jopesta.com | impressions and reflections

Germany

After a most unfortunate 24 hour bus ride experience I made it from Herrang to Berlin.  Mental note: Overnight bus is no fun.  My mom asked me why I didn’t take a train, and whether it was significantly cheaper to take the bus.  I don’t know, it just sort of happened this way. 

Berlin was great.  Andy was a perfect host and spent his evenings showing me around the corners of the city.  He took me to a very neat place called ‘Zapata’ which is a old 5-story warehouse that is now filled with artists, graffiti, and rooms for drinking.  Mostly I was fascinated by Berlin’s history, as even though I had heard about Berlin in school, I feel the information had not stuck.  Mostly, it did not occur to me that 1989, the year the wall came down, is extremely recent.  Berlin has undergone huge construction since then to fill in the dead man’s land that used to surround the wall, making a large portion of Berlin’s buildings quite new.  In general Berlin felt vibrant, young, and I loved the graffiti. 

Dresden was also quite nice, but I was a little less enthralled.  I spent much of my time relaxing in the main downtown squares.  On the first evening there was an orchestra playing in the Zwinger courtyard that I listened to, and later there were some buskers playing on stairs which overlooked a Cathedral and beautiful sunset.  I also took a bus around to see the main sites, and headed out to Pillnitz Castle only a short ride away.  The tours spoke a lot of trying to rebuild historical buildings after the WWII bombings, and it appears as though the important rebuilding is almost complete.  However, there’s still quite a few empty spaces that need to be filled in. 

After a couple days of bumming off my grandparents in Travcice I am headed to Prague late this afternoon.  Czech classes start bright and early tomorrow morning at 9.  Good thing I’ve readjusted my sleep schedule to something relatively normal.