Garmish to Berlin

November 15, 2018

Garmish to Berlin via Dresden

Today was a travel day. Checking out of Garmish we headed for our next stop...Berlin.

We took the back roads skirting the border of Czechoslovakia on our way for a quick tour of Dresden. We had originally planned to spend two days in Prague, but changed our mind since we would have had to travel by train and we couldn’t get a guide. Prague is not one of the safest cities in Europe. Good decision.

One of the unusual pictures you’ll see is just a fence with deserted buildings, That was one of the German military installations during the Cold War that Frank surveilled,

Dresden itself is a beautiful city. Now home to a Volkswagen factory, it once was the center of the tobacco trade for Germany. The building you see in the photos that looks like a Mosque is actually the home office of the major tobacco company. Seems it created quite a stir when it was built, but apparently most of the tobacco came from Turkey, hence the architecture.

The governmental buildings and the church are beautifully constructed. Unfortunately I was never able to get a clear picture of the entire complex. In contrast, Dresden is now almost completely modern in construction. The beautiful architecture we see was basically reconstructed from the rubble of a bombing that had no military rational, left the city gutted, and unknown thousands killed.

Photos: Dresden as we drove through

Reflections: Germany is a confusing oxymoron of war and new life. It’s terrible history is matched only by the brutality of the Allied Forces as they tried to destroy Nazi Germany, Yet, in reality, the entire continent has been constantly at war since it’s earliest days as the museum in Vienna demonstrated. As always, the refrain from “Where have all the flowers gone” keeps ringing in my mind.