Beautiful Cities Pt 3

Although we hated to say goodbye to Prague, we were anxious for the second half of our trip to begin. Heading north to Berlin, we decided to stop in Dresden for the Master's Art Museum, lunch, and a tour of the Volkswagen factory. The factory tour was seriously so incredible! It is this amazingly futuristic factory where they make the VW Phaeton BY HAND at the rate of about 35 a day...which is a small number, but when you see how incredible these cars are, and the crazy way they are assembled, you totally understand. All of our minds were blown and we daydreamed about our future Phaetons the rest of the trip. After that break we made it to our hotel in Berlin just in time to go out in celebration of July 4th! We found an "American Diner" which sounded fitting, then strolled through town until late that night.

Monday morning we found information about a tour through Berlin and bought tickets immediately. Our tour guide, Barnaby, led us through town and taught us all about the dark history of both Berlin and Germany. The tour lasted until the late afternoon but it was so worth it. We got to see Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler's grave site, many different Jewish/Holocaust monuments, the Berlin wall, Brandenburg Gates, and much more. It was super interesting and we really all learned so much. Definitely worth taking a tour as I am sure we would've missed a lot! That night we went out for gelato (as usual!), took fun photos in one of those old photo booths, ate some dinner, then took the subway to the Capitol building for another amazing view of Berlin by night.

The next morning we decided to go back to some of the sights from our tour to take more photos and actually go inside certain museums. We returned to the wall, the Victims of Communism museum and many more. We used the subway system a lot that day, making a large loop through the city before we ended up back near our hotel for dinner and drinks.

On our way out of town Wednesday morning, we went through the Museum of Contemporary Art, grabbed some lunch, then headed south to Eschenbach. We made it home in time to watch the Spain vs. Germany World Cup game in a pub in town.

Outside the Phaeton factory before taking our tour. We couldn't take photos inside but trust me, it was phenomenal.

Eric and me outside of the Master's Museum in Dresden.

Our tour guide showing a building where Hitler gave many speeches. We learned so much on this tour and really appreciated being able to see so many important places.

Checkpoint Charlie was really strange to be at too, it was hard to imagine this giant city as 2 divided areas.
On the left below the glass is part of the SS Bunkers, to the right is the Berlin Wall. It was surreal to see all that history literally feet away from each other.

The Brandenburg Gates were bigger and more beautiful than I expected. It was hard to imagine all the important people (and armies) to march through the same place we stood taking photos.

The Museum of Contemporary Art was a mixture of amazing and strange...thank goodness again for Brent being our impromptu tour guide through all the different exhibits. The Andy Warhol's were my favorite. This painting stood about 40 ft tall.