Our story continues where we left off, in the steaming hot tour bus on our way to Dresden, Germany!
These girls right here made this trip one of the greatest experiences ever! It could have been a pretty awful experience were it not for our constant jokes and laughs which got us through all the tears as well. :) I really feel like I have made some amazing, life long friends. Exploring these incredible countries with them was so fun!
The day consisted of a whole bunch of standing around and listening to our Ukrainian tour guide.
We stood in here for a very long time. Good thing there were some pretty remarkable buildings and we were in good company, but I have absolutely no idea what they are or any history behind the buildings.
Again, some more beautiful buildings that I have no idea what they are.
Now I know what this is because of President Uchtdorf! The Lutheran church Frauenkirche.
After we were finally freed of following our Ukrainian friends, we decided to go and look for this beauty here. It's a building we saw on pinterest. It's supposedly supposed to make noise/music when it is raining. When we left to find it, it was raining, but was only lightly sprinkling when we arrived.
This was one of the coolest things for me! I loved these adorable buildings and have to live here one day! It's a pretty long wait list I hear, but I got on and will patiently wait my turn ;)
We also did some shopping in Dresden. We went to the biggest mall you could ever imagine... It was huge! We found a store where literally everything was on sale and spent the next hour or so there. It was a good time :)
Next onto Prague again!
We drove back to Prague that night and stayed in the same hotel as the night before. The next morning we woke up and were pumped to have the whole day to explore this beautiful city and to do it alone, just us girls!
The first stop was of course the John Legend wall. We all had to get the picture... Or like 20. So yeah, sorry not sorry for all the pics of me in front of the wall! ;P
Cute teacher Haley and Me
Peace and blessings. God bless America!
We tryna be hipster. Tamarah and Emery have it figured out
We wrote our names on the wall. ILP Ukraine 2016
We enjoyed the whole day, walking around the city and square. We had read about these delicious desserts, again on pinterest, and had to try! Inside was chocolate and strawberries. The cone was cinnamon and nuts. It tasted as good as it looks.
This is the cute little square we walked around for a while. We ate delicious hot dogs. It was grand
We went to the library and went through a tour there. It was so beautiful! We couldn't take pictures of the actual library, and we couldn't even walk inside. But it was remarkable! When they opened the doors, the lights slowly turned on and it lit up. It felt like I was in Beauty and the Beast. It was so cool! This rose reminded me of the movie too.
This is the view from the top of the tower at the library. It was so beautiful up there! The stairs going up to this point were one of the scariest things ever! So tiny and creaky. But this view made it all so worth it.
Our last stop on the journey was Polan. We stayed in this adorable little cottage-like hotel in the mountains on our way there.
It felt like a ski resort in Utah!
We drove to Auschwitz first. I knew that it was going to be hard walking through this place, but I never could have imagined it would be as hard as it actually was. Just walking around, my heart felt heavy. Just thinking about those that had to suffer through this terrible place.
We had about an hour and a half to walk around. This was almost too long emotionally but was not nearly enough time to see it all.
There is not much that I want to say about Auschwitz because it reminds me of the feelings I felt while being there. It was something that I'm glad I could do but not something I would probably ever want to do again.
This is the gas chamber. Walking into this was probably the worst part of the whole thing. We were in there for only about a minute but I felt like I was suffocating. I had an awful feeling inside there, just imagining the pain of all those people that were blindly led in and killed. And to think that Christ suffered every pain of all of God's children... It's unimaginable pain. How grateful I am that my Savior suffered through that so that we can all return to live with Him and our Father.
After Auschwitz, we were all very emotionally drained. We did have one more stop though before our journey back to Ukraine. We stopped in Krakow for only less than 3 hours. We all agreed that we just needed some real food and to sit. We had been eating snacks and sugar almost nonstop for the whole week.
So these are the only pictures I took of the actual city. It was pretty but we didn't have long here and had no plans of where to go. So, we found a cute little restaurant and enjoyed a good meal there, with wifi.
And that's the end! Well, we did still have a days journey back home on the dreaded bus. Getting back to Ukraine felt so good! To finally be back in a house that I have called home for the last 3 months. It was a great trip and I enjoyed feeling like a world traveler for the week. I think the next trip I take though will need to include sun, sand, and fresh coconuts :)
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