After taking two midterms and writing a paper, I am now in Dresden. I feel like I deserved this break. DIS offers a lot of course choices, you have to choose one core course, which you would concentrate on (I went ahead and selected European History as my core course, just because I am personally interested in learning about European History and Culture) and then the rest of the course are considered elective, you are free to choose whatever you please. Core course is usually something that you are majoring in or really want to know in depth about, the core class has a short study tour for 3-5 days and then a long study tour for 6-9 days. My European History class focuses on Germany, so for our short study tour we went to a small town Flensburg in Germany, and Western Denmark. Right now, I am on my long study tour in Dresden. We stay in Dresden for a day, go to Weimar for another day and then finally stay in Berlin for four days. Dresden and Weimer (as I have recently learnt) are of great significance in German history. Both of these cities like Berlin were almost completely destroyed in World War II. It is amazing how wonderfully Germany has collected itself after the war; they rebuilt almost everything in the cities after the cities were bombarded. A lot of historic building including Churches, Opera houses, palaces, Art museums are built the same way as they were before the war. After their reconstruction, the buildings are more wonderful, elegant and beautiful. You would see a lot of old and modern building next to each other in the cities. After a long and delightful day in Dresden, I have declared it my favorite city. Dresden is a small cozy city consisting of all the Baroque model buildings, new markets containing the most fashionable stores and statues of great late kings of Germany. They city square was one of my favorite places where on one side, “Church of our lady” stands with all its glory, other side has the best cafes and restaurant and the third side consist of the tourists street. I sat under the statue of Martin Luther King next to the church and listened to the musician playing one of my favorite music pieces. After a brief tour of the former Royal Palace, Opera House, Cathedral Church (built by Dresden’s protestant king who later became Catholic), and Church of Our Lady, my whole class had lunch at a medieval restaurant. The inside of restaurant was completely different, it was cozy relaxing, and traditional. The servers were wearing elegant English dresses (just like they have in Jane Austen’s movies); we were served a traditional German meal (where you find meat in every course) and a big class of German bear (which is apparently very cheap compared to a few other European countries). I absolutely loved everything.
When we got out after the lunch, it was still bright and sunny outside. We went to hygienic museum (which is not the first choice of many tourist because it focuses on religion and science of modern day). Our tour guide was obviously a German who mentioned that it was his first time giving tour in English. I must say that his English was beautiful and very accurate. (I almost felt embarrassed by not having as much word variety as he did). We visited the museum that had collected different important and unique parts of all the religious believes from all over the world. The museum was a bit dark from inside and was made so on purpose so people can pay attention to the complexity of the matter they discuss there. We saw everything from a Japanese “good luck Cat” (wish I remember the correct name of it) to the Hindu’s Ganesh god there.
After visiting the museum, we had time on our own to walk around the city, I definitely took advantage of that and went shopping. Europeans (particularly Danish and German) have unique sense of fashion, it was a pleasure to shop around and buy cheap stuff (if you convert dollars into Euros, it is actually pretty cheap compared to U.S). I definitely recommend more shopping in Germany or Sweden if you come to Europe, but not in Denmark. Danish people pay 45-60% of their salaries in taxes; you would not want to shop in Denmark ever (its not that bad but considering I am a student, it is pretty expensive).
In Denmark, students get paid to go to school. I never was familiar with that concept, I mean you can go to high school for free in States but in Denmark from Kindergarten to your masters’, you don’t pay anything to the government but instead you get a monthly check in mail to fulfill your everyday life expenses. The concept is foreign to me, but considering that Denmark is social Democratic country, it makes sense.
It is now time for me to go to sleep but I will keep you posted on my adventures.
Auf Viedersehen (Good Bye in German)
Former Royal Palace in Dresden
Opera House
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