Peggy does Deutschland...
 

Well, eastern Deutschland anyway. My trip encompassed a total of 25 days in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, and Wernigerode. I'm very interested in WWII and Cold War history, so that was my focus.

The length of the trip was really an accident, since I cleverly made my plane reservations before counting how many days I'd actually be gone. I'm embarrassed to say that I'd meant to travel for 18 or 21 days, but I was careless.

It's difficult getting anywhere from my home in Spokane, so I did a mix and match of airlines. I flew Alaska to Seattle, then Lufthansa (non-stop) to Frankfurt, and finally Air Berlin to Berlin. I found to my delight that Alaska forwarded my suitcase to Lufthansa and then Lufthansa forwarded it to Air Berlin. Since I'd been dreading the thought of picking it up in Seattle, then checking it with Lufthansa and repeating the process with Air Berlin, I was pleased with the ease with which it was sent on.

Ten hours was a loooooong time on Lufthansa, especially since their entertainment selections don't include solitaire or free cell-type games. I can happily spend endless hours playing free cell, but I'm not crazy about movies, so I just read my Kindle.

I was in Berlin for only three and a half days, as I've been there several times before. I had a fairly ambitious itinerary, but what with napping, walking, and eating, I didn't see as much as I had intended, mainly because--as I've finally figured out--I became tired too easily, probably on account of my age and lousy physical shape.

I stayed at the Hotel-Pension Bregenz, which is near the Kurfurstendam and is convenient to bus transportation. I've stayed here before. It's clean, comfortable, quiet, and inexpensive. Kind of homey. I can usually hear birdsong outside, and sometimes the sweet voices of children. It's very quiet. I like it a lot.

Thursday: After my post-arrival nap, I had dinner down the street at La Vigna, a nice little restaurant with good food and friendly waiters. Yeah, yeah, I know. You're not supposed to take a nap after arrival. You're supposed to tough it out and go with the local schedule, but after a missed night's sleep and with a 9-hour time difference, my 77-year-old body says nap.

I then took a bus in search of adventure but found none. I was unable to figure out which bus to take home--for reasons which I will not explain here, because they will reveal the depth of my cluelessness. I finally took a subway partway home and then a taxi the rest of the way.

Friday: The next day I walked what seemed like a couple of miles to the hop-on/hop-off bus and did a tour of the city. I didn't hop off anywhere, but I saw various sights that I wanted to check out the next day. I had lunch at a restaurant called Maredo near the hop-on/hop-off kiosk. They had a nice salad bar, and I had a sort of Texas toast to go with it, and my favorite drink, an orangensaftschorle. In general, I find German food too heavy, especially away from the big cities, so I was pleased when I saw the salad bar.

As I walked along the Ku-damm, I noticed that many of the men wore odd-colored pants--maroon, or mustard yellow, or lime green, and I saw a lot of shorts, mainly on young girls. I don't recall seeing these particular fashion statements in the past, but then I haven't been to Berlin in four years.

Saturday: I took the hop-on bus to the area near Checkpoint Charlie, but didn't go into the museum there, as i'd explored it last time I was in Berlin. I thought back, of course, to the first time I saw Checkpoint Charlie, in 1966, when it marked the line between freedom and tyranny. Perhaps if I hadn't seen it then, during the height of the Cold War, it would be more impressive now, but I felt like it was kind of cheesy.

After that I walked to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which consists of large gravestone-like columns, dark gray in color At first, when I looked at it from the outside, I saw these blocks of different sizes. But as I walked among the columns, I began to feel uneasy, then claustrophobic until I was desperate to get out. I assume that was the feeling the architect wanted to evoke. It was very powerful.

Across the street from the memorial was a nice little cafe into which I was lured by a cheerful young woman, a great relief,since the rain had started to pour down, and the wind had picked up. At the table next to me was a group of Italian men, talking away at a great rate and enjoying themselves. The contrast was impressive.

When I first saw the Memorial it took a while to. " get it"
there was a group of young German kids running around, hiding from one another and laughing.
It was , at the same time, sad and hopeful.
Intersting about men in bright colours...I stayed in that area last year and did not notice.
Lokking forward to more posts...I 'll be in Berlin( again ) this summer.

