Doin' it Dresden (& Berlin)

“If we had been standing here 30 years ago we would have been shot at.” ~ Thomas Zimmerman while standing on the East side of Berlin Wall

I spent the past few days exploring European trains and Germany (Dresden and Berlin) with a dear childhood friend, Thomas Zimmermann, who became more and more like a big brother to me this weekend. Thank you for a wonderful weekend full of laughs and great conversation. 

Weekend Itinerary:

Thursday: Train - Budapest - Dresden

Friday: Dresden - Train - Berlin

Saturday: Berlin

Sunday: Berlin - Train - Budapest

This trip was abnormally packed with interesting social interactions:

• Legit? Train Station Helper: While searching for my train in Budapest, I was approached by a man wearing a bright yellow vest. He seemed to work there and was kind enough to offer to help my find my seat. After he asked me to pay him for "how helpful he was". Apparently this is not a normal occurrence here; maybe I seem easily manipulated. I paid him...I guess that means I am...
• Hungarian Homeless/Orphaned Children Representative: 10 minutes into the trip I was bombarded with pictures, documents and information regarding the homeless and orphaned children living in Hungary. After donating 4 Euros I was informed that the smallest donation accepted was 10 Euros. I stuck to the 4 Euros, but to this day I am still not sure where my donation is going. I trust it is a good cause. 
• Angry Hungarian Ticket Lady: A very beautiful Hungarian woman came to stamp my ticket, so I offered my passport too in case she needed to see it as well. Next thing I knew she was yelling at me, because she didn't need to see it. Whoops! I decided not to take it personally and blame it on a bad day. 
• Obsessed Slovakian Father: Upon entering Slovakia, a middle-aged man boarded the train and asked to sit in my compartment. Realizing that we couldn't communicate in Slovakian or English we found Hungarian to be our common language. After some time I pulled out my computer and headphones in hopes of sending the "I'm done talking to you" signal, but he still proceeded to interrupt me periodically throughout his ride.  First weird question, “can we get to know each other?”, to which I responded "ONLY a little bit”. Other questions asked sporadically: "why am I in Europe?", "where am I studying?", and "at what university?" Next he showed me a picture of his daughter who he thought looked like me and later proceeded to ask me if he could take a picture of me to show her. Yikes! I said no and thankfully that was the end of that conversation. 
• Kind Czech Guy: Later I was blessed by a kind czech college student who was going home for the weekend. We had a nice conversation and he was very helpful in figuring out where my stop was. He gave the quite stressful and demeaning train ride a nice ending. 
• Berlin-Wall Crazies: Immediately after arriving at the Berlin Wall on Saturday we were bombared with a woman who shoved a document in our face demanding that we sign the paper before even giving us a chance to read it. Throughout our 30-45 minutes there we had about 5 of them ask us for signatures and food. After the 4th time we made a plan that if they came up once more I would just start speaking to them in Hungarian and Thomas would stay quiet to give the appearance that neither of us spoke English or German. The next time, it worked!

Dresden: 

Dresden by night

The fusion of history and the present at its finest. They are rebuilding a building that was bombed, while still using as much of the ruins and foundation as possible.

The Dresden Frauenkirche has been my favorite church in the world since I saw it for the first time after it was finished being rebuilt in 2005 when I was in Dresden. This Lutheran church was destroyed in the Dresden bombing during World War II. When the rebuilding designs were being made, a technology was used to figure out the location of the remaining pieces in the original building. As you can see in the photos, the darker parts of the church wall are the stones from the original church.

We ate a delicious lunch of Currywurst and Pommes (curry sausage and french fries).

Yes we made chocolate chip cookies! That is just what the Auses do with Thomas.

Berlin: 

First we stopped at the Mall of Berlin. It is so big that there is an underground stop at each end of the mall. The old images on the wall give it a classy and unique feel.

Well here it is, folks, The Berlin Wall. It is difficult to explain how it felt to be here, but I can say that it wasn't easy. The intensity of the situation surrounding this wall along with the implications and effects it had on people's lives felt very real. I will never know what it felt like to live in a place so divided, but I understand more about the story than I did before this trip.

I thought that there was only one section of the Berlin Wall left; however, we found a few small pieces of it all over the city. Also there is a strip of two bricks thick running through the city representing where the wall was before it was torn down.

This little boy lived on the East side of the wall and attempted to escape to the West at the age of 6. He did not survive the attempt. 

This is Berlin's Holocaust Memorial. The concrete blocks are resting on a bowl shaped ground and then rise as they approach the middle; therefore, allowing the tallest block to reache 4.8 meters (15.75 feet). 

Berlin's 368 meter tall TV tower was built to portray technological advances in 1969; meanwhile, the secular socialist State had demanded that all the crucifixes be removed from all of the churches. However, as you might be able to see, when the sun shines on the ball it makes a cross. Legend says that this was God's way of getting back at GDR for their expectations in the churches.

Ritter Sport Store (Germany's Version of the M&M Store) was the company that invented the square chocolate bar. 

Germany is famous for their Christmas pyramids. This souvenir store sold a lot of them making me think of home where we have two of them that we put out at Christmas time. 

We went to see Berlin's Motown "musical" where a group of performers sang and danced to songs from the Motown musical genre. It was phenomenal and so fun to see this outside of Detroit!

I am very blessed to have so many generous friends around Europe who are willing to share their homes and time with me to give me a unique and incredible experience while living her. 

Auf Wiedersehen, 

Emily