Dresden

Hi everyone! I had another lovely trip this weekend. This time I went with my host mother to Dresden! We stayed in her friend's apartment and toured around a lot. Dresden was destroyed on February 2, 1945 by American and British bombers so everything had to be completely reconstructed, but it looks absolutely amazing now. We visited the FrauenKirche, an enormous church that was completed in 2005, and we climbed to the top. The view is really incredible. You can see the Zwinger, the castles, the Rathaus, the Semperoper (which we toured) and the Grünes Gewölbe Art Museum(which we also toured). Helga and I also did a bit of hiking to see the castles on the other side of the Elbe River. From the top there was a nice view of the Blau Wunder Bridge. On the way back we toured the Buchenwald concentration camp outside the town of Weimar. It was strangly peaceful. It was on a mountain with a nice view of the landscape and it felt like the souls that suffered there were at peace. Most of the buildings were destroyed after the liberation, but there were many disturbing pictures of the camp in the museum.
Monday the other American students and I went to a WWII museum with some German students. The museum was small, but I think that the point of the excursion was to give us a chance to meet some German kids. Afterwards we had dinner with them and played ultimate frisbee and football with them. It was really fun. Tomorrow I have to give a presentation--in German! so I have to go practice a bit. Tschussi!