Hi Peg,

I'm thinking of Berlin, Potsdam, and Dresden for my next trip so I'm eagerly awaiting more from you.

The Berlin hotel looks nice and the rates are reasonable. What were the bathrooms like; I didn't see a photo of any bathrooms on their web site.

I've seen photos of the Memorial on the internet but your description of it is invaluable. Are the columns tall, such as over your head? It sounds eerie.

Adrienne: The bathroom in my room was just your ordinary shower, toilet, sink arrangement. Sometimes the showers in these older hotels are too small because they're squeezed into a room, but this one was comfortable. Next to my room there was a separate bathroom which I think was used by a room on the other side. It had as tub, as I recall. I didn't pay much attention to it, though.

I prefer a shower, since I have artificial knees and would have trouble getting out of a tub.

Yes, the columns are over your head as you go farther in to the memorial. It's in a sort of bowl, so that the columns don't look so tall until you are a way into it.

I had wanted to see the film museum, the Käthe Kollwitz museum, the Pergamom, the Story of Berlin, the Haus der Wannsee (where the final solution was decided upon), and the Bendler Block, where Stauffenberg and other conspirators were executed. However, I had neither the time nor the energy to see all these attractions. I hope you do a better job than I did.

Enjoying your report, Peg! I'm also interested in WWII and Cold War sites, so I am eagerly waiting for your next installment!

I completely understand about the energy running out. I find if I see too much in a day then I get sensory overload and can't remember a thing since everything blurs together.

I was recently in Barcelona with a friend and at the end of the trip we decided that we could have done more but would it have been worthwhile. We had the same travel style and lingered at sights and stopped for lunch every day to unwind.

Another question on the hotel - do they serve breakfast? I would not expect a cooked breakfast but ham, tomato, cucumber, bread - those wonderful German breakfasts.

I happen to love German cooking but not at lunch - I want something light like a small salad or sandwich or soup.

looking forward to the trip

Wow... The 3rd interesting TR I've come across today. Go Peg!

Hi Peg,

I've been looking forward to a trip report ever since I read you were going to Germany again. Can't wait for your thoughts on my native Saxony. Keep up the delightful writing and thanks for sharing.

Yes, they serve breakfast. It's good, has a lot of variety and is inexpensive.

I was in that same cafe across the street from Memorial to Murdered Jews.

Coloured pants are all the rage in Europe this summer. Thank Dries van Noten for that.

I like Berlin.


Thin

When I left the cafe, I had to duck into a little store next door because the wind had started up and the rain became a torrent instead of a drizzle. I bought an "I heart Berlin" umbrella, which wasn't much use when the wind would grab it and turn it inside out or when I had to turn in toward the rain and was unable to see much ahead of me.

Somewhere in there--it must have been before the memorial to the murdered Jews--I visited what I thought was the Topography of Terror exhibit. It was a long wall below street level that displayed photos of the rise of Nazism. It was pretty grisly.

Suddenly I was struck with a longing for McDonald's. McDonald's, for crying out loud. I never eat McDonald's! I wandered through the shopping center under and around Potsdamer Platz, found the golden arches, and ate a burger, some fries, part of a shake and a sundae, after which I was filled with shame and worthlessness for giving into that terrible craving.

I took a taxi home because the wind was still blowing, I was wet and cold, and I wanted to get into some dry clothes, maybe take a nap and go to "The Story of Berlin." However, I never made it that far. I was worn out.

I did ask Christian, the hotel owner, for directions to St.Hedwig's, the Berlin Catholic Cathedral. He told me it was nearby, so I took a walk to locate it. It turned out not to be St. Hedwig's but St. Ludwig's. I always like to find a beautiful church with good music when I travel.

On the way there by back streets, an elderly (that means older than I am!) lady said something to me. It took me a second to realize that she was scolding me for crossing the against a red light. She said that young people did that all the time, but that since I was older, I should know better.

More later. I picked up a cold, so I'm going to baby myself even more than I usually do.

St Hedwig (Harry Potter fan?)
Yes I get scolded by old German women, I think they like to do it.

