Ever since I retired two years ago July, I have worked hard to relax to the point of not worrying about the time or day of the week....why???????? because it reinforces my success at a new life style, but........
Today Peter and I woke up early to be ready for our day trip to Dresden. We were both very excited. The last time we had been in Dresden was in "91 (I was here on a Fulbright assigned to teach 6th grade English/literature at the John F. Kennedy School, a German-American school) . We had gone to experience the Christmas Market in Dresden. It was my introduction to "gluhwein", a hot red wine drink...very good.
Peter told me that since the wall came down in "89 Dresden had been revived. (Dresden had been bombed by American/British forces to demoralize the German Nazi effort near the time of the end of WWII. Over 85% of Dresden was destroyed.)Peter wanted to see the changes since we had only seen the destroyed version of Dresden in '91.
Anyway, we made our way to the meeting point, but no one was there. We worried, of course, but tried to keep our cool. 9:00 came and went and still nothing. We tried to think of what we had done wrong: wrong time, wrong place, wrong entrance, wrong communication, etc. Finally, we made our way back and decided to make the best of our day by taking a Berlin city tour. When we talked about our missing the trip, the tour lady heard me say, "Wednesday was our day," she said, "But today is Thursday!" ENOUGH SAID.
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TOPOGRAPHY OF TERRORS
We went to see the Topographie of Terrors, which is an outdoor and indoor museum . It is located on the site of buildings which during the
Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 were the headquarters of the
Gestapo and the
SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era.
The
Berlin Wall ran along the south side of the street, from 1961 to 1989.
The wall here was never demolished.
The first exhibitions of the site took place in 1987, as part of Berlin's 750th anniversary. The cellar of the Gestapo headquarters, where many political prisoners were tortured and executed; their bodies were found and excavated. The site was then turned into a memorial and museum
. The new Documentation Center was officially opened on May 6, 2010 on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the end of
World War II.
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I would say we had a good time, but there are sites to visit in Germany that are very grim and should be approached with strong respect for the dead and the suffering that occurred.
