Europe

Wow! I am incredibly behind on this blog....

However, Europe was way too cool not to blog about - so join me as we go back in time to October...


This is where we went. We started in Berlin, spent a few days in Prague, and ended with a couple of days in Vienna.

Here we are on the tour bus -

we went with our sisters, Carolyn & Jennifer


This is one of the first places we visited in Berlin. This was mostly a work camp verses a death camp, though there was plenty of death here as well.
Primary activities at this camp were testing shoes made of various materials and laundering money. This picture is taken inside the visitors center with a map of the camp on the left hand side.

This is the entrance to the camp.

The Berlin Wall was one of my favorite parts of the trip. I really enjoyed learning about the wall and seeing what it was really like. It was however, not at all like I imagined. It is not the Great Wall of China! This section of the wall is painted by various artists and has some really fun pictures.

So, here is what I did not know. There were actually two walls - you can see one on the left and the wall we stood in front of is behind the planter. The walls are about 12 feet high and had wire etc on the top of them. The space between the two walls is called the death strip. It consisted of guard towers in view of one another, an asphalt strip down the middle patrolled by guards with guns as well as attack dogs, and sand on either sided of the asphalt to make it harder to run.
We also learned the wall surrounded west berlin.
A couple days after these pictures, we saw pictures of the wall as it was ... the funny part is there is now a wall around the wall to protect if from being torn down.

Here is another picture of the Wall on our night tour. You can see one of the guard towers in the back. We learned about Tunnel 57 on this tour which is an amazing story.

The Berlin Dome

BEAUTIFUL!

Holocaust Memorial for the Jews. It is left for self interpretation. Block towers of all sizes, some tall, some short, some leaning. Continuous pathways between them.

Ampleman... The street crossing symbol for Berlin.

Our first view of Prague.... Prague was our favorite city. It is charming and romantic. The famous Charles Bridge is down the river... I think I could have spent a whole day on the bridge if we had not been with a tour group. It rained the first day, but the second day the bridge was filled with vendors selling art & various items. I would have had our picture drawn if we weren't trying to keep up with our group....

Our favorite picture of Prague... doesn't it look like a Fairy Tale? This is in the old town square.

TThe center of the Astronomical Clock. This chimes every hour and various figures do things, ie: the skeleton on the right dances and rings a bells. Further up the tower, there is an actual human trumpeter that comes out and plays on the hour.

After this, my camera broke.... kind of a bummer on vacation. We have other pictures from Mikes phone & Jenny & Carolyn's cameras, but this is all I will post.

We spent only 1 1/2 days in Vienna. I think I would have liked it more with more time to explore.
While we were there we saw the Schonbrunn Palace (which was AMAZING), We rode a famous Ferris Wheel, and we spent time at the Museum.

Wonderful trip with way too many things to post here....