Eastern Germany-- Leipzig and Dresden

After leaving Berlin, we stopped in Leipzig for six hours or so on our way to Dresden. In case you are not a Germany geography wizard, these cities are both in Eastern Germany.


This is the Nikolaikirche, which is a church where some of the first successful resistance to the GDR (Eastern Germany regime) began. People used to meet here for 'prayer meetings' and would actually conspire against the government.



We also visited Thomaskirche, the church where Bach worked for 27 years. He is buried underneath the church.



These blue pipes are above-ground water pipes. I'm not sure if they are unique to Eastern Germany, but we'd never seen them before.

We also went to a Stasi (East German secret police) museum in Leipzig. It was really interesting to see the technology they used to monitor mail, phones and people's homes and learn about the techniques they used in questioning suspected dissidents.

We also went to the Leipzig Zoo, which is world-known for its research in ape communication. It was the prettiest zoo I've ever seen, and the animals are actually kept in something similar to their native environment. This ape decided to pose for me!

This picture was taken without zoom-- the monkey was literally right in front of my face because the Leipzig Zoo has some free-roaming monkeys who are not afraid of humans.

Notice the big, scary lion in the background and the very short fence. Okay, I realize that there is a bit of water between us and the lion, but it seemed a little dangerous to me. I don't think you'd ever find something like this in the US!



This is the Zwinger in Dresden, which my guide book says "used to be a party place for royals." Dresden must have been pretty wealthy place back in the day-- nobody even lived here, the multiple castles are elsewhere in the city. Now the buildings house museums, a few of which we visited.

This is part of Dresden's sky-line. Walking around this city I often felt overwhelmed by the beauty-- it was literally too much to take in! My guide book says that "there are few city silhouttes more striking than Dresden's" and that in the 18th century, Dresden was known as the "Florence of the north."

We had to wait in Dresden until 10pm to catch our overnight train to Paris, so when it got dark, we went to the Botanical Gardens. They had a tropical house, and I saw a banana tree!

The Big B--- Berlin!

Our train ride to Berlin was exciting because the train was so full we rode for an hour and a half without seats. Here is Colin guarding some of the luggage.


Amelia and me in front of the Brandenburg gate. Napoleon took the Quadriga from the top and dragged it over to Paris after he defeated the Prussians. Then, when the Prussians defeated Napolean, they carried the big thing all the way back to Berlin, where it sits again above the gate as a sign of German greatness :)

Me in front of the Reichstag (Parliament building). For a German and Political Science major, it doesn't get much better than this!


Amelia and I woke up at 7am to get in line early so we could climb up the dome in the Reichstag. This is what it looks like from inside--you can climb all the way up and look down and see the city.


This is a section of the Berlin wall called the East Side Gallery. In 1990 the government decided to preserve this section and allow Eastern artists to decorate it. Now much of the art is covered by graffitti, but some of it was still comprehensible.


Another part of the wall. It says: Viele kleine Leute, die in vielen kleinen Orten, viele kleine Dinge tun koenne das Gesicht der Welt veraendern. (Many little people, who do many little things in many little places can change the face of the world)

The famous East Germany Ampelmann. Eastern Germany created him as the 'walk' signal for their traffic lights because he is cartoonish and would attract kids' attention.

We saw the Berlin marathon. Actually, we were literally in it. We stood in the middle of the road to watch it, and then the runners decided to leave their designated path and run on both sides of the road, which meant we were stuck in the middle of thousands of sweaty, panting runners. Don't worry-- we got out safely.

This is a church near our hostel that the Germans chose not to restore after the war. It was moving to see the destruction that the city endured.

We saw lots of bullet holes and schrapnel damage around the city. Berlin has tried to reconstruct after the war, but the city is not very wealthy, and there was a lot of damage done.

This is East Berlin. The difference in East and West Berlin was so noticable! Not only were the buildings in the East much uglier (mainly concrete) and much more dilapidated, but there was more graffiti and food prices were cheaper. Berlin in general is not a very nice city-- it has 20% unemployment and is only 2/3 populated. It is a great city to visit because its history is so rich, but it is not a good example of typical German cities.

