After three days in decadent luxury of elegant suites we are
due to be in a standard room tonight. Departing Prague at 8 AM with light
cloud, overcast skies and an attractive countryside we crossed over into
Germany after a couple of hours on the bus.
We had a walking tour of Dresden, which although it looks old, was
completely destroyed by the Western allied air forces in February 1945. Dresden
was a city of history and museums with a timber medieval centre.
A catholic cathedral had to be built for the Polish King (Augustus)
who was marrying a Catholic Princess. He
had an overhead walk bridge built for him so he could go from the palace to the
church twice a day. He had 300 children
and 299 were illegitimate. We had lunch at a restaurant called the
Kurfurstenschanke which was established in 1704. It seemed to be populated by the locals as we
avoided the touristy ones including, “Ayers Rock” that seem to have Australian cuisine
we have never heard off. We had lovely
potato and sausage soup and shared a baked potato and salad, it was quite cool
outside so it was good to be inside.
The Church of Our Lady that we went inside of is only 10
years old but the sandstone here ages quite quickly. The gold cross on top of
the church was donated by the United Kingdom and weighed a lot considering it
was gold. I doubt she bought it in her hand luggage as Queen Elizabeth was
there for its consecration. Designed in rococo style and it appeared more like
a theatre than a church it was spectacular.
Apparently a lot of Russians now visit Dresden because Putin was heas of the KGB for 5 years here.
On the side of the museum there is message scratched in big
letters in Russian saying that there were no mines, this dates back to 1945, Krzysztof
Piechowicz (pronounced Kristov – and for
his surname you are on your own here) our tour guide who is Polish, told
is he had to learn Russian, which I guess everyone had to. There was a lot of security in the city
because a G7 meeting is on.
I did hear that Queensland won the State of Origin Game 11-10
- woo hoo!
On the way we saw a huge glass dome that apparently is like
an Africa experience. Apparently Germany has been moving to renewable energy
with wind power. The countryside is flat and as we get nearer to Berlin the
open fields give way to pine forests.
Arriving in Berlin we had a very brief talking tour of the remaining
section of the Berlin Wall, our tour guide told us that when the wall came down
there were about 4 million people in Berlin and about 8 million rabbits living
in Berlin who lived between the two walls.
So when the wall came down the rabbits were everywhere as they had
nowhere to go, we can only imagine what happened to them…such cute little
things…such delicious cute little things.
Strangely enough when we were in Paris we saw a rabbit in the middle of
the day in the grounds of the Hotel Invalides.
He also told the stories of the difficulties of going
through borders. His friend was going by car into East Berlin and they asked
him if he was carrying any guns. He
replied by asking why isn’t is safe do I need one. They then proceeded for the next ten hours to
take his car apart screw by screw, bolt by bolt. They did not have a sense of humour
apparently.
We arrived at our hotel in Berlin the Ritz-Carlton and OMG
the room, it was a suite, not as nice as the Art Deco in Prague but not far off
and no night trams, It did come complete with a Beefeater in uniform to greet you and a nightly bed turn down service. How will we cope when we come back to Australia?
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