At last, a hotel with more than one computer!
Yesterday morning, our host and guide Rainer (that's RAY-ner... not ray-NEAR) reminded us that our trip was paid for by the RIAS Berlin Kommission (google it) by holding up his sign and saying RAIS is leaving Berlin.
"And we are all sad to be doing so!" I yelled from the back of the bus.
And two things are true: 1) Even though all thirteen of us are missing home, and were looking forward to Dresden and Prague and are still looking forward to Brussels tomorrow, we enjoyed Berlin so much.
And 2) Even at this age, the troublemakes still sit in the back of the bus.
Yes, a bus. And not a short bus, either. Europe's buses are so much nicer. Made by Mercedes Benz! We pulled out of Berlin at about 9:30 and headed south for Dresden... about 2 hours by fancy bus. Very green, is Germany. A few rolling hills, a few groups of old houses, farms growing... corn? (I've flown 10 hours to be in Iowa?) and big windmills. Okay, I know my Bakersfield friends are thinking "So what? we have windmills in Tehachapi." Which is what I thought. Until I saw one behind a house. Like, MILES behind a house. And it still dwarfed the house! Germans know how to build windmills!
(Oh, and German's know how to build solar, too. In a country that is gray and cloudy most of the year, in the next few years they will have installed enough solar panals to equal the energy output of three nuke plants.)
We got to Dresden, checked into a lovely, posh hotel that sits amid centuries-old buildings, then left to tour a Volkswagen plant.
The Dresden plant--in what was communist East German--is state of the art. Four floors, it is built with glass wallss You can see the whole hi-tech process from the street. They build custom-ordered Volkswagen Phaetons by hand, in a factory with wooden floors and indirect lighting, using special overhead units to move the cars from the holding area to the assmebly line, and the line moves each car on a special platform on the wooden floor in a circle like a giant rotating sushi bar, built buy Germany's best in white overalls. My "normal" traveling companions were impressed. Gearhead that I am, I was geeked.
Then a walking tour of a giant church, and the exteriors of some of tha many giant German palaces in Dresden. Here's the odd thing. All of these old buildings are mostly brown, except for some odd parts that are just jet black! At first, you think "Jeez, would it hurt them to clean ALL of the building, and not must leave some random stones dirty?" But all of these buildings were destroyed by incindiary bombs at the end of WWII, and most sat as ruins during the communist era of the DDR. When they were rebuilt, the remaining sandstone pieces were numbered Most of the "centuries old" buildings in Dresden are only about 20 years old, on the average. The ramaining stones were numbered, and the salvageable parts were used in the reconstruction. Stained by fire, the black stones stand out against the new sandstone. To see the old, baroque palaces and churches, made with 85% new stone tells alot about how far the former East Germany has come, and a constent reminder of the cost of war.
Then, this morning, back on the "bus" (this ain't no Grayhound) to Prague. The few hills turned to rolling hills. Castles and churches dotted the mountain tops. And as we entered Prague, centuries old buildings appeared. But the bus could not make it into the city center; we had to drag our luggage the last 1/2 mile. And what an old hotel: a new hotel in an old building (kind of like the Padre, you Bakersfield peeps) but with an attitude... pictures later.
We went to Radio Free Europe, then on to dinner and walking through the small, narrow streets of Prague, including seeing the Astrological Clock, and popping into an Absinth bar... oh, so much more to tell you, but there is a guy waiting for this computer and he's starting to look really mad.
Don't want to create an internation incident....
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