Beautiful Dresden

Last weekend Rob's older brother and his girlfriend were here. It was really fun!!! They came here on Thursday evening, we had dinner at home together and then we went to the old city to wonder around a bit. The next day we spent the whole day around town- and we got to see a lot of what this beautiful city has to offer. The next morning they had an event far away so they had to get up early and drive.

Here are pictures from that weekend-

one photo is worth a 1000 words...

(click pictures to see them in a normal size)

This is the Zwinger
Was build by Augustus the Strong
and today houses several art collections.
This is its Crown Gate.

The Frauenkirche
(the Women's Church)
Was rebuild in the last 10 years,
after it was almost totally ruined
in the bombings of February 1945.
It's pretty impressive (and huge!)



Blaues Wunder
(the Blue Wonder)
Said to be the first bridge in the world
to be build without any constructions in the water itself.
We crossed it from the side you see in the picture,
and took a cable car up on the hills.


Here it is again with some more view.

and again.

(these pictures were taken
from a really nice restaurant
on top of the hill
that has the nicest view in Dresden)


Here is the view to the other side-
The Elbe river and it's amazing valley.



On this side of Dresden
there is some of the nicest and
most expensive houses in town.
Even Putin himself used to own a house there
while living in Dresden
when it was still DDR (GDR).


Last picture- from Neustadt
the cool side of town.
We went to have dinner there,
and this is just a nice picture of the sunset.

Hope you enjoyed!!!
I'll sure miss this city...

As promised - pictures

Well my computer is playing with me again. This morning it started... I know it just shows how sick it is... hmmm... don't even know if to really be happy about this or not...

Anyway, here's some pics as I promised.

I took the subway to meet Rob's mom in town. It was 8:30am, and everybody was on their way to work. My stop is the 3rd stop of the line going north, and the train was already full when it got there. I squeezed myself in with all the rest of the ppl, telling myself that I only have 4 stops and it's over. Then we stopped in the next stop- and even more ppl came in. Then we stopped in the next one, 2 took off, and 5 got on. I wanted to die... the only thing that relaxed me, wasn't knowing that I only have 2 more stops to go, but was closing my eyes and imagining myself on the wide open beach. Was so claustrophobic. No one could move, everybody was touching everybody, was no air, and was really really hot. I hate it so much that there are so many of them. Everywhere you go there's millions of ppl, being a gentleman here will leave you with nothing, so everyone pushes and behaves like little kids... Since the first time I was in China I realized that the individual Chinese person may be as nice as anyone else in the world- some are great and some are terrible, but in the masses, as a group of a billion gazillion ppl- it's almost impossible to feel good among them.

This is how it looked like when I got off the train. There wasn't even room for air to get on.

After meeting Rob's mom in town we did a walk from her really good book on Shanghai. I love walking in the streets, especially when the weather is nice, coz Shanghai is so huge - you always find new things in it. We were walking in some old streets, that most of the houses there were built in the 1920's, by Expats. These houses were really nice, and here's an example to how some of them look like these days:

Lets hang our laundry outside the lovely house!

Some of the houses are of course renovated and looks like some really important ppl live there (especially coz when Rob's mom asked the guards if we can go look the only thing they said was: "no no no no no no no"). It's really refreshing to see these kind of houses here. We visited Song Ching Ling's Mausoleum, which is in her old residence in Shanghai. She was Sun Yat Sen's wife, he was about 30 years older than her, and they got married in 1915 despite her parents opinion, and despite the fact he had a wife (he just decided he's "letting her go" and got married with Song Ching Ling in Japan). She was a big activist for the New China in the early 1900, and as his wife she met the most influential ppl in the Communist Party in those days. He died after 10 years of marriage, leaving her, a woman in her 30's alnoe. She never remarried, but she kept on meeting some really interesting ppl, including some ppl I wouldn't mind torturing....... The list is long, and it includes the prime ministers of India, Pakistan and North Korea, and a lot of women in international women's organizations. On the one hand this woman was very impressive (in pictures as well) and on the other hand- what would you say about a woman that got the "Stalin Peace Award" and entertained Mao in her living room???

Me next to Song Ching Ling's lawn, where she hosted tea parties... Her house was amazing. I wouldn't have minded living there...

After that we went to the Jade Buddha Temple, and I saw Chinese ppl praying- which was a rare view. Here's a picture that proves I wasn't imagining things:

Remember the Wishing Tree I put a little picture of a while ago? Here's a girl trying to throw a wish on it. I stood there for a while looking at her trying- but after 10 minuets I left. Hope she made it after that...

Back to normal life at last

Rob's family left on Saturday morning. His dad left here on Tuesday already. I spent almost everyday with them- wondering the streets of Shanghai- was really nice walking in places I've seen so many times- but this time listening to his mom tell us all about the buildings and history(reading from her book- I made her leave it here so Rob and I can actually be tourists too). When you live in a place- you usually don't really look at it like a tourist does- you usually don't see things that for someone new are really interesting. Of course I've seen Shanghai in these eyes the first time I've arrived here almost 2 years ago- but I haven't spent so much time touring it then- and after a while I got so used to the scenery that it never looked so interesting and strange to me anymore. This time I could really see it and learn. Rob and I have seen more of and walked more in the streets and spots of Shanghai than we ever did and it actually felt really really nice. On Friday we both spent the day with them- he took a day off- and I just skipped school (bad girl!)- and we went to ZhuJiaJiao- a little Chinese town almost an hour to the west (an hour with traffic). It's very touristic but it was really nice to see how a real old Chinese town looked like. The fact that they actually charge you for the entrance to the town might seem weird at first- but then you see how rather clean it is (compared to Chinese standards) so you forget about it and just enjoy. Rob's mom and sis spent most of their time shopping - buying all kinds of Chinese souvenirs - nice stuff- but the stopping at every store was exhausting. In the end I think they left with a nice collection of Chinese stuff. I have these kind of things since I'm a little girl, and obviously I have a lot of these things from my last stay here- so it's not so easy to excite me with them...
I promise I'll put some pictures soon- as soon as I collect them all from everybody's cameras...
Starting a normal week now... Wish me luck