A German friend used to say "Typisch Deutsch." I was scolded by an old gentleman once because I wasn't crossing the street at the zebra-striped crossing, but rather at the non-striped crossing right next to it. Absolutely no difference but the striping.

In Munich, I saw a sign at a crossing telling people to give a good example for the children.

Hi Pegontheroad,

I am also looking forward to your report, being a huge WWII buff. I am not that many years behind you and have enjoyed flying solo during the past several years. Leaving for London in two weeks. Do your friends/family at home have concerns about your lone jaunts?

Sorry about the weather. I have been reading about the flooding in the southern part of Germany and other mid-European venues. Look forward to more updates….

lateday: My family does tend to fret a little, but not much. They know I've been doing this for a long time. My sister, with whom I traveled on 8 European trips until she became unable to travel, says that I am "bulletproof."

My nephew, known in the family by his real name--"Tech Support"--is coming over this afternoon to help me load my pictures on my camera so that I have better reminders of things I saw and did. I'll continue my report after that.

Well, back to the trip report. Mass was quite nice. Beautiful church and good music. There was a really fine tenor who sang and then the congregation did the responses. These Germans are singing fools. I'm always impressed with how responsive they are to music and how well they sing.

On the Monday after the Mass, I took the train to Dresden and settled in to the Hilton, which I liked a lot. It was comfortable and quiet, and it had a little tea/coffee setup in the room, PLUS an ironing board and an iron. The Hilton is very centrally located, right across the square from the magnificent Frauenkirche.

The Frauenkirche is huge, with three or four galleries around the interior. It's the most beautiful Protestant church I've ever seen, since most of those eschew the decoration of the baroque churches that are so prevalent in southern Germany. It's really impressive, stunningly beautiful, decorated in pale pink, blue and white, with a lot of gold around the altar. The windows are large, made of clear glass, so that the interior is very light.

The church is built of stone, some of it quite dark and some of it much lighter. I had assumed that the darkness in much of the stone was due to its having been damaged in the horrendous firestorm of February,1945, but someone told me that the darker stone was just older.

The other momumental buildings have the same dark/light mixture, though not to the extent as the Frauenkirche. My next destination was the Albertinum because I wanted to see the romantic paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. I enjoyed the paintings, especially the one called "Zwei Freunde," (Two Friends). I didn't enjoy the rest of the Albertinum as much, perhaps because I'm a philistine when it comes to a lot of abstract art. There was a scattering of works by well-known painters, such as a Picasso and a Braque, as I recall.

For me, Dresden is an odd sort of town. Instead of having a real old town such as you'd see in other German cities, there were 8 or 10 magnificent buildings situated within a fairly small area, with very large squares surrounding some of them, and with the other buildings being fairly new hotels and various shops and restaurants devoted to serving tourists.

There were also some large building sites or potential building sites nearby. Once I got away from the "Old Town," I did find areas that seemed less geared to tourists, though there were lots of restaurants near the Kreuzkirche, too.

The first full day I was in Dresden, the sky was intensely blue, and I was very glad to be in Dresden. The siutation deteriorated pretty quickly, though, and most of the time, it was raining and windy. Though I had repeated checked the weather reports before I left home, I guess hadn't checked far enough ahead, because it was much colder than I had expected, and I didn't have a warm jacket, which I really needed.

I had mentally set aside some days for trips to nearby towns, but it was all I could do to get myself out of the hotel to visit the nearby monuments such as the Zwinger, the Semperoper--(gorgeous), and the Catholic Court Church.

A lovely surprise at the Catholic Court Church was the boys' choir who sang at Sunday Mass. They were wonderful.

After having seen the Frauenkirche, I was at first not too impressed with the Catholic Court Church,the Cathedral, but it grew on me.As I wandered around after Mass, I found a side altar dedicated to three priests of the Dresden Diocese who had been murdered in Dachau and whose ashes were returned to Dresden in a ceremony in 2011. I read that there was a "Stolperstein" commemorating them in front of the cathedral, but I never could find it.

