dresden

The Transparent Volkswagen Factory

This is the actual production line throught the windows, if you look closely.

Paul, David, Bronte and Richard in Dresden.

We left Berlin on Tuesday morning and headed for Dresden. Once we arrived in Dresden we caught up with some friends from Adelaide, Paul and David. We spent the day with them and they left in the afternoon for Prague. We tried to do the factory tour of Volkswagen but the tours were not running at the moment and they advised us by email that the factory tours were closed for the week. Well we decided to go and have a look anyway and it was worth it. The factory is called "The transparent factory" and yes it is made of glass and you can see the cars being made from through the glass. It was very interesting and very very clean and organised. The people making the cars wore all white and looked more like doctors.

Dresden received bombings from the Americans in WWII and being part of the old Eastern Germany, nothing was fixed and a lot of the town was left in ruins . It is only recently, as in the last 5 years that they have rebuilt some of the buildings. The town was really nice and quite well organised with public transport and shops etc. They are still doing heaps of work.

Off to Brussels on Wednesday, a 9 hour train trip!!

berlin

Brandenburg gates

The Berlin wall that stills stands today as a memory

Our New Berlin tour group leader

Check point Charlie

Well we are finally in Berlin after a 7 hour train trip from Stuttgart. Arrived late in the afternoon so we just managed to find a hostel, book in and have some dinner. We also got some flyers from the hostel for different tourist stuff which included a free walking tour. We decided to go on the free tour which started at 11.00 a.m. The tour was fantastic. It took us to some of the most visited and the most important places that form part of the German history. The tour guide "Chris" as pictured above made the tour even more enjoyable. He was really like an actor and was quite funny to explain the rather serious stories of the past.

Once we finished the tour we headed to the TV tower for a look, it is 368 metres tall and the observation deck is 203 metres. This gave us a good look over the city and a bit of perspective on the size of Berlin.

After the tower we went to a part of the Berlin wall which has been preserved for memory and tourists I would imagine. It really makes you know how lucky you are to be brought up in Australia.

Tomorrow or Tuesday we are heading to Dresden for a look, it's just a short trip south of Berlin. We are trying to organise a tour of the Volkswagen factory. This is the factory that makes prestige VW's. The ones that cost about $150000 that Australia does not get. These cars are hand made in a factory purely for them and the factory is only about 4 years old. Apparently it is a day outing kind of like Sea World without the rides. We'll see!!

stuttgart

Mercedes Benz museum
Famous Gull wing roadsterMerc's every where

After leaving Geneva we headed to Stuttgart, Germany. Home of Mercedes Benz and Porsche. It was a very long train trip and we didn't get into Stuttgart till 10pm.
On our first day we went to the Mercedes Benz Museum, it is a bit out of town and €14 for entry but worth every penny. The building the Museum is in is a modern marvel. It is seven stories high. The museum tells a story, not only of Benz but also of what was the world was like at the time. We thought that it would only take an couple of hours but it took nearly all day, we also got there early enough to get our names on the Engine plant tour. Inside the Museum is every sort of Benz you could imagine, right from the first car ever made through to the modern cars. There were also truck, buses and Benz's used as taxi's etc. In the engine plant we got to see the 2,0 litre Kompresser engines being made, it all looks very simple as it goes together step by step.
Porsche Museum tomorrow..... or maybe not as Richard is all Car'd out.