We met at IES just before 8am to get on a bus with the most hysterical bus driver in the history of all bus drivers. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the drive up there:
"Look to the left. You see nothing. Look to the right. You see nothing. Welcome."
"Do you see those Kuehe. Creme Ladies in English. Half milk. Half ice cream."
Anyway, this man was hysterical. We got to Dresden and dropped our bags off before going on a city tour. The city is absolutely amazing. AMAZING! Quick history lesson: Dresden was pretty much COMPLETELY destroyed in the bombings of World War 2. Leveled. Shortly there after Dresden fell under the ruling of the DDR. Which as you can probably imagine didn't do anything food for the restoration of the city. For the most part the DDR refused to restore anything and in many cases refused to even clean up the rubble. In 1990 Germany was reunited and therefore Dresden was able to begin rebuiding the city. So, in an effort to put the historical aspects of the city back together, the citizens organized the piles of rubble piece by piece and when possible used the original stones in their original places to rebuilt each building. Unbelievable! Anyway, the buildings we saw were rebuilt sometime in the last 15 years.
So, we went on a really cool tour of the city and then had a couple hours of free time. My favorite part of the tour was the Zwinger, or party palace. When the prince was ready to marry the king built this extravagant outside palace/garden venue for the party. UNBELIEVABLE!!
During our free time, I had lunch with Maria and Eric (two of the three IES mentors) at a Tapas restaurant and it was so fun to talk in German and to get to know them both a little bit better. Afterwards we split up and I went back to the Zwinger and toured the Porcelain collection which was almost as beautiful as the party palace itself. James and I then took a peek at one of the churches in the area.We met up as a group and headed back to check into the hostel and then James, Maria, and I went back to the Opera hosue and "bought" tickets for Don Giovanni. Now yes, we did buy tickets but we bought them to stand up in the very back of the very top. But during intermission we found seats on teh seventh row! So cool! While it wasn't the best performance I've ever seen it was so wonderful to finally see an opera that I've always wanted to see. I hope to see it again sometime soon but either way it was so fun to see the inside of the Opera house.
We headed back to the hostel, with a quick break for my first bagel since the USA and after a good conversation with James I headed to bed.
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