If you've been to Germany, you may have seen "Stolpersteine," or "stumbling blocks." They are brass plaques which have been sunk into the sidewalk or the courtyard in front of a residence, commemorating the deaths of inhabitants who were killed in the concentration camps. I've seen them in Schwäbisch Hall and also in Berlin.

They give the birthdate, the name, and the date of death of the person, often saying "ermordert in Auschwitz." Sometimes there are three or four together--a family. They're very stark reminders that these were real, specific people who lived here and who were murdered by the Nazis.

Enjoying your report. Hope you will include more and share some of yourpictures as well. thanks for sharing!

One day trip I did take was to see the "Saxon Switzerland," the rock formations above the Elbe. I took the train to Königstein (I think that was the name), then took the boat back on the Elbe. Once again, weather was a problem, as it was very windy and cold. Part of the time I stayed on the deck, but it was mostly too cold, so I went down to one of the galleries where people were eating and drinking....and talking.

There's a German expression that I think is very funny. It's what you say when you're reading or hearing something difficult and you understand very little. You say, "Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof," or "I understand only 'train station.'"--or "All I understand is 'train station.'" (I guess I'm easily amused, but that saying cracks me up.)

Anyway, I'm sitting at a table in the gallery. It's jammed with people and they're all talking at a great rate. I speak German after a fashion, but I can't understand a SINGLE word they are saying. They're speaking the Saxon dialect. There's even a dictionary for sale there of the Saxon dialect. I guess I should have bought one, though I'm not sure my standard German is good enough that I would have appreciated the dialect.

A day or so after the trip on the Elbe, I went to my favorite city, Leipzig. I wasn't expecting it to be my favorite, by any means. I thought it was an industrial city, and I imagined it would be filled with that horrible uninspired blocky Communist architecture. But I loved Leipzig.

One thing I liked about it was that it was a real city, not just a series of monuments. Many of the buildings in the narrow pedestrian streets sported carefully restored art nouveau facades. I wasn't looking in the store windows but rather up at the facades--though I did buy one souvenir in Leipzig in a DDR store that contained articles from or reminiscent of the DDR times.

My purchase was a little shopping bag decorated with emblems of the "ampelman," the little figures on the East German traffic lights of which many Germans are quite fond. The green light ampelman is a walking figure, whereas the red light ampelman is a standing figure with his arms stretched out. Both figures wear hats.

So after I finished looking at the facades and buying my souvenir, I went to one of my main interests, the Nicholaikirche, which played such an important role in the fall of Communism.

More later.

"and settled in to the Hilton, which I liked a lot. It was comfortable and quiet, and it had a little tea/coffee setup in the room, PLUS an ironing board and an iron. The Hilton is very centrally located, right across the square from the magnificent Frauenkirche. "

I stayed at the same hotel severals years ago.
The ironing board is a huge plus for " light" travellers.
As beautiful as Frauenkirche is, I could not get it out of my head that it is sort of a reproduction
Felt the same about the Opera House.
Looking forward to hearing more about Leipzig....

Danon: I think all those buildings were reproductions. 15 square miles of the city were destroyed in the firebombing. It's hard to forget that destruction when you're in Dresden.

I was very much aware of that in the church and the Opera House.( I took a tour of the Opera)
I guess the citizens of Dresden wanted the buildings
reproduced exactly the way they were.




.

I'm very interested in your report as we will be returning to Berlin and Dresden next March. Thank you for your report!

>The church is built of stone, some of it quite dark and some of it much lighter. I had assumed that the darkness in much of the stone was due to its having been damaged in the horrendous firestorm of February,1945, but someone told me that the darker stone was just older.


There is more to it. The dark stones are original pieces from old Frauenkirche which were rescued from the pile of rubble, while the light stones are new. For years these original pieces had been sorted onto huge shelves around the construction site and then set together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, missing parts were subsituted by new stones. The colour is a particularity of Saxon sandstone: it is very light when it comes from the quarry but sunlight and weather and time (and pollution) darken the surfaces.

Usually when reading a travelogue, I skip parts of no immediate interest.

But, Miss Pegontheroad, you write so well that I lingered over every paragraph.
Well done, and thank you.

