour. I wish that this was the first thing we did in Berlin, it would have been a perfect orientation to the city! But better late than never.


One of our first stops on the tour was on museum island. This is a picture of the Alte Museum. It probably looks familiar to you because Hitler used this area to lead huge Nazi rallies!





One interesting thing about many of the the buildings we saw today is that you can see lighter colored patches all over their facade. These buildings were heavily damaged during WW2. The light color patches on the facade are actually covered up bullet holes! It's taken decades and a lot of money to restore these buildings to their pre-war quality.

We continued down the road to this memorial. I can't remember what it's called, but it's a memorial for fallen soldiers. It depicts a grieving mother holding a fallen soldier, her son. Directly above the memorial, a circle was carved out of the ceiling exposing the mother and son to the elements 365 days of the year just as the soldiers were exposed to harsh conditions during the war.




Across the street, we stood at the sight of a Nazi book burning. Super sad. Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 or, more recently, the Koran-burning preacher guy. But I loooooooved the memorial there. It was impossible to get a decent picture of it, but I'll describe it. On the ground in the center of the courtyard area, there is a slab of glass. You can look down into the ground (through the glass) and see tall rows of empty white bookshelves. And apparently (I couldn't see it at the time) in the middle, there is a light bulb, always lit to symbolize that it is possible to destroy the book, but you can't destroy the idea <3

Next to the memorial is a plaque which translates to "Where books are burned, in the end people will burn." Which was a quote from Heinrich Heine who lived long before the third reich. That quote is so true that it totally creeps me out!





From where we were standing, we could look across the street and see Humboldt University. Many famous scholars have been associated with this university. Einstein, the brothers Grimm, Marx, and Engels to name a few! Anyways, I can't find the picture that I took of the Humboldt, but here's a picture of a nearby building... I think a faculty building for Humboldt (?).



Then we made our way down Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's most famous structure which miraculously survived WW2.





We took a quick bathroom break. Here, you have to pay to use public restrooms. Also, if there is a restroom attendant, you have to tip them like 50 euro.




...I'm going to stop here.... I'm tired! I'll blog more tomorrow on my way to Prague.