Polish Pottery trip, Part 2

Sunday morning Carolyn and I took our time waking up. I actually woke up kind of early (8ish), so I took my time getting ready, then went out to take pictures of the city skyline from the bridge over the Elbe (a river in eastern Germany). In someways the skyline reminded me of Venice, just not directly on the water. The buildings look very 18th century Baroque. It's quite pretty. What was interesting to me was to see how much "shoreline" there was between the river and the other bank. Just last year this river overflowed it's banks and many buildings first floors were under water! Now there's about a quarter mile shoreline between the river and it's bank. What a difference.

When I got back to the hotel, Carolyn was ready, so we went out for breakfact and walked around the old city a little. Directly across from the cafe we ate at is the old FrauenKirche (Church of Our Lady). The cafe menu said it took 6118 days to built (nearly seventeen years!) and was destroyed in one night of bombing in WWII. Even more amazingly, it remained as rubbled ruin for the last fifty years. They started rebuilding it about 10 years ago, and it's nearly finished now. There is a visitor center with exhibits of how it looked for years, and how they're rebuilding it. Quite amazing.

At check out we had a little snafu because Carolyn honestly thought the Daylight Savings Time change was that Sunday and it wasn't. So we checked out an hour late and the desk clerk got all huffy on us ("We wait for you!"). And they talked in German about the situation in front of us. So, after Carolyn left to go get the car, I insisted on speaking only German to them. And they insisted on speaking only English to me. Argh....Germans can be so picky and difficult when it comes to infringing on their schedules!

We had no problems on the drive home - was a breeze! And then Bill had dinner waiting for us when we got home. Posted by Jinglelady at October 23, 2003 11:55 PM | Previous Blog | TrackBack