Quokka, thanks. I figured that was the case. Maybe that's what "someone" meant when he said said that the dark stores were the older. They're the ones that survived the firestorm.

Peg, I remember visiting Dresden and seeing the piles of stone. I was very excited to go into the church when it was completed. I also have ampelmann souvenirs. Am loving your report.

CarolJean: That's fantastic--being there in a truly historic time.

29Feb: Ah, shucks...Thanks for the compliment.

Okay, back to work! I wanted to visit the Nicholaikirche (St.Nicholas church) because of its central role in the fall of the East German government and of Communism in eastern Europe. It is a beautiful church, large and very light-filled, with white-painted pews and columns and clear glass windows.

In the latter part of the 1980's--1988 and especially in 1989--groups met at the Nicholaikirche to pray for peace, for democracy, for the freedom to leave the GDR, and even for alleviation of the pollution of the area.

As the year progressed, the Communist government tried to suppress the non-violent demonstrations, which grew into the hundreds of thousands. I bought a pamphlet chronicling the events of that time, the cover of which shows a huge crowd standing in the rain in front of the church. It's really impressive--a sea of umbrellas with the silhouette of the church in the dark background.

The pamphlet is translated from the German, and it's a bit of an awkward translation, but one can see that those years were very difficult, with many arrests and much dissension.

After seeing the Nicholaikirche, I proceeded to das Museum in der Runden Ecke--the Stasi museum, the Stasi being the East German secret police. It was fascinating! A young German guy was leading a tour, which I decided to follow instead of using a hand-held guide in English. He began by telling how children of 13 and 14 were led into service of the state by tempting them with the idea that they could become pilots.

We went through various rooms, one of which held a manikin wearing the actual uniform of one of the Stati higher ups. The tour described the structure and full-time staff of the organization and also "the most powerful weapon in the struggle against the enemy"--unofficial employees, that is, people who volunteered or were coerced into informing on others.

I had heard that there are thousands of files still stored at the museum but they're only available to the victims of this spying. I wasn't interested in reading any of the files, of course, but I'd like to have seen the mass of files, to get an idea of how many there were.

I wish I'd done a better job of taking photos, because I could describe more of what I saw, but I was so interested in the tour that I didn't take as many pictures as I should have.

One of the rooms showed some of the disguises that were used. A cupboard full of fake noses, wigs, mustaches, glasses, even a suitcase with a workman's disguise, which included a yellow hard hat. Another room contained a fake belly which could be strapped on underneath the clothes to alter the shape of the spy. Amazing!

I am loving your report Peg! I am glad to know about the Stasi Museum as I would like to see it one day too.

I was on the Queen Mary 2 ship last week and one of the lecturers inboard was an art historian who gave a lecture on Caspar David Friedrich!! I enjoyed it and had not known about this artist.

Sorry to hear about the bad weather - it all ended in another big flood. Yuck. An excursion to Saxon Switzerland in the rain is of course not exactly exciting :(

A couple of comments on *odd* Dresden :-)

Quokka already explained the deal about the dark and light (sand)stones. Just want to point out again, that these dark, old stones are now exactly at the place where they originally were.

Yes, the townhouses around Neumarkt square and the Frauenkirche itself are replicas. What the bombs had not totally destroyed of the townhouses was torn down by the communists. They had plans to rebuild the city centre as a "communist" city with large blocks in post-war style. However, many of the so called "public" and "royal" buildings were not totally destroyed, some even in relatively good shape so they could be restored, not reconstructed as replicas: Zwinger, the buildings along Brühl's terrce in general (Albertinum, Academy of Fine Arts, former parliament building e.g.), also parts of the Royal Palace (Stables courtyard with procession of princes mural, Historic Green Vault, Hausmann tower e.g.), City Museum, to name a few. It was consensus between the citizens of Dresden and the administration that the old town district would be rebuilt in parts as replicas according to original plans - about 40%. The rest is (will be - not completed yet) modern.

This is one reason why I always recommend to walk across the bridge and see the so called "Neustadt" district, where many more old townhouses, are orginally preserved and give a pretty good impression of old Dresden (area between Königstraße and Hauptstraße).