This is us with a girl from Australia we met in our hostel and Nick and Gabe, two other students from St. Olaf who are studying in Berlin. We went to a cool wine bar where you pay 2 Euro for a glass and then try all the wine you want and pay whatever you think it was worth at the end. The wine wasn't amazing, but we had fun.

This is the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. It is simply rows of different sized cement rectangles, and the observers are supposed to decide what it means to them. The memorial was strategically placed in this spot in a high-traffic spot in the city so that nobody could ignore it. Underneath of the memorial is a powerful museum displaying stories and letters of families who were affected by the holocaust.

Ole reunion! In Berlin we met up with 6 other St. Olaf students/grads. One of them, Katie, was a tour guide in Berlin last summer and gave us a hilarious and extremely informative 3 hour walking tour of the city.

This was the view from our hostel-- it wasn't the best place in the world. But, it was our only bad hostel, so we were pretty lucky!

Adventures in the North-- Hamburg and Kiel

After Bacharach, we took a long train ride to Hamburg, one of the largest cities in Germany, and the largest port in the country. It is also known for its cleanliness and safety. We stayed for two nights with my friend Lennart (who was an international student at St. Olaf for 2 and a half years) and his parents. He and his parents were so welcoming! Lennart showed us around Hamburg and drove us up to another city, Kiel, on the Baltic Sea. His parents just genuinely love people, and we stayed up late both nights chatting with them. They also took us to a quintessential German restaurant where we had----- just guess------ Wiener Schnitzel and potatoes! It was, however, much better than the Schnitzel they serve at least twice a week in the cafteria here at school.

In Hamburg we also saw a huge U-boat (submarine) factory, which makes such great products that the United States wanted to buy it a few years back. The Germans, however, were not about to give their pride and glory to the Americans and the governement forbid the selling of the company. Pretty interesting!


Lennart's house. He lives in a little village outside of Hamburg called Bad Bremstedt. Apparently Karl Lagerfeld also grew up there and went to Lennart's elementary school. This housing style is typical in Northern Germany, while white houses with red roofs are typical in Southern Germany.


Hamburg. It was a little rainy and gray, but so beautiful! It kind of reminded me of a bigger version of St. Paul. As with virtually all German cities, Hamburg is thriving with life and has a city center that is closed off to cars and is always full of people shopping, having coffee, wandering around, and traveling across the city by foot.


In Hamburg they take their pedestrian crossing lights very seriously; the lights display TWO red men for do not walk because apparently two red lights get people's attention more than just one red light.


This is the beach on the Baltic Sea in Kiel. So gorgeous!


Margit and I took a little rest in one of the beach chairs that are all over the place.

It was hard to capture the excitement and beauty of Hamburg in pictures (especially because of the dingy weather), but if I had to live anywhere in Germany, I think I would live in either Konstanz or Hamburg.

Bacharach-- living in a castle!!

Next stop- Bacharach on the Rhein (Rhine) River. When I came to Germany in high school we stayed in a castle converted into a youth hostel and I loved it so much that I talked the others into including it on our trip this time around. It took us 15 minutes to schlep our luggage up super steep, muddy steps carved into the side of a hill, but it was definitely worth it!!

Our castle!

The view from the castle. The hills are covered in vineyards and the whole area is filled with small medieval-looking villages. We did a wine tasting in town and decided we really like the wine from this region!

More beauty. That's our castle way up on the hill. We spent our days here wandering around the town, lounging in the sun by the river, and playing cards with some other students in our hostel. It was a much needed relaxation after the craziness of finishing up our language course, packing, planning our trip, registering for classes at home, choosing classes to take at the University here and finishing up the last of our beaucratic tasks before heading out of town.

Just a cool sign I saw. It means: stairs ahead. The Germans really like to make signs for everything so that everything is very orderly and nobody is taken by surprise when they find a staircase in front of them.

