Following our stay in Augsburg we travelled to Nordlington and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, both medieval walled cities, the later that has not had any new buildings within the walls since medieval times. Buildings, walls and gates were amazing but unfortunately tourism has got the better of the Rothenburg and ever shop is filled with the usual tourist trinkets and crap, except the Christmas shop which has every imaginable decoration , trinket, wood carving etc etc imaginable. Even convicted me to buy a Christmas wood decoration which is quite fragile. Now will need to work out how to get it home. We stayed in a restaurant with a small number of rooms above right within the walls so really nice. Weather was miserable so we did not need to walk any further than downstairs for dinner and breakfast.
Next day was a 400 km drive to Dresden. As spectacular the buildings in the city centre are, is the realisation that they were demolished in bombing raids in the last weeks of the war, and that they have been totally reconstructed and look exactly like they did before. Amazing. Very historic city centre as it was one of the independent states that made up Germany in the late 1800's.
Then to Berlin and truly a unique city. It's history is not as long as the other major European cities but it has certainly made up for that in the last 100 or so years. We went on a walking guided city tour and found out many things that we otherwise did not know touching on briefly the history of the city in the past but then concentrating on the 20th century. We visited the outside of the major museums which are all housed in old buildings that were all partially destroyed in ww2, or were damaged during the Soviet occupation. Most of the historic buildings and monuments in the city were in East Berlin. When I asked the guide why, it was a simple explanation, the Soviets got here first.
We visited the famous site where the Nazis burnt 70,000 books because they did not fit in with their beliefs. Books included those written by Freud and those written by Jews and homosexuals, Checkpoint Charlie, the only site where non Germans could cross into East Germany,the moving Jewish Memorial, the site of Hitlers Bunker where he and Eva Braun and Goebbels committed suicide. The site is a carpark with only a sign indicating what it had been. Oh and a stretch of Berlin Wall that has been left standing.
A rely remarkable city. Tomorrow a visit is on the cards to the museums