Leipzig is another favourite city of mine. Love the lively city centre with the shopping arcades, old and new. Actually, it's never really been an industrial city - the saying goes that in Saxony the Dresdners spend the money that comes from selling the goods in Leipzig, which were manufactured in Chemnitz. Meaning that Leipzig has always been a city of trading (in past centuries Europe's leading place of trade fairs).

Excellent trip report, very interesting and well written!

I.

Ingo, I guess I shouldn't complain about a little rain, as at least my home wasn't flooded, as were so many in Germany.

I'd like to see Saxon Switzerland from closer/above rather than from the boat. I didn't get as close a look as I would have liked.

When I returned from my trip, I found Kästner's "Als ich ein kleiner Junge war" in my mail. I'd ordered it before I left, and will read it soon, with the help of my new German/English electronic dictionary, when necessary, if necessary. It looks very simple. The cover portrays a little boy standing on what I assume is the Körnigsufer looking across at the Augustusbrücke and all those magnificent buildings.

I wandered through the shopping center under and around Potsdamer Platz, found the golden arches, and ate a burger, some fries, part of a shake and a sundae, after which I was filled with shame and worthlessness for giving into that terrible craving.>>

Peg- travel does funny things to us, doesn't it? My equivalent is cornflakes!

loving your descriptions of a part of Germany I visited for the first time only 2 or so years ago. We were lucky enough to be staying with locals most of the time and this undoubtedly added to the interest of our trip. we also had a lot of help from Ingo - danke!

we went to a concert in the Nikolaikirche, so i'm very much looking forward to reading what you thought of it.

Peg, still with you and enjoying your solo report. You go girl!

I have a history of not finishing trip reports, and I've already made two attempts to continue this, but this time I really mean it.

As is probably apparent, I was fascinated by the Stasi museum. The guide explained the methods of capturing a person's scent and keeping the scent on fabric in a sealed container so that when necessary, the person could be trailed by a specially trained dog. Absolutely amazing!

The guide also told of Stasi safe houses and showed pictures of a bunker to be used by Stasi personnel--as I recall--in case of nuclear war. He showed us pictures of jail cells used by the Stasi, and it seems to me there was also a replica of a typical jail cell.

The art of spying was well represented in the museum--ways to open and reseal letters and packages, telephone wiretaps and ways to monitor conversations in adjacent rooms.

I have not done a really thorough job of describing this museum. There's much more to it, but by the time I'd walked to the museum and then gone through the whole tour I was pretty tired, so that I didn't go through it with the audio guide. If I ever go back to Leipzig, I will do the tour again and also go through with the audio guide.

Before I left, I asked the secretary/receptionist about the protests against pollution that had been part of the agenda for the opposition. I wanted to know if the environmental problems had been addressed--the river that had been described as a cesspool, for instance. I think the secretary was too young to remember most of this, but she did say that the snowflakes used to be black. She seemed to think that the environmental issues had been addressed.

As I walked out of the museum, I remember being absolutely stunned by the lengths the government went to in order to control the population. I just kept thinking "What was in the minds of those people--of the leadership--that they somehow thought they had the right to spy on the citizens, to lie to them, and to exercise such stringent measures."

I strolled back to my hotel, accidentally seeing more of the city than I'd intended because, as usual, I became lost. I dropped into the Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian Bach spent many years as cantor. It was interesting but not as attractive as the Nicholaikirche, nor did it have the same historical/political associations. I saw many gorgeous baroque (I think they were baroque) facades that were different from the art nouveau facades on pedestrian streets such as the Nicholaistrasse.

A couple of asides. I stayed in the Westin, and I was not very impressed. The walls seemed to be thin, so that when my next-door-neighbors started slamming around in their room at 7:00 a.m., I was awakened. And annoyed. The room itself seemed rather minimal. There was no coffee/tea set-up such as the ones I'd had in most of my other hotels.

The staff was helpful, right down to the porter who found copies of USA Today (Ugh!) and deposted them outside my door each morning, but in general I wasn't impressed with the quality of the facility.

