Coming home!

Well, its official. We bought our tickets home last week. We will be coming home on May 7th and we are very excited about it. So we will see you all in a week. You can expect a few more posts with pictures of some of the last places we visit while we are here in Germany. We have really enjoyed our time here and feel like we have learned a lot.

Prague

Prague is our favorite city that we have visited so far. It is full of history and beautiful architecture. The atmosphere of the city was fun and interesting. The only difficulty we had was on the way home from Prague. We took a wrong turn and ended up on a dirt road in the middle of the Czech Republic. We were in the middle of a dark forest and kept seeing signs with an exclamation point that said "Pozor"on it. Of course, we had no idea what pozor meant and we were getting a little worried. Finally, after finding no place to turn around, we had to drive in reverse down the road to find a place to turn around. We finally found our way and made it home. Later, we found out that pozor means warning which was not very reassuring. Here are some pictures of beautiful Prague.

A museum in downtown.

Below is the castle from the Charles Bridge.

Just one of the many pituresque streets.

This is the cathedral inside the castle walls.

This is the largest castle in the world, according to Guiness World Records. The tallest part is just the cathedral, everything else around it is the castle.

Outside a Jewish synagouge.

The view from the Astronomical Clock Tower.

This is the Medieval Castle.

Berlin

This last weekend we rented a car and drove to Prague and Berlin with McCord and Lisa. After getting lost several times, driving at 120 mph on the autobahn, and six hours on the road, we had a lot of fun and really enjoyed these two cities. Berlin is a city with a lot of amazing history and we really enjoyed learning more about it and standing in such historic spots. Here are a few pictures.

The picture above on the top is of an old Prussian cathedral. Unfortunately, we don't know much about it because we couldn't understand a word of what our tour guide was saying. His accent was so thick that it didn't sound like English. The picture just above is of us in front of what is left of the wall.

On the top is the very small stretch of the wall that is still standing. Just above, we are standing in front of an old church.

Of course, nearly the whole wall no longer exists. Therefore, Berlin has put a small coblestone line around the city to indicate where the wall used to stand, as you can see in the picture on the top. The one just above is the Berlin victory column.

This is the building where the German president lives. The German president has very little power in the government and is more of a face for the government. The German chancellor is the one with the power who is more like the US president.

This bridge connects East Berlin to West Berlin. It was built as a symbol after the wall came down.

This is the German chancelor, Angela Merket's, building. Again, her duties are more like those of the American president.

Above is the capital building of Germany.

The famous Brandenburg gate. This has been a site of many political uprisings. Berliners demanded their freedom from the Prussian empire here, Nazis had large meetings, and now it is a symbol of freedom.

This memorial in both the pictures above and below was built somewhat recently, by a New York architect, to remember the the murdered Jews of Europe. It is a really neat memorial that takes up a full city block.

Köln - Dom-it!

This last weekend we went to Köln, a famous city in the west of Germany. This city is most famous for its carnival celebration and its massive cathedral, the Dom. Also, it sits right on the Rhein River, one of Europe's most famous rivers. It is a beautiful city with plenty of culture and history. We hope to go back to spend a weekend there soon.

The following pictures all come from the Choclate Museum that we visited.

The first picture is the most elegant chocolate cake we have ever seen in a beautiful cafe called the Cafe Reichard. We felt like we stepped back in time in this cafe because of its 19th origins. This is a hollow chocolate rooster from the chocolate museum. It the biggest peice of chocolate we had ever seen until we realized they have a chocolate bunny about three times this size.

The picture above and below show the biggest
chocolate fountain we have ever seen. It was at

least 12 ft tall and held several gallons of the best chocolate we had ever tasted.

The picture below shows a part of the

chocolate production process.

Above are a couple of pictures some of the architecture in the city.

The rest of the pictures are of the cathedral (The Dom). It is massive and absolutely gorgeous. The architecture is amazing. Its somewhat breathtaking when because you walk out of the train station and the first thing you see is this huge cathedral right in front of you. They started building it in 1248 and finished it in 1880.

These two pictures are from the top of the cathedral.

Again, these are from the roof of the cathedral. You can pay a Euro and they let you take the 509 stair hike to the roof in a small round staircase. We were tired and sore afterwards from the hike. The view from the roof allowed us to see the whole city and was spectacular. The picture on the left is looking down at the train bridge on the Rhein River. The picture on the right is looking down onto the roof of the other part of the cathedral.

There was a keyhole type window on the roof that I took the picture on the left out of. It turned out to be a really cool picture. The picture on the right is looking up from the roof on one of the towers. The whole roof was covered with these bars to prevent people from falling or jumping.


The picture on top is at the very top of the cathedral looking up into the tallest tower. The one on the bottom is of Sarah and Marijke climbing the last part of the 509 step spiral staircase. That was a tiring hike!

Both of these pictures are inside the cathedral where mass takes place. Look at the people and it will give you an idea of how tall the ceilings are in this place.

The picture on the left is a pure gold box that holds the scriptures of the three kings. The picture on the right is the tile floor in the cathedral. It is made of thousands of very small tiles that make these designs.

More pictures inside of the cathedral. Notice the paintings on the walls on the left. Also, notice the colors on the pillars in the picture on the right. These stones are just normal stones, but when the sun shines through one of the big stain glass windows the walls turn colors like this.

A couple of pictures of the stain glass windows.

More of the stain glass windows and architecture inside of the cathedral.

The picture on the left again shows the colors the stain glass windows produce. The one on the right is the outside of the cathedral.

More pictures in front of the cathedral. The one on the left has Sarah, Lisa, Marijke and Steffie jumping in front of the cathedral.

More of the outside of the cathedral.

This is one of Sarah and I on the train ride home. We love their trains here. They really have a great transportation system.