Dresden and Berlin

Dresden

Didn't do much. A lot of sleeping. Wandering around old buildings, that weren't actually old since they all had to be reconstructed after the firebombing.

Berlin

Great, great city. Very funky architecture, lots of history. Did a walking tour one day and say the place where they had the book burnings and the Riechstag and the Bradenburg Gate and stood on top of Hitler's bunker. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in really something. It's made of uneven solid black columns, approximately 12 feet in height and in a depression. You wander between the tightly packed columns, never knowing if someone is around the corner... the designers point was to simulate the paranoia and fear that the Jews in Germany felt... I'd say it works.

I now have some very excellent photos.

Went on a pub crawl that night too, and I must say Berlin has some very interesting clubs... one was underneath train tracks and the entire place rumbled and shook with every train that passed. It was a 'authentic' East German bar. I suppose it might have been authentic 18 years ago, but now the tourist shtick on the wall kinda ruins the ambience. Other than that, lots of bars within bars and wonderfully sarcastic Yale English lit majors...

The next day I just wandered around Berlin, through this huge outdoor festival of bad DJ music, bratwurst and beer, in through the Sony Centre which is supposed to be a glass and metal Mount Fuji.

Munich

Berlin made me really, really tired. 4am bedtime the first night, 5am the next, took it easy with just a 2:30am night the next. Plus hours and hours of walking, so I haven't done a lot in Munich yet, except of course visit a beer hall last night. So I just booked another day, because today I have just laid around and read. Those days are nice too sometimes.