Bad Schandau, Germany to Usti Nad Labem, Czech Republic
Today I wanted so much to go to the DDR Museum in Pirna, but, alas, it
was Monday - so, of course, it was closed. It looked like it would have
been very interesting! They had an old Trabant parked out front. I
have read about those in some of the Christian books that I have read.
It was interesting to see one in person! They were supposed to have had
rooms set up, just the way that things looked under Communist rule. I
thought that would be interesting. I always hated History in school,
until I got to college. Then I had outstanding teachers both in
European History (the teacher was from Great Britain, and told a lot
about WWII) and in American History. If I had majored in History,
though, it would have definitely been European History with emphasis on
WWII and the sociological aspects of it. It has always been interesting
to me how a society could totally fall into line behind a leader who was
determined to kill much of the population in various ways, and rule the
world. And, how some people could end up doing things that they never
thought possible, while others took the Resistance route and helped
others at the risk of their own lives. It is scary to me to watch how
closely things in our own country resemble those of countries that have
gone before. But, I won't get into politics here. It's not really my
thing.
We traveled on a ways and stopped by a few antique shops, but they
were closed, as well. We finally went to a shopping place that could
have gotten me into a lot of trouble if I had had extra money to spend.
It was the Kunsthandwerkerhaus between Stolpen and Langenwolmsdorf.
They had so many beautiful things there. Just the kinds of wooden
things that I like. The prices were good. They even had some beautiful
dolls at good prices, but I couldn't figure out how to get any of it
home. We finally bought some scroll saw patterns (now I just have to
find someone who does really good scroll saw work to cut them out for
me), and a couple of little ornaments. There were so many beautiful
things that my brain just shut down. I am horrible at decisions like
that - I've always had trouble picking out one thing if there are more
than one that I like. (It almost totally paralyzes me to have to decide
which one to get!) That being said, there were thousands of things to
choose from, and I know that our suitcase room is very short already, so
there would be no place to put something big. We kept asking if they
could ship to the US, but they acted like we had asked something in a
foreign language or something! Oh, wait, maybe we did! Anyway, we
finally decided that we would have to wait until next time (after one or
both of us gets a job for a while!).
After shopping there, we traveled the back roads, back through the
Saxony-Switzerland National Park to Usti Nad Labem, Czech Republic. It
was starting to get late, so I told Lonnie we should probably look for a
hotel. We saw that there was supposed to be a hotel, but the GPS took
us all over the town several times without us finding the hotel. Lonnie
was just about ready to throw everything out the window. His
frustration level with the computer is just about to match mine, I think!
Side Note - Whatever happened to the time when families used to sit
down, plan out their vacations, pour over maps, mark where they wanted
to go and just went! Now, I have to say, I have nothing against
computers (I'm on one right now, and you can find me on one a lot of the
time at home!), but when you have to spend so much time trying to get
the computer to work, the GPS to work, the phones to work, the internet
to work - it really begins to get frustrating!! Tonight we just gave up
on the GPS and looked at the map on the computer to help us find the
hotel. I have to say, God blessed us with a very nice hotel tonight! A
Best Western, and the people speak English - which is not at all
surprising here. When the Wall came down, a large number of Americans
came to Czech Republic and started businesses because everything was so
cheap then. It's not cheap any more, and will go up considerably when
Czech Republic goes on the Euro. The farther East that we go, tho, and
when we get into small villages, it will be harder to communicate. We
will see more of what life was like before the wall came down.
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