I must say (she sputtered, outraged) that I don't understand why the buffet breakfasts in the Hilton, the Westin, and the Russischer Hof are so expensive--$30 for breakfast is way too much. I suppose that a business traveler on an expense account would accept that kind of cost, but I won't. It offends whatever shreds of frugality that I possess. I always managed to find a cafe that costs half or a third of that for the meager breakfast I require.

The other interesting venue in Leipzig (though I am sure there are many) was the Hauptbahnhof, which is apparently the largest in Europe. It was filled with shops, restaurants, cafes with every kind of clothing or merchandise your heart could desire. They even had Dunkin' Donuts! Which I don't eat. Too sweet for me.

I ate a couple of dinners there at an Italian restaurant where I had melon and prosciutto, a tomato salad a couple of times, and some kind of pasta. I ate (a much cheaper) breakfast several times at a little cafe there.

On my final day in Leipzig, I took the bus (#190, outside the train station) to Castle Colditz. I had long wanted to see it, expecially since 2009, when, driving down the Autobahn toward Regensburg, I saw an Autobahn exit for Schloss Colditz.

Colditz was used as a prisoner of war camp for "bad boys"--Allied officers who had escaped from other POW camps. It was SUPPOSED to be escape-proof--it LOOKED escape-proof, a medieval fortress with massive walls and sheer drops or steep terraces all around and with a large contingent of German guards always present and alert.

However, it WASN'T escape-proof. There were numerous escapes of French, British, and Dutch prisoners, including the German estimate of about 20 "home runs"--where the prisoners were successful in reaching neutral or Allied territory. About 50 percent of the attempts were successful.

Since I arrived too late for the tour in English, I did my own little tour, seeing the exhibits and reading the descriptions posted in English and German in each room. I also bought a booklet with detailed information about the castle and the escape attempts. Since these prisoners had little to do, they had plenty of time to plan and prepare for escapes, right down to building a glider; although it was never used, a picture of it exists. There were numerous other creative plans, which included fabricating German uniforms and forging documents, among other things. As far as I could tell, being imprisoned there wasn't a horrendous experience such as would have been imprisonment in a concentration camp.

The German camp commander and later security officer, Hauptmann Eggers, built up a mass of historical material which he managed to retain after the war. Until his death in 1974, he was the prime source of German material on Colditz and its escapers. On the Allied side, Major Pat Reid became the leading British historian, writing several books on Colditz. This historical material included many pictures and diagrams, so that the booklet I bought was lavishly illustrated.

I'd long looked forward to visiting Colditz, and I wasn't disappointed with my tour, though I think I would have learned more from the formal tour.

As I said, I took bus #190 which leaves outside the train station. When I looked up Castle Colditz on the internet, I found good direction and instructions as to how to travel there by bus. The trip took about an hour and 20 minutes. To those who are interested in WWII, it is a worthwhile expedition.

Still enjoying your report, Peg. Which town did you prefer - Leipzig or Dresden. I'm still thinking of Berlin, Potsdam, and Dresden for my next trip but should I be thinking of Leipzig instead of Dresden? I don't think I'll have enough time for both.

I definitely liked Leipzig more than Dresden. Dresden has many gorgeous buildings, esp. the Frauenkirche and the Semper Oper, but they didn't seem to be integrated into the city as a whole.

I especially liked the Cold War history associated with Leipzig. The architecture was more accessible in Leipzig, too.

I would imagine that others may be more impressed with Dresden than with Leipzig, though. Just thought I had to add that.

Good to hear about Leipzig......I plan a day trip from Berlin in five weeks.

I did like Dresden ...the Green Vault, the Zwinger , the river.
The Opera and Frauenkirche are beautiful, but duplication of the buildings made them seem
somehow fake.

What a fun read! You have really brought Berlin to life for me again. Thank you.

Dresden wasn't my favorite city either. But I'll never forget the Goulash we had at a little café when the guy at the desk of our hotel pointed the way and quoted the sign, "Montag ist Goulash Tag"

I like German women and don't mind that they speak their mind. They say something because they care about you. If they didn't they'd let you get run over.

A coat check woman was happy to let an Italian couple get frustrated because they didn't queue up. They could have stood there all day she wasn't budging. I got the impression she didn't like them.