Hello all!
My class and I just back from a very nice (and long) day trip to Dresden. For those who don't know where Dresden is, which is perfectly fine because I also didn't know before yesterday, it is about 2.5-3 hours away from the middle of Berlin and it is a wonderfully beautiful place. The train ride there was very scenic and you could see the expansive green landscape of the German country side almost the entire way there. Once in the city one can see the completely new and modern Neu-Stadt, the new part of the city, this space is full of shopping, delicious food and happy people.
Our class was joined by another American class from the University of Tennessee, we all walked around and trough the Neu-Stadt until we came to the Alt-Stadt, the old part of the state. This naming is somewhat deceiving though. The Alt-Stadt is currently an amazing looking part of Dresden full of old looking, monolithic strucres such as the Frauenkirche, a massive church, and the Zwinger, an even more massive summer vacation castle for the former Duke of Dresden. The keyword thought was old-looking, the entire Alt-Stadt of Dresden was completely and utterly leveled by British bombers late into World War 2. During 3 days of bombing just 2 months before the German surrender, Dresden was hit with an immense amount of artillery and it is estimated that somewhere between 25,000 and 250,000 people died in that small time. The number varies so much because there were droves of immigrants coming through Dresden at that time, and the total number present in the city at the time of the bombing was uncountable. As a result all these buildings had to be restored and as of just a few years ago, most of the original state was rebuild, sometimes using a considerable amount of the old structures as well.
So after that short history lesson, you can see from the pictures, in order, the land between Berlin and Dresden. Next, the view from the second-floor of the inside of the Zwinger Castle which houses a massive garden with numerous fantastic water fountains. Third, the interior of the Fraunkirche, the monumentally huge church in the center of the Alt-Stadt in Dresden, this was the tallest building in Europe for a while. And finally you can see a piece of contemporary art work that I founf particularly interesting, from a world-renown museum in Dresden.
That's all for right now, and as always, thank you for reading!
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