Frankfurt am Main

After Stuttgart we took a train to Frankfurt and spent a few hours there before heading onto Bacharch. Frankfurt wasn't very cool. When we left the train station we walked right through the red light district. My guide book says, "Women in particular might want to avoid Elbestrasse and Taunusstrasse," and for some reason we thought those would be the best streets to take. Perhaps we should read the guide book BEFORE we get to a city :)



We did, however, get to visit the European Central Bank.


We also visited the house in which Goethe's family lived. This is the desk at which he wrote some of his most famous works! Kind of cool as I have had to read lots by Goethe for class!


The sign here says "Speak English und die Welt versteht dich." That means, Speak English and world understands you. I took a picture of this because it is SO true (except in France, where they are very proud of only speaking French). We have had so many people stare at us in astonishment when we say we're from the USA because they are so surprised that we aren't the 'dumb Americans who speak only English' and then they ask us why we'd ever need to learn German if we speak English fluently.

75 degree weather!

Hi all! I am going to try to chronicle my past two weeks of amazing beauty. I'll start from the beginning and make a post for every city. Have fun!

Our first stop was Stuttgart. We got a little worried about the whole adventure when it began with a couple of train problems. Our first train connection didn't happen because of construction on the tracks, so we shoved our way into a bus with everyone else who wanted to get to the next station. Then, after lugging our luggage up and down hordes of steps, we found out that our train "ist ausgefallen." That means it no longer exists. SO, we grabbed coffee and waited for a couple hours to catch the next one. After that, however, all was smooth sailing.

Stuttgart was so much prettier than we thought it would be and it was 75 sunny degrees!


The whole crew-- Colin, Margit, Amelia and me.



The whole city came out for the beautiful weather. I think that's a castle in the background.


That is definitely a castle in the background.



Stuttgart had an amazing amount of green area in the city!

After a full day in the city, we lost our hostel. We ended up walking all the way up this huge hill only to find that we had walked up the wrong hill. Then we had to walk all the way down and go find and walk up the right hall. It was okay though-- we considered it conditioning for the rest of the trip.

Away we go!

Well, my pre-semester language class ended today and I leave on Sunday for a two week adventure around Germany and Paris. I am VERY excited!! I wanted to post some pictures of Easter before I go, and let you all know that I won't be writing for a few weeks.

I got together with Amelia (from St. Olaf), Azzurra (from Verona, Italy), Margit (from Denmark), and Antoneota (from Romania) for Easter. We started by going to Easter mass at the Münster (cathedral) in town, and then made a huge lunch/dinner. Mass was in Latin, and the music was beautiful. The meal was perfect--- we all ate so much we couldn't move afterwards.


Three great cooks in the kitchen! After we delegated tasks (necessary because everybody knew the best way to cook everything), things went very smoothly. Azzurra made crepes with nutella and whipped cream for desert, and, I felt super sophisticated eating crepes made by a real Italian (even though I know they are a French fare).

Our beautiful concoction of carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, whatever spices there happened to be laying around in the kitchen, garlic, schnitzel meat (which we did not make into schnitzel), and orange juice. It actually tasted really good! We were very proud of ourselves because we didn't even use a recipe. We also had asparagus and mashed potatoes. mmmm!

Happy and satt (full)!

from left to right: Amelia, Margit, Antoneota, me, Azzurra.

And, in conclusion, a picture of me. I think it nicely captures my emotions right now-- I'm still a bit in awe of everything I get to see and everything I get to do. Oh, and the light around my head is there because I am just that holy. :)

The schedule for my trip is:

March 30-31 Stuttgart

March 31-April 2 Bacharach

April 2-4 Hamburg

April4-8 Berlin

April 8-9 Dresden

April 10-13 Paris

Classes start for real on April 14, and after that point, I should have internet in my dorm room! Have a great couple weeks, and I will post stories and pictures when I get back!

Love you all!