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After the exciting IAESTE meeting in Prague I couldn’t say no to the next IAESTE meeting, this time in Dresden, city of kings and capital of the old kingdom of Saxony. I didn’t expect Dresden to be such a great city, in fact right now it has become my favorite city in Germany, it´s even more impressive and beautiful than Berlin.
On Saturday we had an interesting guided tour through the city, here are some of the best pictures:

The IAESTE Zwickau team

In the background the river Elbe and the impressive historical center of Dresden

The Katholische Hofkirche

Unfortunately the city was totally destroyed after suffering one of the worst war massacres in history, the bombing of Dresden, where the casualties suffered were similar to those in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A lot of historical building were rebuilt after the war but a lot of them were demolished by the DDR so that new concrete buildings “for the people” could be built.

The Frauenkirche was totally destroyed during World War II. The DDR kept the ruins as a war monument but in 1994 the new government decided to rebuild it; in 2005 the reconstruction was finished. In the picture you can see how the old stones are almost black and the restored ones are lighter (almost all of them)

IAESTE friends from all over Germany

The Fürstenzug, a big porcelain wall featuring all the Saxon kings in history

The Semperoper, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, and the equestrian statue of John of Saxony

We also entered the opera house. Amazing

The Zwinger Palace, a baroque palace downtown

The views from the other side of the river are exceptional

Me and the cathedral

The day we spent in Leipzig we also went to the famous Leipzig Zoological Garden, which is considered one of the best in Germany. I have always loved animals, in fact when I was a kid my dream was to become the main veterinary of the Madrid Zoo. I enjoyed the Leipzig Zoo visit a lot because it was a long time since I had visited a Zoo. Moreover I put my new camera to test by taking almost 200 pictures, some of the best are these:

The zoo entrance

A funny little monkey

This monkey was stealing food from the visitors, he hated me

An Amerian alligator

A lizard

Team picture

A cute red panda

Przewalski’s horses, the only truly wild horse in the world. They are a seriously endangered species

Mouflons

With a cute horse

A hyena posing for me. Totally undeserved the bad reputation of this animal

Jiraffes in formation

We took more than 10 pics to get this one

Elephant shrew

A human ancestor

A proud sun bear

And of course we couldn’t miss the elephants

A bored black rhino. He didn’t move for more than 10 minutes

We found Nemo!

Red-eyed fish

Last Wednesday I was featured in the “prestigious” local newspaper Zwickauer Zeitung along with my IAESTE mates.

The university’s vicedean invited all of us that are working with the IAESTE programme in Zwickau to a formal meeting with our bosses and the international relations supervisor. In the meeting the vicedean did a presentation about the university and its present issues while taking coffee, and also asked each of us about how our summer was going and our work at university.

The IAESTE trainees with the top staff of the university

In the meeting

The vicedean talking about the Foucault pendulum in the university library

Doing politics

My stay in Germany for the summer comes to an end, today Tuesday at 6:00 in the morning my Air Berlin flight will take off from Dresden to Palma de Mallorca, I will wait in the island for two hours and then head to Alicante. Now I’m spending the night in Dresden airport (low-cost flights…) connected to the Internet in my laptop, I’ve paid 13 euros for 180 minutes of Wi-fi, what a business!

When I arrive home I will have to study full power for September exams, however I will keep posting updates about my summer adventures, I still have a lot more to tell…
As a whole I’m very happy with my stay during 2 months in Zwickau: I have visited many new cities, my job has been quite relaxed, I’ve put my german skills up to date (which were kind of rusty), and the most important thing the new friends made.
The plane still hasn’t taken off, but I already feel like coming back to Germany. And it will be soon: 30th of September, a year of Erasmus in Hamburg! I can’t wait!

Two weeks ago we had two free days of work because they were changing our workplace to other building and they had to move all the stuff. One of those days we decided to visit Leipzig, which is the biggest city in the Free State of Saxony (506,578 inhabitants according to Wikipedia).
It is a city with a lot history, its university (founded in 1409) is one of the oldest in Europe. A lot of distinguished and important people lived in Leipzig like Goethe, Leibniz, Bach, Wagner… and much more.
On the other side Leipzig was one of the cities that hosted matches for the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

Davit and me in front of the opera house


Noemi and Jerry next to the monument to Bach


With the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church), where Bach worked as a cantor.


The organ where Bach played his themes


Downtown streets


Soccer-decorated buildings


City-Hochhaus, Leipzig’s tallest building


Monument to Goethe


Next to the bar where Goethe went to take beers while he was studying at university.
As usual they say that if you touch that foot the wish that you make will be granted (haha…)

One of the best things in Zwickau is its wonderful lake, which is located very near from downtown and 5 minutes walking from my dormitory. They lake is known in German language as Schwanenteich (literally “Swan Pond”) and was built by a very rich nobleman in the 15th century.

The walkway

Some horses next to the walkway

As I’ve been able to see, this is the favorite spot by the local people for long walks. It’s also an ideal place for jogging, I’ve already jogged 5 or 6 times, or for riding bikes.
In the pond there are a lot of fish so it’s pretty usual to see people with their fishing rods. Moreover the lake is “navigable” and you can rent paddle boats or pedal boats shaped like swans.

With Davit (Armenia), Mahmoud (Syria), Jerry (China) and Noemi (Armenia)

What a photographer!

There are also goats

And of course there are also swans…

Searching stuff with Google I found a shocking new about how a swan felt in love with a pedal boat, and as you can see the boat model in the new is the same as the one they have here in Zwickau’s lake, next time I will check if any swan approaches to much to the swan boats.

Swan boat

During the next two months I will be working in the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (West Saxon University of Applied Sciences of Zwickau). I’m going to work 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday with Davit, an IAESTE trainee from Armenia. Our boss, Dr. Schuman seems to be in a business trip and he won’t be here until Monday, so Frau Tittman, his assistant, told us to do a presentation with Power Point about ourselves that we will present in the first work meeting this Monday. About our work I just know that it’s related to Second Life, I suppose programming scripts. In our work group we will be 4 IAESTE trainees: Davit, a girl from Egypt and a girl from China that will arrive during the summer.
I’ve uploaded the presentation to SlideShare, a website like YouTube but to share Power Point presentations. The website is very cool, in just 3 minutes I registered and uploaded the Power Point file:

Well, after a pretty hectic week, I’m ready to start writing my adventures in Germany. On Saturday I took an Air Berlin flight from Alicante to Berlin Texel airport, thanks to Luis instructions I arrived to the impressive Berlin Hauptbahnhof (inaugurated last year for the 2006 FIFA World Cup), there I waited for 3 hours, and I could find out that German Crispy Chicken burgers taste different from the Spanish ones, and here they offer you mayonnaise with the french fries while in Spain they only offer you ketchup…

Later I took the train Berlin-Leipzig and then another one from Leipzig to Zwickau, the final destination, where I will be living for 2 months. In Zwickau train station Frau Kunze was waiting for me. She is a very nice woman who works for the international relations department of the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (West Saxon University of Applied Sciences of Zwickau). She welcomed me and helped me out with everything, we went to a supermarket to buy the basic things to survive and then she took me to my accommodation.
I’m living in a college dormitory in downtown Zwickau in an individual room, sharing kitchen and bathroom with a nice French girl and two not-so-nice German boys. Since yesterday I’ve an Internet connection in my room, and it’s pretty fast, so from now on I will not have any excuses not to update my blog. Tomorrow more.

View from my room (in an eight floor)