HOORAY

Photos now on my computer! I'm afraid this will be a rather long entry, with number of themes, but you can take your time with it as there won't be another before Christmas at least.

Here firstly is a shot of me at the Olympic Stadium with one of Sherees friends. I can't remember which one she was though... :(

Sabrina (Derek's girlfriend) and I at the Berlin Wall remnant on Potsdamer Platz.

This is the Holstentor which leads into Luebeck. The city is nicely situated on a quasi-island, so there aren't to many ways to get in. This Tor is pretty famous actually, and featured on a limited edition set of coins (WOOT), like all of the towers in Luebeck these are crooked. The island is basically sand, so everything sinks.

A lovely little Luebeckian street we walked along during our two hour city tour. On the right hand side is a 600 year old wine merchant.

The main church, it was basically destroyed in WW2, and then rebuilt but they left the churchbells smashed on the floor as a reminder.

See, smashed bells....

Other than that, we had lunch at a restaurant where I had Luebeck style fish and potatoes, we went to the Buddenbrooks Haus (does the name Thomas Mann ing any bells?), went up the steeple of the St Paulus church, and bought marzipan. OMG, they make the best marzipan!

Now here is Dana on the train to Dresden. The train was pretty ancient, but it was travelling onto Hungary, and for some reason they don't send the good trains there... There is light outside the window, which means it must be somewhere around 8:30 am. We arrived in Dresden just after 9:00.

Here it is, the lovely Dresden as seen from the Augustinerbrucke. It was soooooo cold that morning. My hands and cheeks physically hurt. If it had rained then we would have had snow.

This wave shows how high the 2002 floods were, Dana provides a good comparison.

The first buildings you come across as you enter the Dresden Altstadt from the Neustadtare the catholic church and the Schloss (castle).

We spent the large part of the morning at an art exhibition, which had been a large part of the impetus to visit Dresden when we did. I saw 6 real Kandinsky paintings, and a whole room full of Klee! In the afternoon we went out to the Grosse Garten (big garden) and saw the Jagdschloss (hunting palace)

There is also the most gorgeous little narrow gauge railway there, but it only runs during the summer months.

Check out this old DDR mural. They certainly knew how to do a mural. It needs a bit of a clean up, but is otherwise a fantastic testimony to all things socialist.

The Christmas Market in Dresden is the oldest in all of Germany. I was a little dissappointed with it though. Too much of the same old stuff you find at every christmas market. Still, they must be doing something right to be still getting that many people attending in their 572nd year.

The Deutsches Hygiene Museum, i know it sound's really weird, but it was actually really cool. They had an exhibt on the medical ideologies and experimentation of the Nazis, as well as the standard exhibit. We spent about four hours in there. My feet were killing me.

TRADAH! Here it is. The Frauenkirche. Ain't she pretty? It's sooo gorgeous on the inside too. I only took the one photo inside, cos we weren't really allowed to take any at all. They broadcast the weekly service there on the tv here though. SO i can have my fill of godliness from home in my pj's.

The I.C.E., my train out of the newly renovated Dresden Hauptbahnhof. Much nicer than the train to Dresden. We had to change trains in Leipzig, so i've spent all of 45 mins there. They have a nice train station...