Westminster Trip Day 4

June 16, 2008 – 22:22 Local Time

Grüße aus Deutschland!



Nathan and I did, in fact, decide to go back out for dinner last night. We walked a short way down the road and found an enormous shopping mall stuck right in the middle of what appeared to be a small set of office buildings. It seemed like something out of Harry Potter! Once inside, we were quite amazed to find a grocery store, a theatre, a 3-story bowling alley, an entire floor of restaurants and cafés, any clothing and/or goods store you could find, a liquor store, shopping carts (something I’ve always thought we needed in American malls), and very long, slanted moving sidewalks instead of escalators (you can’t take a shopping cart on an escalator, haha). I decided to pull out my camera to take a quick picture of the interior. Well, that was a VERY bad idea! This HUGE Czech security guard [bald guy on left of picture below] came rushing up and starting speaking quietly, but forcibly, in Czech (a language of which I know absolutely nothing). I assumed that I knew what he was getting at, but I politely (and with a great deal of suppressed panic) mustered out, “English?” He snorted and gave the terse reply, “In English – no photographs!” I quickly apologized, put the camera away, and we walked away as quickly as possible! *I got the photo though, haha!* We finally decided to eat at Sbarro. I know, I know – we go to a foreign country and eat American fast food. Well, after all the other stuff we’d been eating, our stomachs seemed to need something that wasn’t unusual. We then left the mall, walked back to the hotel, and went to sleep rather soon.



The wake-up call this morning came at 6:30!! After fighting through the fog and actually getting out of bed, we had to pack, I had to shower, then we ate breakfast, put our suitcases on the bus, checked out of the hotel, and drove to Terezín (or Theresienstadt, named for Maria Theresa by her son Joseph II, for you German/Hapsburg fans out there), the site of the so-called “Small Fortress,” a prison camp in the early 20th century in which a large number of Jews and other anti-Nazi prisoners were held, tortured and executed. This was not a concentration camp, per se, but the conditions rivaled those of Auschwitz. When we arrived there, it was chilly and raining – a rather fitting set of conditions for such a bleak history. I think that, personal discomfort aside, this is how Terezín should be viewed. The weather put one in a sorrowful and somber mood, and helped to open the heart and mind to the atrocities of this place. One quite intense moment occurred when our entire group was herded into a rather small room and told that even more people would have had to be in this one dark room with no toilet, no wash basin, no open window, and only a small hole through which any fresh air could enter. It was a thoroughly disheartening experience, I assure you. After the complete tour of the grounds, we sang (just one piece – Sing me to Heaven) on the steps leading down to the cemetery. Fortunately, the weather had improved greatly by this time.









After singing, we boarded the buses and took a short drive over to the Jewish ghetto. We didn’t stop here because we were running quite a bit behind on our schedule. However the Human Benadryl (the incredibly boring Czech tour guide I mentioned yesterday) was more than happy to rattle off statistics and measurements, much to everyone’s chagrin. After touring the ghetto, the guide left us to our journey and we started up the freeway toward Dresden with just Joop to shepherd us. However, he made what I consider a bad decision. Instead of stopping somewhere which could accommodate us for lunch, we stopped at a convenience station. In a matter of seconds, a quiet convenience store in the middle of nowhere in the Ústí nad Labem region of the Czech Republic became a nightmare on wheels! The clerks working were visibly harried by our presence, and our lack of understanding of the language and money only served to further agitate them. I was quite glad to get out of there and back on the road to Dresden.

The ride up was quiet and full of beautiful green countryside. However, due to a lack of sleep and the fact that we had just eaten, I dozed right off and missed the German border altogether. Nowadays, this isn’t such a big deal, apparently. As long as the two countries between which you are passing are members of the European Union, there isn’t even a border patrol. The next thing I knew, Joop was saying, “And here we are in Dresden, folks,” and informing us of our schedule for tonight and tomorrow morning.





We arrived at our hotel about 10 minutes later – Four Points Sheraton Dresden. It has a stunning interior with exceptionally knowledgeable staff and quite comfortable rooms. There are again two twin beds, and all the amenities of the last hotel, but without the room-length balcony. However, everything in this room seems much more up-to-date, and there’s even a trendy bit of fabric hanging like a canopy over the two beds. We had a lavish buffet dinner at 6:30 downstairs in the hotel. After soup, salad, white asparagus (!), white and black rice, broccoli, miniature carrots, snow peas, hominy, salmon, chicken and turkey breasts, gnocchi, all the deserts we could imagine (from pomegranates to chocolate mousse to tiramisu), water and wine, we were ready to burst, not to mention that we were half-asleep before reaching our floor on the elevator. However, it was still rather early, so we fought off the tiredness and decided to take a walk around this area of the city. It was after 8pm by then, so everything was closed, but it was still nice to get out in the clean air, take a long, relaxed walk, and read/speak some German with Nathan. There was still quite a bit we didn’t understand, but we could pronounce it all! Haha. Actually, we picked more of it up than we thought we would, including a lovely anti-American propaganda poster which compared us to the Soviets. Yay, East Germany! Ugh…



Ok, well, we’re back in the hotel now, and it’s quite late. The wake-up call is coming early in the morning, so I should get to bed. Tomorrow is the tour of the city, an afternoon to ourselves, and singing a concert at the Christuskirche just up the hill from our hotel. Thanks, as always, for reading! Gute Nacht, meine Freunde! ~AJR